Month: July 2021

Here’s this week’s Sunday story.  No politics, no great philosophical points.  This is the story of a lost dog, and the efforts of a lot of people to get him home!!

The Queen’s Dog

Corgi’s are best known as “the Queen’s” dog.  Queen Elizabeth has had over thirty Corgi’s during her reign, and is even responsible for a new breed – the Dorgi.  That’s a  dachshund-corgi mix.  Their connection with the Queen makes them seem a more regal dog, a bit above all that “doggy” stuff. But they are a loving breed, “snugglers” who like nothing more than a couch, a warm fire and a nearby lap.

And Tito is all of that.  He is his owner’s emotional support dog, helping her through anxiety issues.  And he goes everywhere with her, in a job that requires travel to car races all over the Midwest.  Tito is always there, beside her or in the camper, waiting for a snuggle. 

Race Time

Saturday night is a big night at the Eldora Speedway races.  After the evening events, there’s celebration with fireworks and plenty of partying back in the campground.  Tito, who never left the area around the camper, just had to go – outside to potty. Unfortunately, just as he finished and was climbing back into the camper, the fireworks began.

He panicked and set off a series of events that went on for two weeks and covered dozens of miles.  Tito dashed off into the dark corn and soybean fields of nighttime Western Ohio.

Tito wasn’t the only dog to head into the cornfield when the fireworks started.  But by Sunday morning, all the others found their way back to their respective campers.  Unfortunately as racing wrapped up on Sunday afternoon there was still no sign of Tito. 

Travelling Man

The first surprise came on Tuesday morning. Tito wandered up to the door of a small building truss manufacturing plant, two miles away from the races and way out in the country at the corner of Dull and County Line Road (not making those up!).

Dogs often wander in the country, and one of the plant workers shooed Tito off, telling him to “go home”. It wasn’t until around noon that Tito’s owner stopped by to drop off a flyer, only to hear the news that the Corgi had been and gone. Tito’s “Mom” (and Grandma) drove desperately around the area, searching along the roads and ditches between the corn and soybean fields.

They pulled back up to the truss plant later in the afternoon, just in time to see Tito emerge from the corn. But before they could get the car stopped, several of the factory workers thought they could “save” Tito, and ran out of the plant calling his name. Tito, reasonably thinking all these strangers might be a danger, sprinted (on his very short Corgi legs) back into the corn. He was later seen in the evening behind a home across from the plant.

LPR

Lost Pet Recovery (LPR) decided to get involved.  LPR works out of Columbus, Ohio, and the dog went missing near St. Henry’s, Ohio, over two hours away near the Indiana border.  But Jenn (my wife)  was already working on a dog in Fairborn, north of Dayton on Wednesday, “just” an hour away, so after trapping a dog gone missing for a couple days there, we headed up to “the country”.  I was along for the ride, and it looked like an easy catch.  

There was the area behind the house across the road, right beside the cornfield, perfect to set a trap, and a trail camera.  “Mom” and “Grandma” were still at the campground, hoping to take Tito home.  If Tito went into the trap, Jenn would see him on camera, and could notify “Mom”.  An elaborate plan was set up:  take Tito in the trap to a garage, and release him in there where he couldn’t run back into the corn. (Dogs that are “on the run” are usually terrified – even of their own “people”.  It takes a few minutes for them to recognize that they are in safe hands). 

But Tito had other plans.  Clearly the truss gang freaked him out enough that he moved on.  The trap and camera sat for a couple of days.  Meanwhile Tito was spotted near a house, a mile north of the plant.  

The Worst News

There were several other sightings of Tito, all around the area, but no clear place where LPR could “get ahead” of him to set up a trap. “Mom” had to go back home to Indianapolis, about 90 minutes away. Two local volunteers passed flyers to local stores and farm houses.   And Friday morning we got a terrible report.  A man driving on SR 119 late on Thursday night saw Tito peeking out of the cornfield.  The man swerved, but thought that Tito came out into the road.  He heard a thump, but when he came back, couldn’t find any evidence of the dog.

Jenn and I dropped some food for another lost dog in Dublin, Ohio, then headed out the 120 miles to SR 119.  We searched alongside the highway, underneath the bridge over the Wabash River (while the Wabash becomes a major river in Indiana, here in Ohio, it’s little more than a muddy creek).  Then, with permission, we marched down the rows of the cornfield, covering the first several to see if Tito dragged himself in there to hide. (As a guy who grew up in the city, this was my first experience hiking in the middle of a cornfield.  No wonder the “country” kids played hide and seek there). 

But there was no sign of a Corgi – though there were dog prints in the mud.  They looked a lot bigger than Corgi prints, maybe coyote sized.  That wasn’t a good sign either.  Jenn set a camera under the bridge, hoping to see Tito go by to get a drink.  Then we headed home, unsure whether the Tito story was over.

Sightings

You can’t catch a dog you cannot see.  Lori and Robin, wonderful volunteers who lived a half hour away and had helped LPR in the past, put signs out around the area.  You can usually tell an LPR sign – bright pink, “LOST DOG – DO NOT CHASE”, followed by a phone number.  It’s those phone calls that allow the team to plot where a dog is going – and hopefully get ahead of him so he can be trapped.

But for two long days there wasn’t any word of Tito.  Don and Kim, the leading “trappers” for LPR, went back to the bridge to see if there was any sign of him, but found nothing.  Kim got injured trying to get down to the river to check for evidence.  That’s one of the risks of trapping dogs.  (She’s sore and bruised but will be OK).

And this would be a really sad Sunday story if it ended here.

Little League Field

St. Henry’s is a small town, a few miles away from the bridge.  There’s a Dairy Dream, a Food Mart, and a couple of small restaurants.  On Sunday, Tito showed up behind one of them, and the phone call came in.  Lori and Robin sped over to check. They found Tito hanging out in the middle of the Little League baseball field on the north side of town, waiting for the next game to start.  

The word passed quickly: “The Lost Dog of Eldora” was here. Kids roamed the streets, looking for Tito – so there was more chasing, and more dodging into the nearby cornfields. Lori, followed too, but from a safe distance. She found Tito’s “safe zone”, behind a farm house where he had water, peace and quiet. She let everyone know: leave him alone! Then she called Don.

It’s a two hour drive from Columbus, but as soon as he could, Don headed up to set up a camera and a trap near the ball field.  And it took another night, but on Monday morning there Tito was on camera, calmly waiting in the trap for someone to come and get him. 

He was soon reunited with his family.  After ten days, a couple dozen miles of corn and soybean fields, a brush with a truck: adventures all on short little Corgi legs, he was a little skinnier but healthy.  And he was home.

LPR doesn’t always have success.  Sometimes searching for dogs is beyond frustrating; they are never found, or even worse.  But the reunions are awesome – and that’s a happy Sunday Story ending.

To learn more about Lost Pet Recovery or support our efforts – click here

• The Sunday Story Series
• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21

Seven Days in December

A few days before Christmas last year, I wrote an essay called Seven Days in December.  The title was an homage to Seven Days in May, a book from the early 1960’s about a military takeover of the United States government.  It later became a movie starring Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Eva Gardner and Fredrich March (movie trailer).  Rod Serling wrote the screenplay from the Fletcher Knebel novel.

The generals were plotting to take over the country, creating a national “crisis” to use troops to control communications and transportation.  Some Senators were “in” on the plot, encouraging the military to move against their political rival, the President.  It was a dark story and literally a dark movie, shot in black and white.  It was left to the loyalty of a lowly Colonel to the United States Constitution over “his general” to save the nation.

The reason I wrote the essay was the fear that somehow Donald Trump, after losing the election, would try to launch a similar action to stay in power.  I wasn’t “making up” the concern:  there were news report of a meeting in the Oval Office about declaring an “Insurrection” and using it to rescind the results of the election.  Former General Mike Flynn was in the middle of the plot and the meeting descended into a screaming fight among the Trump aides.  It happened.

Insurrection for Real

We all know what we saw on January 6th.  We all felt how close our nation was to a major turning point:  when the mob took over the Capitol, and disrupted the Constitutional certification of the vote.  And within days we found out how close the mob was to “capturing” Vice President Pence, Majority Leader Schumer, Speaker Pelosi and the rest of the legislative leadership.  It was a matter of minutes, even seconds.  If they were seized, the course of our national “experiment in Democracy” would radically change. 

The House of Representatives select committee on January 6th began their investigation this week.  We listened to four police officers describing a “medieval” battle for control of the Capitol building, the battle we all watched.  They told us about the hours of hand-to-hand combat, and their personal costs from that struggle.  

There are those that, like Holocaust deniers, want to pretend that January 6th really wasn’t that big a deal.  They want us to dis-believe our own eyes and ears, saying that the crowd was simply exercising free speech;  and those that broke into the building were just “a few crazies”.  But that’s not what we saw and heard on that fateful day.

So it is incumbent on this committee to document what actually happened.  In this age of “fake news” and the “Big Lie”, we need clear evidence of what occurred.  After World War II, the Allies carefully filmed the death camps, because they knew that their horrors were unbelievable.  So too, we need documentary evidence of January 6th to dismiss those who pretend nothing happened.

Thousands of Questions 

(Questions – Buffalo Springfield)

But there are so many other questions that need answered.  If an “essayist” (sounds so much better than “a blogger”) in Pataskala, Ohio, could warn of “insurrection” seventeen days before January 6th, how was the national leadership caught so unaware. Or were they unaware at all; was there an actual plan for the certification to be disrupted?  Were the actions of January 6th spontaneous, just a reaction to the goading of the Trump speakers on the Mall?  The crowd around the Capitol was estimated at ten thousand or more, drawn to Washington directly by the President.  Is it more incredible to believe this just “happened”?  Or was there more organization behind this event? 

There are five areas of questioning that the January 6th committee must address.

• What caused the attack on the Capitol?
• Why was the Capitol unprepared for the assault?
• What kept help from arriving at the Capitol for so long?
• Where there any political interference in aiding the Capitol defense?
• What steps need to be taken to prevent future assaults on the Capitol? 

The Battle Continues

Each of these questions has dozens of sub-questions, all leading back to the fundamental issue.  Was January 6th an orchestrated attack on our Democracy, planned by the Trump Administration, or was it the “accidental result” of the throwing gasoline on the mob’s fire? 

We need to know: the whole nation needs to know.  Because the January 6th Insurrection isn’t over, it’s going on in the State Capitol buildings of dozens of states.  Who can vote, when they can vote, how they can vote: all are being restricted because of the “Big Lie” and in spite of the results of the 2020 election. To paraphrase Senator Teddy Kennedy:   the battle continues, and the work to win goes on. 

                                                                                                            July 28, 2021

Senator:

I am not one of your constituents, but I hope you will still take the time to read a note from a fellow Democrat.  

First, thank you for your service to West Virginia and to the Nation.   There has to be an incredible amount of pressure to follow your state’s current governor and switch to the Republican Party.  You haven’t and I am glad that you are willing to take “the heat” of being the only statewide Democratic office holder in the state.  Your colleague, my Senator Sherrod Brown, shares that same distinction.  

I think I understand your position on the filibuster.  Not only are you a “traditionalist” in the Senate, unwilling to change that long-standing practice, but you are a political realist as well.  There may be a day when the Democrats don’t have control, maybe soon.  By opening the door to ending the filibuster, the door is open for Republicans to do the same.  It’s gaining power now, but perhaps losing critical control later.  

There’s no guarantee that Republicans wouldn’t do that anyway, but there are a lot of traditionalists in their caucus too.  So I get that.

I watched the House January 6th Committee hearing on Tuesday.  I was struck with the testimony of the policemen, who, regardless of their own political views, did their job to protect the Capitol.  They were defending the Capitol, the rule of law, and the Constitutional process of choosing the President.  They risked their lives to do so.

In part because of their efforts, the Insurrection failed in its goal of keeping Donald Trump in office.  Those officers and the action of most of our legislators stopped the direct result of the “Big Lie” campaign waged throughout the nation.  But they didn’t stop the “Big Lie”. 

It’s still out there, this “Big Lie” cause of the Insurrection.  And it’s driving the Republican legislatures throughout the country to change the voting process.  Like the REDMAP program a decade ago, this wave of election “reforms” will fulfill the Republican goal:  minimizing the votes of Democrats, particularly Democrats of color.  What wasn’t won in the halls of the Capitol building in January, they are winning in the halls of state capitols throughout the nation.

And that is not only a threat to the Democratic candidates.  It’s a threat to our Democracy writ large. We are stepping back to a time before 1965, when the right to vote was dependent on skin color.  Sure it’s being done “legally”, just as the “Jim Crow” laws were legal.  That in no way makes it right.  It’s a continuum from the Big Lie, to the Insurrection, to voter suppression.  And the only way to stop that procession is for the Federal Government to step in, just as it did in 1965. 

I also understand that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed with 77 votes.  That assured that the next Senate wouldn’t turn around and take it all back – as the Republican Senate tried again and again to do with the Affordable Care Act.  Passing voting rights today by 50 votes lays open the prospect of an “anti-voting rights” act in the next Republican Senate.  But it’s a very different era than 1965.  It’s hard to imagine, but we are even more polarized, more divided than they were over the Civil Rights movement.  There was no “insurrection” of 1965; and no one in the position of Donald Trump, “fooling some of the people, all of the time”. 

Senator, I am asking for you to find a way to protect the right to vote for all Americans.  It’s clear that there will be no Republican colleagues willing to cross the aisle in this cause, no compromise available for bipartisan support.  The compromise must be with you, and it must be over the filibuster.  Some way, a “carve out” or some other modification,  must be reached to allow our Federal Government to protect the most basic right of our democracy – the right to vote.  

Thanks for your time, and your service.

Sincerely, Martin Dahlman

Civil War

Let’s go back in time a little bit.  It’s the fall of 1865, three months after the last Confederate troops surrendered in Texas.  The Civil War is over – like it or not, the Union is reunited and the nation is moving forward.  Reconstruction troops occupy many parts of the former Confederacy, there to guarantee that the Rebellion, the Insurrection of 1861, remains over. 

But what if Jefferson Davis, former President of the Confederacy, instead of being held for treason in leg irons at Fortress Monroe, was allowed to go from town to town and speak in favor of the Rebellion?  What if instead of moving on from the Insurrection, the more than 600,000 dead, the four years of brother against brother and father against son, we allowed the leaders of the Confederacy to continue to preach for their cause?

It would have made no sense.  It would have denigrated the ultimate sacrifice made by the Union dead.  Even the departed Lincoln, with the final words: “With malice towards none, with charity for all…” recognized that victory required recognition of the victors, and acceptance by the defeated.

MAGA Mailing

Somehow, I ended up on the  mailing list of an organization called “Save America”, a joint fundraising political action committee along with another title, “Make America Great Again”. It says it’s not authorized by any candidate, but it’s website is donaldjtrump.com.  This is the Trump campaign, of 2020.  It continues, because there are huge financial gains to be made by “campaigning”, whether Trump ever intends to run for President again or not.  There are Trumpian bills to be paid, and many still willing to donate.

Here are Mr. Trump’s bullet points:

• Hydroxychloroquine works
  • The China Virus came from a Chinese Lab
  • Hunter Biden’s laptop was real
  • Lafayette Square was not cleared for a photo op
  • The Russian Bounties story was fake
  • We did produce vaccines before the end of 2020, in record time I might add
  • Blue state lockdowns didn’t work
  • School should be reopened
  • Critical Race Theory is a disaster for our schools and our country
  • Our Southern Border security program was unprecedentedly successful.

Ignoring History

It’s like the whole history of our nation from November of 2020, through the inauguration of Joe Biden in January of 2021, didn’t happen.   It’s as if Jefferson Davis was debating the Constitutionality of secession after the War was done. (Jefferson Davis WAS anxious to continue that debate, and hoped to do so in his treason trial.  Instead, he ultimately was allowed to leave US custody on $100,000 bail, and departed to Canada, until Andrew Johnson pardoned him in 1868).

The “Big Lie” of non-existent election fraud led to the Insurrection of January 6.  But it’s not just that lie that empowers Donald Trump.  It is a series of “little lies” that have been going on since that “Golden Escalator” moment in 2015.  The “little lies” softened us up.  We got so used to the lying, that we stopped calling them lies:  they were “alternative facts”, and the New York Times had long conferences on using the word “lies” (NYT).  They were afraid by using so often, it would lose impact.  It did.

Little Lies

We became inured to the lies, overwhelmed by the number and volume and sheer audacity of them.  We were told not to believe our own eyes and ears, to only believe what HE (in a godly, capital letter way) told us.  And after five years, when HE came out with the “Big Lie”, and incited his followers to attempt to overthrow the Constitutional process of choosing the President, we weren’t ready.  The shock of the battle of the Capitol didn’t really set in, until we watched it “live”.

And now we are told again to not believe our own eyes and ears.  And the “little lies” continue too.  The former President’s list is still full of them.  By the numbers:

• Hydroxychloroquine still doesn’t work for COVID (National Institutes of Health)
• We still don’t know how the COVID-19 virus began (Washington Post)
• Lafayette Square was cleared moments before Trump spoke (Washington Post). (An inspector general report that the Park Police only cleared it to install fences never looked at the roles of the Attorney General, Secret Service or other agencies in the park “clearing”. 
• Lockdowns saved lives (Health Feedback).

The others – it’s hard to factcheck Hunter Biden’s laptop to a non-opinionated source – unless you use the New York Post, and  the Russian Bounty story factuality is still undetermined.  

Credit where credit is due:  Operation “Warp Speed” did produce the vaccine quickly (though Pfizer didn’t get any of the research money) (NPR).

Fortress Monroe

But the “little lies” continue to dilute our world of facts.  And the “Big Lie” that led to the attack on the US Capitol and the constitutional process, remains a “fact” for many.  Unlike Jefferson Davis, Donald Trump is still selling it to his followers, like a dealer to his junkies. 

Fortress Monroe is still available.

Braveheart

“FREEDOM!!!” They just need some blue face paint and a kilt, and of course Mel Gibson, and they’re all set.  “FREEDOM” from the oppression of – vaccinations and face masks? And the “FREEDOM” to risk not just themselves, but their fellow citizens with a COVID variant that can “breakthrough” the vaccines?  “FREEDOM” to throw out all of the reasonable expectations of public health, expectations that began during the Black Plague in medieval times?  

And who are “they”, crying out “FREEDOM” and threatening to lift their kilts?  

Well let’s start with the candidate for Governor of  Arkansas, former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.  Her current platform is her promise of “FREEDOM”, from all of the public health measures designed to protect her potential constituents.   

“If I’m elected governor here in Arkansas, we will not have mask mandates.  We will not have mandates on the vaccine, we will not shut down churches and schools and other large gatherings, because we believe in personal freedom and responsibility. It’s one of the key cornerstones, frankly, of our country.”

Of course personal freedom and responsibility doesn’t include a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, or a transgendered child’s right to choose their gender identity.  But that’s not really the point of this essay.  

Arkansans

Arkansas is 49th in the percentage of the population vaccinated, with only 35% fully covered (Becker).  Frankly, one of the “key cornerstones” of the United States is sacrifice for the public good.  It’s why we pay taxes, and in times of crisis, accept increased government controls including rationing and even compulsory military service.  And the “sacrifice” that Arkansans might be asked to give?  Get the vaccination.

Exercising personal “FREEDOM” by not getting vaccinated means risking infection.  It means that the non-vaccinated person is choosing not to get a near guaranteed protection from hospitalization and death.  And, just like smoking cigarettes, they could argue that it’s their choice, and their fate.  And even if you discount the increased costs of medical care for everyone due to infection and hospitalization, again, like cigarettes, it’s their choice.

But here’s where their “personal choice”, their “FREEDOM”, does more than just sicken or kill them.  Viruses mutate by widespread infection.  Stop the widespread infection, and there’s much less likelihood of the virus changing.  Mutations create new risks for all of us; the risk  that the virus will change into something not protected by the vaccines. By Arkansans having their “personal freedom and responsibility”, the great state of Arkansas becomes a petri dish for COVID virus mutation.  And that’s when their vaunted “FREEDOM” impacts us all.

For Us All

It’s like because you smoke cigarettes, we are all forced to smoke.  Not just secondary smoke, but we all have to light up and inhale:  men, women and children.  Arkansas, and the other states that refuse to take reasonable health measures won’t just have more infections of the COVID viruses we have now, but may well create new ones we don’t know how to control.

Sander’s isn’t the only one in Arkansas demanding “FREEDOM” from masks and vaccines.  The state legislature banned schools from imposing mask mandates (though prisons can).  So while other national Republican leaders, late to the game, are encouraging vaccination, Arkansas is “doubling down” on “FREEDOM”.  And they are likely doubling down on increased COVID infections, hospitalizations and deaths. Let “FREEDOM” ring.

Common Sense

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has finally figured this out.  Alabama is 51st in vaccinations, with only 34% fully covered (Becker).  When asked about the rising infection and hospitalization rate in her state, Ivey replied:

“Folks are supposed to have common sense. But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down…The new cases of COVID are because of unvaccinated folks.  Almost 100% of the new hospitalizations are with unvaccinated folks.  And the deaths are certainly occurring with unvaccinated folks.”

Somehow, both Governor Ivey and Candidate Sanders have determined that the “common sense” of the good people of Alabama and Arkansas will save the day.  They will mask, social distance, and even close down, all on their own.  But even if COVID hadn’t become intertwined with Trumpian politics, it’s not likely that citizens would lead in sacrificing.  We have always looked to our leadership, in hurricanes and forest fires, in wars and now in disease. 

But some of those leaders are more interested in following than leading.  They don’t want to be up front with the hard realities of COVID and viral infection.  Instead – they find it better to lead with phrases steeped in “Red, White and Blue”:  FREEDOM.   Freedom to infect us all. 

This is another in the “Sunday Story” series.  There’s no politics here, just some stories from my years of running and coaching.  Enjoy!!!

An Old Jogger

I started running again three weeks ago.  I’ve run a lot in my life. There was a track career as a sprinter in high school and college. Then I became a distance running Cross Country Coach. And finally there were early, early morning conditioning as a track coach.  Since I retired from coaching, I’ve tried to keep my conditioning up. But a knee injury put me on machines for a while. I tore cartilage in my knee kicking mulch, it doesn’t get any stupider than that.  And for the past year and a half, from before COVID and right through, I’ve been on an elliptical machine.  That’s working out in a room, watching TV.

Now the elliptical has been great, and I stayed with a consistent program.  But when track season rolled around this year, I found the I had same problem as when I was coaching.  Three or four track meets a week wore my legs out to the point that something had to give.  Doing both was just wearing me down.  I took a break.

Back on the Streets

So it’s been three months “off”, and I’ve decided to try running again, on the streets, outside, in the world.  At my age I start really slow, a jog for a little more than a mile, trying to remember what all of the muscles feel like.  Running is different than “elllipticaling”, there’s more balance, more work for all of the little muscles that keep you upright whether the sidewalk is cracked or a root protrudes from the path.  It takes more energy over less time than the machine.

But the best part of running, is it brings back all of the decades’ worth of memories.  Sure I’ve run the same roads and trails for generations (of kids), but it’s not just the familiar places.  While I struggle to get my “mileage” in, I also am flooded with memories.  Here’s some of them.

New Grass

There is nothing like the smell of newly cut grass on a just getting-hot summer morning.  I’ve experienced that smell my whole life, but it’s all linked to running.  Whether it was the long run summers when I was going six or seven miles a day, or just a more recent excursion of one mile (and some change – working to get to two), hot-cut grass in the summer takes me back.  Summer runs with the Cross Country team or discussing philosophy with David Taylor as we jogged (well, he jogged, I was running pretty fast for me) down McIntosh Road. 

A million (or at least thousands) of runs up Watkins Road from the school, before it became all housing developments, when it was cornfields and soybeans and grass.  There was no need for “OPP” (on potty patrol – bathroom breaks) as long as the farmers were growing corn.  Kids would disappear into the “fields of dreams” and come back ready for more mileage.   

Hillsboro

Coaching at the Hillsboro Invitational, where the short-cut to the two-mile mark took as long for me the coach as it took the runners in the race. The course was mostly old farm fields, grass cut lower on the course but piled up along the sides.  The “new hay” smell was all over.  

Hillsboro had some great memories – cheering my best teams excelling early in the season.  And also some of my worst – it’s where I decided that I needed my heart checked. Running to the two mile mark it felt like someone took a wire brush to my throat. I made it there, but had to walk back and didn’t get to see the finish.  It seemed stupid to die in Hillsboro. I had a stent placed within a month.  The stent went in on a Monday, and I was running around at the Conference Meet at Big Walnut that Saturday, feeling great (though my Assistant Coaches weren’t very happy about that).  The doc told me I couldn’t do any more damage – so the stent got “field tested” a little bit.

Crows

And then there’s the cawing of crows early, early in the morning.  I’m not running that early yet, it takes me a lot longer to physically get going than it used to.  But I do have dogs (see almost any post on this blog) and they get up very early. So we are up, walking around in the very early light, listening to the crows let everyone around know that they are awake.

We used to take our Cross Country team to a Boy Scout Camp, Camp Falling Rock, for a four  day summer camp.  We put the kids in a cabin, dorms with bunk beds with two big rooms, one for the girls and one for the boys.  I was always up early there, to get some coffee going before the kids were awake for our 7:30 am run.  Walking from the cabin up to the Lodge to make coffee, I was always greeted by the crows, dozens of them, hanging out in the trees and a little bit concerned that someone else was sharing their hilltop.

And on really good days, the birds were joined by a herd of deer that grazed on the grass at the top of the hill.  It was a mellow feeling, a good start to the day; sharing the sunrise with the crows and the deer, quietly feeding away but always with one eye on the sleepy looking guy staggering up to get some “joe” in before the morning trail run.

Trail Runs and Deer

That was a tradition, those early morning trail runs.  Everyone stayed together, running at “sub Dahlman pace”.  It was just to shake out the legs for the day, nothing crazy.  But tradition was that at least once a camp we would “get lost”.  It really wasn’t intentional (they were following me).  It was always a matter of can we get “there” a different way than “the regular” way.  Sometimes it worked, but sometimes the morning run ended up a lot harder than it should.  Everyone always came home, with a story to tell, of a cliff, or a stone, or a road that wasn’t supposed to be there.

Speaking of deer, my favorite deer story is of a pre-dawn solo run in the streets of Pataskala.  I was getting the “town loop” in. That’s once all the way around in the dark before there were any cars on the road.  As I ran down High Street, past the historic Pataskala Elementary School, I sensed I had a companion running with me.  It was a deer, a younger buck, who decided I would be good company for a bit of his pre-morning search for flowers.  We went about a block together, before he realized that I really was only running on two feet, not a “brother” deer at all.  Then he headed west as I continued south.

Sunrise at the McGowan

While coaching I had the opportunity of managing the McGowan Cross Country Invitational for thirty-some years.  The last decade or so, it was one of the largest meets in Ohio, with nineteen races and over five thousand kids running.  It was an all-day affair, with the first race at 9 am and the last ending around 6 pm.  There were lots of folks who made it happen, with everyone pitching in to do their part.

I always got there super-early, before 6 am, in the pre-dawn darkness.  In fact, we turned on the soccer field lights for the first hour, so that we could see to work.  That wasn’t a problem for years, but then a housing development was built right up against our running course.  Nothing like field lights at 6 am on a Saturday morning.  But somehow, we never got complaints.  I guess they knew what they were in for when they were bought their new house.

 Our scoring was in the soccer press box, where all the computers and printers had to be networked to work together.  That was one of my early morning tasks.   But I always took a break, just as the sun came up. It peaked over the starting line a quarter-mile to the east, highlighting the dew in the grass of the field leading towards the soccer fence.  Sunrise is always a fresh start; whatever the day before had been, today was something new.  “Sunrise over the McGowan” was a personal tradition.  Then the running would begin!

Sunset on the Track

And there was one more track tradition.  The Watkins facility has woods and pine trees to the west, out past the baseball field, the woods where we ran most of the cross country course.  At the end of the hundreds of track meets we ran at Watkins, at least the ones that finished in the daylight, I would always pause long enough to watch the sunset over the woods.  

It won’t be quite the same anymore:  new home bleachers are built on the west side of the track and field, and the sunset will now be behind that.  The home spectators will love it: no more staring into the setting sun during football games.  But it was often beautiful and always peaceful, a good end no matter how the track meet turned out for the home team.

• The Sunday Story Series
• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21

Aware

I don’t like the new-speak “woke”, but to quote Peter Townsend from The Who, I “became aware” in 1968 (We’re Not Going to Take It).  I was eleven, and it was the year that Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated.  Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists at the Olympics, the Democratic Convention in Chicago dissolved into violence, and Richard Nixon won the Presidency.

I was as child of the Kennedy Presidency.  Some of my earliest memories are of learning of the President’s death. I watched his funeral on our black and white television (you had to turn it on early – it needed to warmup).  It was only a month or so later that we went to Washington.  The service hats were still surrounding the “eternal flame” lighting his grave.  

Bobby Kennedy took up his brother’s legacy.  It was in January of 1968 that the myth of American victory in Vietnam exploded like an overfilled balloon.  The Tet Offensive showed that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were not only undefeated, but uncontained and willing to accept tremendous losses to gain control.  Now a Senator from New York, Bobby wasn’t the first to speak out against President Johnson.  But his words and actions, his willingness to place his life on the line and run for the Presidency himself, made him Johnson’s powerful opponent. 

It got him killed.   There was another funeral, this time in “living color”,  another procession to Arlington Cemetery.  He was buried beside his brother:  an Attorney General, a US Senator, a candidate for President, a final chapter of the “Camelot” dream.

The Burden

There must be a terrible burden in the Kennedy name.  

Robert Kennedy Junior is the third child of the eleven Bobby and his wife Ethel had.  He grew up in the great “Kennedy” tradition, graduating from private school in Boston and going onto Harvard, the London School of Economics, and, like his father, the University of Virginia Law School.   He made his mark as a leading environmental lawyer for thirty-five years, founding the “Waterkeeper Alliance” and as senior attorney for the National Resources Defense Council.   Kennedy also advocated for minority and poorer communities, particularly when environmental issues combined with their interests.  

As an outgrowth of his environmental involvement, Mr. Kennedy became an outspoken critic of the use of the chemical compound thimerosal in vaccines.  Out of that original concern, he has evolved into the leader of the “anti-vaccination” movement in the United States.  According to Center for Countering Digital Hate, he is one of dozen leading “influencers” on social media. 

Kennedy has come out against many vaccines, including those against COVID-19.  He also claims that 5-G cellular telephone radiation is linked to the coronavirus, and claims, without evidence,  that a “…wave of suspicious deaths” are tied to the vaccines (NPR).

Easy to Hate

Robert Kennedy represents the odd union of progressive politics and conspiracy theory.  And it all began with a now discounted theory linking the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine with autism, published in the British medical journal The Lancet (it has since been retracted).  The author subsequently was stripped of his medical license.   But the “cork was out of the bottle” – and the anti-vaccination world had what they needed to attack.

I guess there’s some logic in the movement.  Big industry spent years hiding and denying pollution.  Some big pharma companies have made a fortune on drugs that ultimately did more harm than good – the opioid crisis comes to mind.  So when “evidence” comes out that vaccines are “bad”, it’s easy to accept.  And when investigations by institutions, like the Food and Drug Administration or the American Medical Association, refute that “evidence”, it’s easy to claim that it’s just “big money” buying their acceptance.

Anti-Hero

But it’s just as easy to go from selective understanding to total “anti” everything.  And that’s a problem.  Vaccinations work, ever since 1796 when Edward Jenner discovered the smallpox vaccine.  My generation saw the end of smallpox and polio, and the fading of the typical “childhood” diseases that took a toll in disability and death every year:  measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, scarlet fever and chicken pox.  Vaccinations worked so well that we forgot the dangers of the diseases themselves. We focused instead on the minuscule risks of the vaccinations.

It’s hard when the leading spokesperson for the “anti” movement is the son of a hero, a man with a long record of service to causes you support.  Hard to maintain common sense, and not fall into the black hole of conspiracy theory and pseudo-science.  Social media is good for so many things, from finding lost dogs to selling campers.  It gives us access to all sorts of information, some legitimate, and a lot of it junk.  But what it also has done is given every “snake oil salesman” a platform, with slick graphics and realistic lab coats.  

Legacy

Robert Kennedy takes his family name and wears it like a “lab coat”.  It gives him legitimacy, an echo of his father and uncles and an earlier, simpler time.  He has spent a career battling the “corporate interests” that damaged our environment.  But now he has stepped beyond the truth – and instead of protecting folks, he is putting them at risk.  He is appealing to their worst instincts, and with the imprimatur of his family, it works.

His uncle said:  “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”.  What Robert Kennedy is doing for his country is helping more people die.  It’s a sad chapter in the Kennedy legacy.

Old Times

It’s just like “old times”, at least old times four years ago.  Back then these essays were called Trump World, all about the 45th Presidency.  From those earliest entries on Trump World, I wrote about the influence of other nations on Donald Trump.  If  we’d only known.  “Russian intelligence” made their first appearance in Drip, Drip, Drip and Drip, Drip, Drip – Part Deux.  That was early March of 2017, barely six weeks after the Inauguration.  

So here we are, six months into the Biden Presidency.  The President did a CNN Town Hall last night, speaking from Cincinnati.  Biden was everything we thought he’d be: a little halting, but   folksy and plain spoken.  He described the first time they played Hail to the Chief for him.  He turned around to look for the President.  But he also came clearly prepared and able to articulate on the issues; from the COVID resurgence to current inflation, US stature in the world to Senate negotiations for the infrastructure plan.

Cabinet Meeting

He held his first full cabinet meeting this week in the actual Cabinet Room of the White House.  In past months a bigger room was used as part of the COVID protocols.  And they looked “packed in” this time, with the President shoulder to shoulder with Secretary of State Blinken to his right and Secretary of Defense Austin to his left.  Those advisors didn’t pay “obeisance” to the President, there wasn’t a round of “how great you are” like the Trump Cabinet.  And that was only one of the big differences between the Biden Presidency and his predecessor.   

Highest Bidder

We now know that many in the Trump Presidency were sold to the highest bidder.  At least three of those closest advisors to the President were directly on the payroll of another nation.  They were “on the take”:  receiving big bucks to influence the President of the United States to benefit their employer.  At least three had another “master” besides the “Eagle flying” on their paychecks.

We know that Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort was corrupted by debt to the Russians.  We know that Trump’s National Security Advisor General Flynn was on the continuing payroll of the Turkish Government.  And this week we learned that his close friend, advisor and the Chairman of his Inaugural committee Tom Barrack was on the payroll of the United Arab Emirates, to the tune of over a billion dollars.  

A Billion 

A billion dollars:  what kind of influence does that buy?  I remember when I was managing a Cincinnati City Council campaign, the candidate and I had long discussions about accepting a $10,000 contribution.  It was a big chunk of change for us, and we were concerned how much influence we were “selling” to the contributor.  That was .0001% of a billion.  For a billion dollars, they get what they want.

And we may never know how much influence others had over Jared Kushner and Don Junior, keeping the constant flow of money going needed to refinance their disparate real estate holdings.  We do know that Kushner’s 666 Fifth Avenue building was refinanced with $1.1 Billion from Qatar, a ninety-nine year lease with the entire cost paid up-front.  

Policy Bought

Russia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and of course Saudi Arabia: all these nations seemed to have a “sweet spot” in the Trump Administration.  And of course Israel, with a direct personal connection from Netanyahu to Kushner.  The Israeli Prime Minister was like an uncle to Jared.  And financially, Israel had a “legal” money line.  The late billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson, a financial force in both American and Israeli politics, made sure the Trump campaign was well financed.  At least that was “legal” cash.

But from Russia poisoning their former citizens throughout the world and hacking into American politics, to Saudi’s bloody execution of Jamal Khashoggi, to the strange blockade of Qatar quickly removed (just before the 666 deal was settled), to Israelis shooting Palestinians across the border:  how much was America’s reaction and policies determined by how many of the Trump Administration palms were greased?  We may never know the answer for sure.  But we do know this.  The former President of the United States was surrounded by those bought by other nations to influence him.

And he was a President most easily influenced.

Coaching

I’ve never coached at the Olympic level.  But I’ve had a couple of “national” quality athletes, and lots of “state” athletes, and that gave me an understanding of what goes into making decisions in an athletic season.  Certainly it starts with talent.  At the highest level, everyone is talented; there is nothing that can make up for a lack of that.  Add to that fierce dedication to “the goal”.  Without that dedication, talent is wasted.  Every coach had that the “most talented” who couldn’t didn’t have the fortitude to excel.  It’s a “lead the horse to water” thing.

But when an athlete has the combination of talent and dedication, as the coach, you “get the shot”.  You get the opportunity to use all of your knowledge, skills, and experience to hone that athlete to an elite level.  

The next factor is structural.  Does the athlete have the physical structure to handle the extreme stresses of training that are required?  Where is the “breaking point”, and how far can you go before it’s “too late”?  There’s a reason athletes can go through an entire season, and then, at the crucial moment, pull a muscle.  They have reached the limit, of speed, of stress, and of training – the edge between the success and disaster.  And they go too far.

Luck Factor

And then there’s the luck factor.  As athletes train, it stresses not just muscle and tendon, bone and ligaments.  It stresses their entire bodies, from the brain to the immune system.  There are points where they are most vulnerable to sickness, where the impact of hard training drops their defenses.  While coaching teams, I could tell to the week when some would get sick.  It was around the week of highest intensity.  

It’s one of the tough decisions I’ve made as a coach.  I took a group of athletes to the National High School Championships in New York City.  One had “his shot”, the chance to win.  But that morning of the race, he came down to breakfast looking awful. He was coughing, struggling to breath, and running a fever.  There wasn’t really a choice, but telling him that he wasn’t going to run when he was so close, the number literally already on his jersey:  that was hard.

The Vaccine

So what’s this essay all about?  The Olympics haven’t even started yet, and athletes are falling by the wayside to COVID. How could they not have been vaccinated?  Common sense – well common sense would seem to say they could have easily protected themselves from this threat.

And that’s true, they could have.  But let’s look at the timing.  And because I was a track coach, let’s look at it through the lens of a track athlete, one likely to have spent a lifetime, and particularly the last five years (one more than expected) to make the Olympic Team and compete in the Games.

An Olympian

There are two parts to making it to the Olympics in track and field.  The first is making the “standard”.  That’s a mark or ranking established by the International Track Federation (IAAF) that says you’re good enough to compete in the games.  And the second part is you have to actually “make the team”.  In the United States, that means finish in the top three at the Olympic Trials.  

So as an athlete, you have three goals:

            – run (or jump or throw) well enough to qualify for the Games

            – finish in the top three in the Trials to actually make the national team

            – run (or jump or throw) at the Olympic Games themselves (medal?).

Achieving the standard can occur as much as a year before the games.  But the other two come in quick succession.  The Olympic Trials were in June, track and field starts in Tokyo next week.  Track athletes are on carefully designed training programs, schedules set up to allow for two “maximal performances”, one at the Trials and one at the Games.  That is, unless they are still in college, then there’s one more maximal performance, at the NCAA Championships.

These athletes did everything they could to protect themselves from COVID.  They had little contact with others, wore protective gear, and literally went to practice and went home – that was it.  When they became eligible to get the vaccine, in mid-April, many of them were right at that moment when there training was at the highest intensity – and knew they were most vulnerable to sickness.  

Weigh the Risk

Their “teams”, coaches, trainers, and the athlete; weighed the risk.  If they got sick from the vaccine, there’s lost training time at a critical point.  If training is disrupted then maybe there isn’t the “maximal” performance – no Olympics.  But, of course, if the athlete gets COVID – well that’s much worse.

And if they didn’t get the vaccine in April, then surely not in May – nor June before the trials.  And while maybe right after the trials would be the “shot to get the shot”, that would still disrupt a training cycle designed for Olympic medals.  

Their COVID protections were working – they dodged the virus for over a year.  I’m sure when it was all added up, some athletes took the chance and got the vaccine.  And some, took the chance and didn’t.  

It was one more gamble, one more risk to take in the quest to achieve their goal.

Pocket-Box

The vast majority of Americans, at least aged twelve and older, are plugged into the world in a fashion no earlier generation experienced.  We, almost all of us, have more computing power in our pockets than broke the Enigma code, developed the atomic bomb, sent the Apollo rockets to the moon, or controlled the Space Shuttles.  And that power is linked to the rest of the world, for many of us, literally twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, Christmas, Passover, Ramadan and Diwali (yep, I had to Google that).  

All of that connection empowers us in many ways.  When a technical question arises:  “Who is that Senator from Louisiana”, or “What goes into a Low Country Boil,” we no longer rush to the books or the library.  We literally (verbally) ask our pocket-boxes, and instantly it reaches out across space and time to gain the answer.  My Dad in his later years used my Mom as his “external hard drive”.  His own memory was “corrupted” by strokes; there were years that no longer were “accessible”, so she served as his “backup” for names, dates, and events he knew he should have.  

Now, for a lot of us, there’s a pocket-box to serve that role.

Education

Ask a middle or high school teacher what the most distracting thing is in their classroom, and invariably they “call out” the pocket-box.  Every student seems to be “texting with Mom” all the time.  And while Mom isn’t always at the other end of that conversation, it’s true often enough to raise a whole different question.  

The pocket-box is a leash as well as a gateway.  The Ronald Reagan line, “Trust but verify” is the mantra for parents today.  Their child is a close as a text, anytime, day or night.  And if they fail to answer, “Find Phone” will give an exact location to their decimal geo-position.  But that child will still take their phone with them, even to an illicit party. Leaving it at home is less likely than forgetting to put on pants. 

That distracting “box” has changed education.  What in my era was “Get out your slide-rule” (a device for solving mathematical equations that didn’t require batteries) and then became “Get out your calculator (HP-85 or Bowmar “Brain”),”, now is “Get out your phone”.  And that honest teaching phrase, “I don’t know that answer, could someone research that for us?” is now answered in under thirty seconds.  It becomes a race of “pocket-boxes”; digital dexterity tested rather than research prowess.

Adaptation

Teaching has adapted.  Notes on a chalkboard (those don’t exist, someone might be allergic to the dust) are only in the movies, and usually in black and white.  The dry erase boards are gone too, with electronic “Smart Boards” the common tool.  Even “powerpoints” are “way old school”.  Since finding facts and performing functions are absolutely accessible, education has become what we once called “group work”, now termed “collaborative learning”.  Everyone works together, pooling their resources to accomplish whatever task is assigned.   It enforces socialization, in an era where electronic connectivity perversely creates increased personal isolation.  No one needs a computer, it’s in their pocket.

One Score

We all know the Lincolnian phrase, “Four score and seven years ago…”, eighty-seven years.  But it was less than one score, twenty years, from chalkboards to smart boards.  Our society is moving literally at the speed of light. Information good or bad, false or true, religiously uplifting or sexually explicit, is completely accessible and totally unrestrained in everyone’s pocket, from children to old men.  

It’s the era we hardly dreamed of in the 1950’s and 60’s; far beyond Dick Tracy’s wrist radio or the HAL 9000 computer.    But all that accessibility does not guarantee veracity.  A lie can travel just as fast as the truth, perhaps even faster.  In our “post-truth” world, the “facts” are determined more by how many people “agree” that they’re true, rather than the actual accuracy.  It’s the ultimate “democracy”: “the people” decide “truth”, true or not.  And that choice determines who else they “listen” to on their pocket-box.  Their version of “truth” reverberates and is reinforced.  The volume and quantity of repetition is constantly providing “verification”, right or wrong.

Crowd Source

In our world the truth is “crowd sourced”.  And we restrict our “crowd” to the truths we want to hear.  So all of that accessibility, all of the networking, or as the previous generation called it, “world-wide webbing”, puts us right back where we were.  We listen to who we listen to, we ignore the information we don’t want to hear.  What used to be “I don’t know” has now become “I don’t want to know”.  But the result is still the same. 

What happens from here?  Maybe we need to ask Facebook.  I’m sure they will provide the answer.

It will be  whatever answer we want to hear.

Bad Labeling

I have never been formally educated in “Critical Race Theory”.  I have of course, spent some time trying to understand it, and to see through all the “noise” made by those who decry it.  

The “debate” seems to me to be a lot like “Defunding the Police”.  That’s a lousy label for taking a close look at how we spend public funds to protect our society.  Do we really want Police officers to be our “front line” for mental health and addiction?  Do those police officers want to be on that front line?  I think all of us would agree that those cases put good officers in positions that others are better equipped to handle.   Re-evaluating why we use heavily armed and protected officers for that, and to direct traffic, or enforce evictions isn’t a slam on those who protect us from dangerous criminals.  But the word “defunding” is a challenge – bad labeling. 

Academic Lens

Critical Race Theory isn’t a political label.  No one is holding up “CRITICAL RACE THEORY” banners at the Black Lives Matter rally, or anywhere else for that matter.  It is an academic lens for focusing study, a way at looking at our history to determine what happened.  There are forces that drive us:  our behavior, our legislation, and our economics, that are beyond individual efforts and biases.  Critical Race Theory is a way at looking at how that happens.

Here’s an example.  Most of the American Founding Fathers were slave owners, or benefitted from slavery.  Madison, Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton, Hancock, Jay all had economic connections to slavery.  But the “philosophers”, particularly Madison, Jefferson and Hamilton, truly believed that slavery would disappear in the next fifty years.  They did “kick slavery down the road” for the next generation to solve (they banned the slave trade, but not for twenty years).  But they believed it was a solvable problem by that next generation. Madison saw the “Three-Fifths Compromise” as a step towards that – “three-fifths” is better than “zero”.   Then something changed.

Cotton Picking

Cotton was grown in the South.  It was an important cash crop to the Southern Planters, not so much for the Virginians, but in the deeper South of Georgia and South Carolina.  And while we all know about the “Triangle Slave Trade”, the trading ships of the North also took cotton to Europe, where it was sold for other goods and brought back to the America.  So right after the American Revolution, the South and the North were vested in cotton.

But cotton has two characteristics that make it difficult to grow.  First, the cotton plant takes nutrition from the soil.  Unlike other plants, such as soybeans and peanuts, it does not return nutrition.  After a few years of use, the cotton yield of a field drops.  It takes years of other crops for that field to regain its nutrients after cotton.  But all of that didn’t matter before the 1790’s, because cotton was so hard to clean.  

Growing and picking cotton is labor intensive.  But even after the cotton is picked, each individual piece of cotton must be cleaned of cotton seeds.  Someone could pick cotton all day, but it would take that same person all-night to clean what they picked.  So the plant itself was self-limiting, a planter could only grow so much, because only so much could be cleaned.

The slave owning Founding Fathers didn’t see cotton growing as the ultimate reason for slavery.  In fact, Thomas Jefferson found himself unable to free his slaves, not just because of his “need” for their labor, but because they were the collateral for the money he borrowed.  The enslaved people were guarantors of his repayment, and Jefferson was deeply indebted.  Regardless of his personal beliefs, he was unable to act upon them. (I’m not offering that as some absolution of Jefferson – just the fact of his situation).

Remove the Cork

What changed?  An invention by Connecticut gunsmith, Eli Whitney.  He visited a friend’s plantation, and saw the enslaved people working late into the night, pulling the seeds from the cotton.   So he designed a hand-cranked machine, a series of combs, that removed the seeds.  Now instead of hand cleaning a pound of cotton a night, the machine could clean fifty pounds.  (By the way, Whitney wasn’t trying to make “life better” for the enslaved.  He saw that he could make a lot of money by building his “engine”). 

The “cork” was out of the bottle.  Planters could grow as much cotton as they could plant.  But now they needed more workers – enslaved people – to plant, tend, and pick the cotton.  With the seeds no longer the hold up, profit was based on the number of workers available.  And the money was rolling in.

Except that the land would wear out, and so the Planters continually needed new land.  The territories of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana and Arkansas had great land for cotton.  The planters went, and they took their “cotton engines” or “gins”, and of course, their enslaved people to work the land.

They moved into the coastal areas of the Mexican province of Tejas as well.  And when the Mexican Government outlawed slavery – they rebelled and set up their own nation of Texas. (That’s not necessarily what your Eighth Grade American History book said – protecting slavery makes the Alamo a lot less “romantic”).

No Clean Hands

But the North had their stake in cotton as well.  Much of the early manufacturing in the Northern states consisted of textile mills – weaving the Southern cotton into cloth.  The industrial revolution opened the manufacturing flood gates, and the demand for Southern cotton increased astronomically.  The Northern industrialists wanted to buy the cotton, the Southern planters wanted to grow cotton, the new railroad magnates in both North and South were making money by moving that cotton.  

The only group that didn’t benefit from cotton were the enslaved Black people. That “next generation” of American leaders weren’t interested in emancipation.  Their future was vested in cotton profits, and cotton profits depended on enslavement.  And while a growing minority of Americans were in favor of ending slavery, the “money” was definitely on cotton, and thus the continuation of enslaved labor.   It was critical to the cotton industry, and cotton was “King”. 

A Civil War 

So when the new Republican Party, voiced by Abraham Lincoln, demanded that slavery should be restricted to the current slave states, it meant that the current cotton model would fail.  And that’s why the Southern leaders saw the Republicans and Lincoln as the ultimate threat – to enslavement, and as importantly, to cotton.  This was more than the individual racist views of American leaders.  This was a founding industry built on the backs of enslaved peoples.  Those people were Black – and that’s an issue that Critical Race Theory examines.  

After the Civil War, the cotton industry still needed the laborers.  So, instead of enslavement, share-cropping developed which trapped the worker to the land.  The state governments backed that up in law, first with the Black Codes and then Jim Crow, keeping the now-freed laborers in the fields.  If they couldn’t have slavery, then share-cropping was the next best thing.

So the legal and economic reasons to treat Black people different than others continued after emancipation.  How those restrictions have continued into our present is another area that Critical Race Theory examines.

Of course racism was a part of our history. Whenever one race holds another as subordinate, that racist. But that racism also crept into our institutions and laws, and became part of our economic foundation. As it took hundreds of years to take root, it will take time to uproot. To say that isn’t to call “everyone” racist, but it does say we are all obliged to dig in our own gardens.

So that’s your history lesson for the day.  I hope you don’t feel “violated” – somehow contaminated by this analysis.  It’s just a way to examine our history, and how that history still impacts us today.

Senior Finance

When my parents got in their late eighties, I did what many children do. I started helping out with their bookkeeping.  That was a big deal – Dad spent most of his adult life dealing with “big” finances.  He negotiated multi-million dollar deals on restaurant napkins (one was framed in his office).    But Mom was responsible for the “checkbook” at home, I suppose because for years Dad spent his weeks “on the road” selling television shows.  And it always drove Dad crazy that Mom rounded all transactions up to the nearest dollar.  The checkbook was never “right” for Dad, a University of Cincinnati accounting graduate.

So when some bills started slipping by, I offered to help. Mom and Dad were “snowbirds”, spending about half the year in Florida. There was the main account in Cincinnati, but there was a second account in a Florida bank. And there were two sets of bills, ones for each house, and so things got confusing for everyone. And It didn’t help that it was the early 2000’s, and “online” banking and billing were becoming a thing. For my parents, the “checkbook” controlled all and the fact that I had a spreadsheet accounting a thousand miles away that I updated weekly didn’t make things clearer for them.

Health Costs

What I discovered though, is that my parents were spending a lot of money on prescription drugs.  That was my first experience with Medicare.  It was the thing called the “donut hole”.  Medicare would cover the first $2000 of drug costs, then wouldn’t pick up any cost until $5000 was reached.  And my parents, being in their eighties, had tens of thousands of dollars of drug costs.  

So we struggled along keeping up with Medicare changes, and what was covered and what was not.  Whenever a medical bill came in, it became the medical lottery game.  The first move was not to pay, because the first bill was NEVER the final bill.  There was what Medicare would pay, and then there was what the secondary insurance would pay, and then there was always a “final accounting” when you found out if you “won” and really had to pay anything at all.  To Medicare’s credit, a lot of times you were “a winner”.

And when Mom and Dad reached their last days, there were the “final” bills to take care of.  Mom was struggling with lung issues, and with spinal fractures.  When she needed to go to the hospital, the only way to get her there was by ambulance.  Somewhere along the way, the “wrong” box was checked on a form.  What was an emergency trip was classified as “transport”.  It was a four thousand dollar error, a fifteen minute ride that was billed at $267/minute.  For a year we argued with different medical staffs.  No one would take responsibility for checking the wrong box,  I suppose that would get them in trouble with Medicare. (After Mom’s death, we ultimately settled that bill for $1400).

Down the Rabbit Hole  

So I thought I had a pretty good handle on Medicare and “senior” insurance.  But now I turn sixty-five this fall, and I’ve got to get the “Medicare” issue figured out for ME.  It’s no wonder that Mom and Dad needed help.  

Everyone “assumes” that when you hit sixty-five, you get free government health insurance called Medicare.  But, like most assumptions, it’s just not true.  Medicare is not a “free ride”.  You have to pay into Medicare to get it for “free”.  For most Americans that’s not a big deal:  you paid into Social Security for forty quarters (ten years) and you “earned” Medicare coverage (it’s listed as FICA on your paycheck).  But some jobs, including mine, were exempted from paying into either Medicare or Social Security.  The idea was that as public employees, the public pension systems were enough and “we” wouldn’t need Medicare or Social Security.

I guess I thought that was a “benefit”. What  I didn’t realize it was that “exemption” meant no one paid.  While I am still eligible for Medicare, if I want it now, I have to pay for it. 

Figures and Figures

So for the uninitiated, there are actually four parts to Medicare Insurance: Parts A, B, C, and D.  Part A covers hospitalization costs, and Part B is major medical costs.  Part C is if you want to be in a total health “plan”, and Part D is for drug coverage.  If you work your forty quarters, you are eligible for “free” Part A, the most expensive coverage.  But you still have to purchase the rest.  And if you didn’t pay in for the forty quarters, you have to pay for Part A as well.

To give you numbers:  for me Part A costs $5652/year, and Part B $1776/year.  And since Medicare covers 80% of expenses, a private “supplemental plan” would be (at least) another $1200 a year, which ends up at $8538/year, not including a Part D drug plan.

You don’t have to take Medicare Part A when you hit sixty-five, though if it’s free you should.  But if you choose not to, make sure you’ve got health insurance for the rest of your life.  Because for every year you don’t buy Medicare after you turn sixty-five, you pay an extra ten percent on the cost if you did end up purchasing it.  (I suspect, but don’t know, that if you are in a Pension system that drops health coverage, a real possibility if you are a teacher, Medicare would waive that fee).

Senior-Hood

I’m lucky. As it turns out, I’m eligible to be on my wife’s insurance, even though she’s retired as well. So I can buy Medicare B and still be covered for everything else (I don’t even HAVE to buy Part B, but it will save me money in the long run). But it’s no wonder that senior citizens (more senior than me) struggle to understand what’s right for their financial situation. It’s complicated. Even the folks at Medicare themselves don’t understand all the in’s and out’s. It took several calls to find out I could buy Part B without buying Part A.

Here’s an out of the box new “niche” business, Medicare Advisor (without pushing a separate insurance product). There’s a whole new group turning sixty-five every year, and they all need help.  But that’s for someone else.  I’m not looking for a new job –retirement’s good.  It would’ve been nice, though, if there was someone with “all the answers” to help me through the process.  It is a rude welcome to senior status. 

But, like birthdays, I guess it’s still better than the alternative!

Fair and Accurate

Extra!! Extra!! Read all about it!! The 2020 election was the most secure election ever held in the United States!

Here in Ohio, the Secretary of State (Ohio’s election chief) just released the numbers. Out of almost six million votes cast – thirteen votes were cast by non-eligible voters.  That’s .000223% (needed the big calculator for that one), or 2.23 illegal votes per million cast.  Hardly enough to change an election; in fact, well within the “margin of error” for just counting the votes.

And that accuracy and integrity is mirrored throughout the nation.  It’s a marvel of our democracy.  At the worst moment in our national pandemic, when the most dangerous action was to gather in large crowds indoors, the United States conducted the largest election ever held here.  Over 159 million votes were cast, 28 million more than the previous biggest turnout in 2008.  

And for those of you who think the turnout size itself is “evidence” of election fraud – the US population as a whole increased by over 24 million since 2008.  Yes, a higher percentage of folks voted, but the voter “pool” was bigger as well.

Meet the Moment

We did it with masks and with mail-in ballots.  We did it by allowing folks to vote early, and vote longer.  The election workers of America did everything they could to make voting safe (from COVID).  And we found what should be the “model” for American voting – the “model” that enabled more Americans to vote than ever before.

Talk about a time to “pat yourself on the back”!  We did it, and we found ways to do it safely.  There weren’t viral “super-spreader” events.  And we took a huge step towards achieving the American dream, of EVERY AMERICAN citizen having the opportunity to vote.  Isn’t that what America is supposed to be about?

But in almost every state in the Union, the 2020 election has caused an outcry in the state legislatures, and in many, laws that restrict voting.  Instead of fireworks and parades for our great election success, many states are limiting voter access, and taking election authority away from those officials who pulled off America’s great success.  

Big Lie

If you’ve read my essays in “Our America” very often, you know I’m no fan of the 45th President.  And certainly he provided the impetus for voting restriction with his “Big Lie” strategy of eroding America’s confidence in the voting process.  He “lit the fuse” that led to January 6th Insurrection.  And there is a large segment of Americans who still “secretly” believe his lie.  

But there is a difference between “the fuse” and “the bomb”. It’s taken a concerted effort of many politicians who know better than to serve as “the bomb” blowing up our national election expansion.  And before anyone says it – these are not the “uneducated” masses that the 45th President is so fond of.  These are our “leaders”, some with advanced degrees from the most prestigious universities in our nation.  

Two quick examples:  on Fox News a guest commentator, Pete Hegseth, continues to push the “Big Lie”, including refusing last week to confirm that Joe Biden even won the election.  Hegseth is a Princeton graduate (2003)  with a Harvard advanced degree.  Josh Hawley, Senator from Missouri who still leads the charge to undermine the election: Stanford undergrad (2002), Yale Law School.  So much for a “Liberal” arts education. 

Future Republicans

There is more to the voter suppression movement than the Presidential election of 2020.  It’s all about the Republican Party’s decision to “double-down” on white “victimization” rather than looking to expand to include the interests of minorities.  That’s a demographic nightmare for Republicans.  The United States is moving inexorably (I love that word) towards a “minority-majority” nation.  Whites will be less than 50% by 2045.  So a political strategy that depends on winning white voters only is a “losing” strategy – at least in the long run (and that’s only twenty-four years).  

So here’s the “simple” math.  Republicans depend on white votes to stay in power. Whites make up a shrinking percentage of the population. So, Republicans must do two things.  They must get an increasing percentage of the white vote, and they must keep the non-whites, the votes they have given up, from voting.

The “bomb” was set before the 45th President, and before the pandemic.  But the exigencies of pandemic voting pushed even the Republican election officials in places like Georgia and here in Ohio to expand access to voting, putting them in direct conflict with their own Party.  They did their job first – got people to the polls – but now are “retrenching” to Party goals.

Rig the Vote

And for those election officials in places like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona who happen to be Democrats – the Republican state legislatures are changing laws and even state constitutions to remove their powers.  Many Republican legislatures are trying to take over the power to determine whether the vote count is “acceptable” – putting themselves as “super electors” over the popular vote.

It’s an ugly process, and one that is truly Un-American.  The inexorable (there it is again) tide of history and population growth is against them.  Democrats may lose some battles, like those they are gallantly fighting in Texas and Georgia.  But in the longer view, Republicans are betting on a losing strategy.  And the longer view really isn’t that long.

(that happened during my life)

by Babs Dahlman

This is a series of short storied written by my Mom, Babs Dahlman.  She had an English Literature Degree from the University of London, and I have edited her writing only very lightly!!!!

I began thinking several months ago of so many coincidences that have happened in my life and thought I would write them down.  They are not in chronological order, however.

The Cabby

Perhaps I could begin with one that happened maybe forty-five years ago.  I was in New York with Don.  He was attending a convention and I was at one of the museums, and found myself late at getting back to the hotel. I hailed a taxi and said, “The Swiss Hotel”.  The driver looked back at me and said, “I know you”.  I said, “I do not know you”, but he said again, “I know you”.  

I was getting a little agitated but went ahead and asked him how he knew me.  He said, “I was a military policeman during World War II and at the First Peace settlement in Germany which General Montgomery signed at the little Red School House.  I escorted you to a seat there.  General Bradley knew you were in the vicinity and arranged it.  Is this not true?”  Of course, it was true, and I was there.  When he stopped at the Swiss Hotel he jumped out of the cab and would not take the fare.  He said, “It is a real pleasure knowing you Ma’am”.

Finnish Furniture

I was in San Francisco, again on a business trip with Don.  How lucky I was to have all those trips!  It was a dreary morning, and I was looking for something adventurous to do.  I had always wanted to sail on San Francisco Bay, so I made my way down to Fisherman’s Wharf where I knew you could sail with a tourist boat.  However, when I got there the captain said it was a little rough that day and no passengers.  I was very disappointed.

As I turned away, a young man came up and said, “I will charter the whole boat and this lady can come along.”  The captain consented and I was thrilled.  He outfitted us with life vests, and  off we sailed into a fairly rough sea!  We sailed for about four hours.  The young man was from Finland and a delightful companion.  We talked of politics and art and had a great time.  He was on a business trip – in the furniture business.  When we got back to the port, he offered to take me for lunch, but I said “No thanks” and then said “Ships that pass in the night” or some such phrase.  

I was pretty wet and decided to go into a restaurant, clean up and have a late lunch.  I did so and ate a delicious meal.  When my bill came, the waiter said a foreign gentleman came in and left twenty-five dollars for my lunch!  When I got back to the hotel for the cocktail party, everybody asked, “Where have you been?”  I’ve been sailing on San Francisco Bay,” said I.

A year or so later, again in New York, I was hailing a cab when a voice said, “The English lady who sailed with me on San Francisco Bay.”  It was my man from Finland.  We shared a cab, he to the airport, me to the hotel.  He paid the fare!

Across the Back Garden

Two years ago I was sitting on the beach at Vero Beach, where we spend our winters, when I saw a couple strolling along the water’s edge.  She was holding a little bowl and collecting something from the sea.  I was intrigued and asked her what she was collecting.  She answered it was bait for her husband’s fishing trip.  We started talking and she said, “Oh, you are English”.  I said “Yes, it is my birthday and I had a card from the Queen.”  

She threw her arms around me.  I asked her where she lived in England and she told me, but then said she used to live in Wallington, Surrey.  “Well,” said I, “so did I.  Where did you live?”  She said, “Hawthorne Road.”  I lived on the next road, Brambeedown Road.  On comparing numbers ,we shared back gardens.  How extraordinary we should meet four thousand miles away in a different country.  We have become good friends in our golden age.

John Hill

This in my favorite, though I am not sure that Don likes it so much.  When I was nine years old, my sister Eileen was dating a young man named John Hill.  He  was very handsome.  I was in love with him myself and went to Woolworth’s and bought a ring and told everybody one day I was going to marry John Hill.  I even had a photograph made and gave it to him.  Kid stuff, of course.  He was wonderful; didn’t laugh or make fun of me.  Well, he and my sister parted, and she married someone else.

John was well liked by our family and kept in touch and visited us.  He and I had a correspondence through the years.  John came to London in 1943 – the same year I met Don and fell madly in love with him.  Don, I mean.  John, at that time, asked me to marry him.  The answer was no because I loved Don.  He left and later married an Englishwoman and they went to live in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Africa.  I kept up a casual correspondence with him over the years and we saw him and his wife a couple of times.

We decided for my seventy-fifth birthday to take everyone to England – children, grandchildren, etc.  I wrote to John and Sue and told them we would like to meet them and they would get to see our family.  I gave them some idea of our itinerary, but I did not get a reply.

We all went to England, and my niece and nephew gave a wonderful party for me the second day we arrived.  Unfortunately, during the party I fell down some stone steps and splintered my pelvis in three places.  I was in a wheel chair for the rest of the trip.  We rented three houses in various parts of England – Canterbury, Oxford and Cornwall.  The thought of seeing John Hill had gone from my mind.

My daughter Terry was driving from Oxford to Cornwall.  We stopped to pick up my sister-in-law in Exeter Down.  We packed a picnic, which we frequently did.  On our way to Cornwall we stopped to eat our picnic.  It was at a pit stop, and we decided to go on.  Terry said, “Mummy, look for a nice shady place as we drive on.”  I  saw a sign saying to miles to Lake _______.  Should we do that?  We decided yes.

We arrived at the lake and they were all helping out of the car when a strong arm came around me.  I looked up and it was John!  “What are you doing here?” I said.  He said “I wrote you to meet me here at one o’clock.”  It was one o’clock.  We had a great time sharing our picnic.  He met some of our children, and we said goodbye.  He died the following year.

When we got back to Cincinnati and collected our mail, there was the letter from John which said to meet him that day in that place at that time.  What an extraordinary coincidence.

From the War

Soon after I was released from the Officials Secrets Act, I was having a luncheon with an English friend in Clifton, and the conversation got around to World War II.  I told her about my involvement with Special Operations in Europe and detailed some of my missions in France.  Some weeks later she called and invited me to a dinner party she was giving, and mentioned she had also invited someone she would like me to meet.  I accepted the invitation.

It was quite a large affair, and soon after we arrived, she came over with a lady, a French lady who was a professor at the University of Cincinnati.  She was about fifteen or twenty years younger than I, and to my amazement, she threw her arms around me.  I was slightly alarmed.  She said “You are Virginia, aren’t you?”  I was shocked for a moment because my code name in Special Operations was Virginia. 

My friend evidently told her about me and she remembered when she was about five, her parents, who were part of the Underground, would go out to meet a Lysander (the plane that brought the spies into Occupied France) and she said they always talked about the young British spy called Virginia.  They were both caught and shot by the Germans. 

Whoever thought that a little French girl would meet the English spy Virginia in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.

Siblings

My brother Leslie was thirteen years older than I and there were three siblings between us.  But Leslie and I were always very close to each other.  When I went to finishing school in Liege, Belgium, he and his wife lived in Brussels and I spent most of my weekends with them.  My brother was extremely talented – spoke eleven languages fluently and was also a great athlete.

When the War broke out in 1939, he sent his wife and children back to England but stayed as the British Army was driven back into the sea at Dunkirk.  The British Government asked him to evacuate all the British citizens out of Brussels to Dunkirk, where, hopefully, there would be a boat to take them across the Channel.

Before he did this, he quickly organized an escape route across Europe for British and (eventually) American pilots who were shot down.  He and his fellow countrymen had a perilous journey to the coast and got on the last boat to England.

Meanwhile, I was doing my bit for my country in Special Operations.  I was called one day for a mission and my briefing was at Tempsford where the Lysanders were.  To my complete surprise, my brother Leslie walked in to do the briefing.  I had no idea he was associated with S.O.E., and he had no idea I was involved.  He was more than a little perturbed that he might be sending his favorite little sister to her death, but that was what war was all about.  How strange, and what a coincidence that was.

My brother was given the Order of King Leopold after the War, and also made a Commander of the British Empire by King George VI.  Unfortunately, he was killed in his own aero plane fifteen years after the War.

Sylvia Beach

When I was at the University of London studying History and English and Literature, I was fascinated by reading of a woman who owned a bookshop in Paris and who had published James Joyce’s Ulysses when nobody else would publish it.

Her name was Sylvia Beach and her bookshop was The Shakespeare Bookshop.  She held poetry readings and her companions were famous writers from all over the world who converged on Paris at that time.  That included James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Alice B. Toklas, etc.  I imagined her to be beautiful, sophisticated and elegant.  I longed to meet her and talk to her.

During the War on one of my missions my assignment was Paris, which was then occupied by the Germans.  I was dropped by Lysander in a small place in a field in the middle of nowhere, I thought.  It was about thirty miles outside of Paris.  I was met by a French agent who drove me into Paris in his Citroen and left me at his aunt’s apartment.  She was also a French agent.

The apartment was just below the Sacre Coeur.  I was led to the attic where I was to spend the night.  It was a sweet little room overlooking the roofs of Paris.  As I stood at the window in my cotton panties and cotton bra, I thought how strange to see Paris this way.  I was a British spy, and in the movies the spies were always in black satin nightgowns with a string of pearls and diamond bracelets and a handsome man to go to bed with, and all I had was cold, damp sheets to step into.  Oh, well.

I noticed an envelope on the bedside table and, as I opened it, in code I found the name of my contact;  Sylvia Beach.  I could hardly believe my eyes.  What a way to meet her.

The next morning I got up and made my way to the Shakespeare Bookshop, stopping to say a prayer at the Notre Dame Cathedral.  As I was saying my rosary, a young German officer came and sat beside me.  I thought, “I am going to be caught” and prayed to the Holy Mother in my hour of need.  The German officer turned and smiled at me and took his rosary out. 

I left soon after and made my way to the bookshop.  I have related this story in a previous paper  — sorry to bore you.  I went in – rather musty and dark – and there she stood.  I was disappointed.  She looked old and frumpy and badly dressed.  Then I looked into her blue, blue eyes and knew she had seen the world and had revolutionized the book world by publishing James Joyce’s Ulysses. I introduced myself and told her who I was and how much I had wanted to meet her.  She was very patient and kind.  Finally, we planned the mission and I left. 

I returned to London the next day and went  to my fake office at the Ministry of Health.  Mr. Baker looked at me and said, “Been out with a Yank all night?”  Little did he know that I had been on a mission to an occupied country and my dream had come true.  I had met Sylvia Beach.  Such a coincidence.  (here is the full  Sylvia Beach Story).

Stolen Art

On one of my missions for S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive) in Paris, I again met with Sylvia Beach.  Our assignment was to dynamite a train outside of Paris to delay a troop train with German troops going to the front.  We heard that it was not going to be a troop train, but was going to be full of art on its way to General Goering’s underground museum in Dresden.  This information was given to us on good authority by the Maquis.  We could not contact London, so finally decided to about the operation, save the art and let the train go through.

Some years after the War was over, Don was asked to go to Le Mans, France, to represent Dayton and to honor the Wright Brothers who had their first (European) flight there.  It was a very exciting trip, starting in Paris where the US Ambassador was to have a cocktail party for us.  On the way to the party, we were caught in a traffic jam in the same tunnel where later Princess Diane had that awful accident.  Anyway, by the time we arrived at the party, people were leaving.

The next morning we took the train to Le Mans accompanied by the ambassadorial staff, NBC news and camera men.  We were met by the Prefect (Governor of the Province) and he and his entourage led us through the old city where a reception was given.  Then onto the Le Mans car race track where we were driven at 185 mph around the track.  It was very exciting.  Then there was a fly-by for us – we felt very important.

There was another reception and then Don proceeded to lay wreaths and the various places and made speeches lauding the French and the Wright Brothers.  He did a super job.  I was so proud of him.

Then the Governor took us back to his chateau where we enjoyed the most wonderful lunch.  After lunch the Governor said he had an important announcement to make. He said that the art stolen from Paris by General Goering had been returned – that very day.  My heart turned over!  I was still under the Official Secrets Act so could not say a word, but what a coincidence that I should be there when the art was returned.  How fortunate we aborted the plan to dynamite the tracks and let the train go on and save the art.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes – attributed to Mark Twain

What’s UP

There are already over 2000 air travel “incidents” in the United States this year.  What’s an incident?  When a flight is disrupted and sometimes even re-routed because a passenger threatens or “loses it” with flight attendants.  This weekend, a passenger tried to open the door – in flight.  In another “incident”,  an eighteen-year-old on a private plane tried to take over the controls and dive into the ground.  

Both flights landed safely – but what’s going on?

In the meantime crime rates seem to be increasing nationwide. Here in the suburbs, the “Ring Camera Networks” are going nuts.  Three or four times a week, there’s the “bing” of a late night warning – someone breaking into cars or checking garage doors.  In the “big city” we see folks brazenly stealing goods out of stores on camera, with little concern for bystanders.  And on an even more serious note, the gun violence of pre-pandemic days has returned.  Here in Columbus more than 95 are dead from guns, twice the 2020 pandemic level, and nearing the 105 killed for the entire year in pre-pandemic 2019.

Crime is up, violence is up, crazy behavior on airplanes is up, so what’s up?

Doomed to Repeat

We’ve been here before.  It was in the 1920’s, after a World War, and a global pandemic.  The economy survived the post-War, post-Pandemic downturn, and began to boom again.  Unemployment, as high as 11% in 1921, fell below 5% by 1923.  There seemed to be more work than there was workers; sound familiar?

And, like today, there was a sharp division in the nation.  The restrictions of World War I on alcohol, used to preserve grain “for the troops”, added momentum to the growing Temperance Movement (headquartered right here in Ohio, the “Anti-Saloon League”  in Westerville). On January 17th, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment banned intoxicating alcohols from the United States, criminalizing the “normal” behavior of millions.  

What we learned less about in American History, was the “mask wars” that went on through 1919 in many United States cities.  Like the masker versus anti-masker struggles of our current pandemic, many cities in the US fought the same battle during the Great Flu Pandemic.  Perhaps the ultimate “scoff-laws” of the time, were the “gentlemen” who abided the law by wearing masks, but with holes carefully made so they could continue to smoke their cigars. They could have just worn them around their chins – we saw plenty of that just a few months ago.

Joie de Vivre

So we remember the “Eighth Grade” history of the 1920’s:  the booming industries, the “Speak Easy” saloons, “Flappers”, the soaring stock markets;  The Roaring Twenties.   But what we probably remember best about the 1920’s was the rise of gangsterism.  Sure, there was the black market for alcohol,  millions to be made in crime.  And there was (like today) the increase in the number of high powered weapons, then brought home from the war.  But there also seemed to be a national “recklessness”, about drinking, about social behavior, and about crime as well.  The gangsters became the “heroes”.  

Maybe it was the “joie de vivre”, the excitement of surviving all the turmoil of war and pandemic.  Perhaps it was that release that led some to take even greater risks, criminal risks.  Or maybe it was simply a response to the restrictions, the “good behavior” during the World War and Pandemic.  The binds of national “obligation” were released.

We’ve been here before – political division, social expansion, economic explosion, vast quantities of weapons, weakened legal obligations.  

Rhyming

Of course we remember the apocalyptic end of that story as well.  The wild excesses of the stock market, soaring up 400% during the decade, ended with the crash on Black Tuesday.  That was the first domino to fall, bringing down the entire Nation into the Great Depression of the 1930’s.  Add to that the impact of drought and over-farming causing the Dust Bowl and the relocation of millions of Americans.  

Today the stock market has more than doubled in the past decade.  And climate change is impacting many facets of the nation, from droughts and heat waves in the West, to dramatic storms and floods in the Midwest and East.  The “roadmap” of the Roaring Twenties looks a lot like the one we’re on now – except most folks don’t know what a roadmap is any more:  “Siri, I need directions to the future”.  

Maybe we should be asking Siri, “Have I been here before?”

PS – The original 1920’s had a star pitcher and home run hitter – Babe Ruth of the Red Sox/Yankees. Our 20’s has one too – Otani Shohei of the LA Angels!!!

Charlie Daniels was one of my early introductions to “country” music.  I got to see him “up close” at the 1976 Carter Inaugural Ball – we were on the same side politicly then.  We didn’t end up that way – but his music still resonates.  Still in Saigon

Call to Duty

For my generation the Vietnam War  was the turning point of our youth.  In the early sixties, we were the generation called by President Kennedy – “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”.  Our generation saw Martin Luther King march.  We watched (in black and white) him stand in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and tell us his dream – our dream too.  Those leaders spoke to us and called us to service.  And we believed.

I was young, born in the last years of the “Baby Boomers”.  And while I was too young to march for Civil Rights, I could still feel the call to action.  America was moving:  rockets were launching from Cape Canaveral, cars and televisions pulled us all together; we were a nation on the move. And we were defending freedom throughout the world, in Berlin, and in Taiwan, and in Vietnam.

When the President was shot, we were stricken.  The young leader was gone.  But his successor, Johnson, showed even more promise.  He passed the Civil Rights law, and he promised a “Great Society” where our nation would take care of all.  Sure, he did it in the voice that once stood for prejudice and hate, the Texas drawl that was familiar from others in Senate filibusters that stopped progress.  But Johnson WAS progress – and even with the loss of Kennedy we knew there was hope.

Vietnam

So I was shocked when I went to see Johnson in 1967 at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds in Dayton.  Shock, because there was a line of black turtle-necked students in the front row, who stood up and chanted.  They interrupted the President of the United States.  They were protesting the War in Vietnam, a war that I thought was part of our “defense of freedom”.   I didn’t know what those Antioch College students already had figured out.  Vietnam wasn’t about “defending freedom”. It was a war we couldn’t win.

I was eleven at the County Fairgrounds that day.  I was eighteen when the final frantic helicopters left the US Embassy in Saigon.  Our leaving that war was just as ugly as our fighting it, with desperate refugees hanging from helicopter landing skids and equipment shoved into the sea.  To take then-President Ford’s statement out of context – “Our long national nightmare was over”, (he said that while pardoning Nixon, but it definitely fit Vietnam better).  Whatever the reason we entered that war, we sacrificed blood and treasure for years only because no one wanted to “lose the war”.  

That’s a lousy reason to fight a war, because you don’t want to be the “loser”.  And it’s an even worse reason for Americans to die.  

Afghanistan

In the past few weeks the Biden Administration made it official:  the United States military is leaving Afghanistan.  We started there on October 7th, 2001, nearly twenty years ago.  Our attack was for all the “right” reasons.  Al Qaeda attacked the United States on September 11th.  The governing “tribe” of Afghanistan, the Taliban, allowed Al Qaeda to use the country as their headquarters and staging ground.  The US demanded that the Taliban turn over Al Qaeda, but the Taliban refused.  So the United States attacked.

Our goal was to destroy Al Qaeda, and capture it’s leadership.  It took years to accomplish that goal, culminating with the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May of 2011.  But once we started, the US also determined to drive out the Taliban, and replace them with more moderate Afghans.  And that has kept us engaged in Afghanistan for twenty years.

It’s really not much different than Vietnam.  The US waged war on a foe that was fighting on their home territory, with nowhere else to go.  Short of total destruction of the Taliban, or the Vietnamese Communists, there was no way to win.  It took us fourteen years to realize that in Vietnam; it took almost twenty in Afghanistan.

Value of Sacrifice

There is no easy way to leave a war, to explain what the sacrifice was for.  But in war, when there is no clear way to win, it is better to leave than to demand even more sacrifice – for nothing.

Both Vietnam and Afghanistan left the US with significant damage.  It’s not just the count of dead and wounded, but the warriors damaged by wars that had no clear enemy, boundaries or goals.  For those, their war does not end.  They’re minds are still in Kabul, or Kandahar; or still in Saigon.  

As Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural Address:

“With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Not My Idea

So it’s Sunday, and lots of times I write a “Sunday Story” about my experiences.  This isn’t one of them.  Today’s story is about a book, a children’s book as a matter of fact.  It’s titled:  Not My Idea – A Book About Whiteness; written by Anastasia Higgenbotham.  Maybe instead of calling this a “Sunday Story”, I should be calling it my “Sunday Book Report”. 

This is an illustrated kid’s book, that took me about ten minutes to read, and it’s being hammered in the crazed right-wing media.  They are screaming – it’s “racist, critical race theory, propaganda” aimed at kids.  I wasn’t sure what to think about that, but I knew I had to read the book to find out. 

Get Uncomfortable

And I get why the right-wing media finds the book more than uncomfortable.  This is a book directed at white children in America.  It starts with the title – what’s “not my idea”?  And the answer to that question from the very first page is that racism and white supremacy is not the child/reader’s idea.  It’s an idea that existed long before that child came into being, and it’s not theirs.  They don’t have to accept it.

It helps to know that the author uses the term “whiteness” to cover all of the racist advantages of being white in our society, versus being a person of color.  Being “white” is not a thing, it is a fact.  But “whiteness” is using that being white to unfairly benefit over people of color.

The book is uncomfortable to read if you’re a white adult.  It calls you out on the concept that you can be “color blind”, and then pretend everything is OK.  Everything is not OK – and pretending just allows for racism to continue.  But it also offers a form of forgiveness.  Racism is “inherent” in our nation, from the beginning.  You weren’t born a racist, but you were born in a nation that rewarded some races and punished others, and still does.  That’s not your fault.  What IS your fault is what you do about it.  That’s where complicity in racism begins.

Absolution

But the white child, the target of this book, is born without blame. They see racist interactions in our society – whether it’s George Floyd under the knee of a policeman, or white insurrectionists allowed into the Capitol but Black Lives Matter protestors tear gassed. And this book explains the racism they cannot help but see – and calls on the adults in the child’s life to do the same.

The message to those adults is that telling white children “You don’t need to worry about this” or “Our family is kind to everyone, we don’t see color,” isn’t the answer to racism.  Because children will see racism: from how their friends of color are treated by society, to what they see in the news.  The author’s message: “Racism isn’t only happening to Black and brown people.  Racism is a white person’s problem – and we are all caught up in it”.

The book goes onto explain how society perpetuates racism, whiteness, and how many white people ignore the problem.  But it also highlights those historic white and Black people who have worked to stop racism, from the Abolitionist Grimke sisters in the 1830’s, up to Colin Kaepernick today.  

And it calls on the children to do something about racism – by recognizing it continues, and that white people still benefit from it. It defines racism as “whiteness”, and tells the child “…you can be white, without signing on to ‘whiteness’”. The first way to do this is to gain knowledge – as the author says “Innocence is overrated”.

This isn’t the first illustrated “children’s” book that comes with a strong political message.  Maus by Art Spiegelman was always in my classroom.  It is a graphic novel about the Holocaust, with the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats.  Maus was a tool to explain the Holocaust without the raw horror of first person accounts like Night by Elie Wiesel (though that book was always in my classroom as well).    

A Dangerous Book

But in today’s world Not My Idea – A Book About Whiteness would be “dangerous” to have in a classroom.  Dangerous for the teacher, in an era when white adults are demanding the suppression of “change”.  Dangerous because school administrators and school boards are unwilling to take up the fight against racism directly with their parents.  

There is so much controversy already – from testing to taxes. Not My Idea would put the issue of racism square up-front. We are in a world already polarized by vaccinations and anti-vaxxers, Black Lives Matter and Blue Live Matter, Insurrectionists and everyone else – all in the community and all screaming their message. There are so many who are demanding that we can’t discuss “ideas” that go against the grain. Not My Idea would put the teacher, the administrator, and the school on the right side of the fight, but directly in the crosshairs for attack. It’s not hard to see why they wouldn’t have the “stomach” for it.

But if you are a white parent wanting help explaining to your white child how their friends of color face a different world, then Not My Idea would be a great tool.  And if you are a person who still thinks that “everything’s equal now”, maybe you should read it for yourself.  Racism wasn’t your idea, but it’s now your responsibility.

• Not My Idea – A Book About Whiteness – by Anastasia Higginbotham – 2018
• It can be in your hands in a couple of days from Amazon for less than $15.00
• Article about banning this book in Texas – Texas Signal
• The Fox News take on teaching from this book

Politics – 2021

Getting elected used to be about telling voters how they would benefit.  “Two cars in every garage, a chicken in every pot” was Herbert Hoover’s successful 1928 election slogan.  Obama’s slogans of “Yes We Can” and “Change We Can Believe In,” promised voters a better future. In the heat of battle, John McCain said of his opponent Barack Obama in 2008:   “He’s a decent family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about.”

But that’s not our politics in 2021.  We are not about two candidates with “disagreements…on fundamental issues”. Rather, we are about one candidate who is represented as “Good”, and one candidate who obviously is “Evil”. 

It’s not that there wasn’t ugly campaigning before this past decade.  In the election of 1800, the first truly contested Presidential campaign, one Federalist newspaper said about Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson:

 “(He)writes aghast the truths of God’s words; who makes not even a profession of Christianity; who is without Sabbaths; without the sanctuary, and without so much as a decent external respect for the faith and worship of Christians.”  

Talk about “Evil”!

But today it’s not just in campaigns.  Or maybe it’s that campaigning never seems to end.  There is no respite from election to election, no time when the legislature can, behind closed doors, work the magic of “sausage making” legislation and get things done for the Nation.  Now it’s all politics, all “Good” and “Evil”, all the time.

Common Ground

How did we get this way?  It used to be that there was a lot of common ground among the political parties.  A “Blue Dog” Democrat was a fiscal conservative, much like the “Moderate” Republican sitting beside him.  Republicans like Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and actually used the United States government to impose wage and price controls.  There was a huge “middle ground” that both parties inhabited.  Voting “for the candidate” across party lines was possible without committing ideologic heresy. To win elections you needed to win the middle.

Both political parties always contained the more “extreme” sides.  In the Republican Party there was always a struggle between the more moderate “Coastal Republicans” like Earl Warren* of California and Tom Dewey of New York, and Midwest conservatives, led by Bob Taft of Ohio.  The Coastal Republicans maintained control, nominating Eisenhower to win in 1952 and 1956, and California’s Richard Nixon in 1960.  

*Yep, that’s Earl Warren from the Warren Supreme Court. He was the Republican Governor of California for a decade, including World War II.  He was appointed by Eisenhower, who assumed he’d be a good “Republican Chief Justice”.

When Extremism Lost

Nixon’s loss to Kennedy let the conservative wing finally get a chance in 1964, with arch-conservative Barry Goldwater of Arizona winning the Presidential nomination.  He suffered the worst defeat in Presidential history, losing to moderate Lyndon Johnson.  That silenced the “conservative wing” for the next sixteen years.

The “Liberal wing” of the Democratic Party remained in control from the Roosevelt days.  Adlai Stevenson was nominated in 1952 and 1956, and John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were from that section of the Party as well.  It wasn’t until the Vietnam War that the Party fractured into the “Old Liberals” and the new “Anti-War” Democrats.  The Old Liberals won the nomination with Hubert Humphrey, but the political division cost the general election.   Nixon narrowly won the Presidency in 1968.

The Anti-War Democrats got their revenge in 1972, choosing South Dakota’s George McGovern to lead the ticket.  He lost to Nixon, in a defeat even worse than Goldwater’s eight years before.

Reaganism

So the extremes of both political parties suffered major defeats, and the moderates of both gained control.  Jimmy Carter represented the true moderates in the Democratic Party, and even though he lost the Presidency in 1980, the moderates remained in control. Bill Clinton is the great example.  He co-opted many moderate Republican ideas to use in his Presidency, making him popular with the “middle voters”.  More Progressive Democrats saw him as “Republican-lite”.

But the conservative wing of the Republican Party found a flag-bearer who could win.  Ronald Reagan won the nomination and the Presidency in 1980, and his eight years in office forced the moderate Republicans (like his Vice President, George HW Bush) to choose.  They could assume Reagan’s conservative stand, or they could be left out of power.

So while Bush was originally more moderate, he moved to the right to “stay with the Party”.  And that has characterized the Republican Party even to today. Every time they had the opportunity to move back to the center, instead they remained loyal to “Reagan conservatism”.  Mitt Romney is the classic example:  a moderate Governor of Massachusetts (he came up with the plan that became the Affordable Care Act), when he moved to become a national candidate, he also had to move hard right to become electable. (Watch what Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland does in the next few years). 

The pressure of Reagan conservatism pushed the Democratic Party to move to the left as well.  On issues like abortion, “Pro-Life” Democrats found themselves pushed out of the “Big Tent” of the Party.  “Blue Dog” Democrats found that they could no longer get elected, and fewer remained empowered.  And so the center of the Democratic Party leaned farther left, as the Republican Party moved hard right.

Obama and the Tea Party (not a children’s book)

But then there were three events that fractured our politics.  The first was the election of Barack Obama as President in 2008.  He wasn’t incredibly “left”, though he was on the “Progressive” side of the Party.  But his election was such an outlier, a Black man as President.  For many, his election summoned the future, an event unexpected until the middle of the 21st century.  And for others, it was simply too much, too soon.

That “too much, too soon” played a role in the development of the Tea Party, a reactionary, right-wing movement from the fringes of the Republican Party.  Republicans saw that movement as a “ticket” back into power, and after the defeat of a not so moderate Romney in 2012, the Party lurched even farther right.  They ousted Michael Steele as Chairman of the Republican Party (Steele happened to be Black), and ignored the finding of the 2012 election “autopsy” that stated that the Party needed to appeal beyond white voters.

The Party instead assumed many of the issues championed by the Tea Partiers, who ultimately became “mainstream” Republicans. 

Damn Computers

And the third event was the refinement of computer-directed gerrymandering, like the Republican “RedMap” plan.  This created legislative districts so dominated by one Party or the other, that the “general election” became just a formality.  The real race was in the party primaries, where the most “dedicated” political voters made the choice.  This caused the more extreme candidates (in both parties) to have a better chance of winning, and made our legislatures, both Federal and State, more polarized. 

Ohio is a classic example of the results of “Red Mapping”.  Jim Jordan’s District, Ohio’s 4th, is the 10th most Republican District in the Nation. The only reason for a Democrat to run is to keep Jordan from donating his money to someone else.   Meanwhile, Nina Turner, a Bernie Sander’s disciple, is running in the 11th District Democratic primary against the more moderate Shontel Brown, endorsed by Hillary Clinton and other establishment Democrats. The winner of that expensive primary will be the newest Congressman from Ohio, as the District is so Democratic, the Republican doesn’t have a chance.

Driven by Demons

When there are two Parties, so divided, elections become less about persuading the middle (like Clinton did) and more about exciting the base.  Rather than two “…decent men or women” running, it’s about demonization.  Republicans are Fascists; Democrats Socialists or Communists.  “Joe Biden should be ex-communicated from the Roman Catholic Church”.   “Mike DeWine is a RINO (Republican in Name Only)”. Voters no longer feel they make a selection based on Jimmy Carter’s ideal – “Why Not the Best”.  Instead they go to the polls determined to vote against someone:  “Hold your nose and vote”.   

Persuasion, changing folks minds, really isn’t “the thing” anymore. Our politicians have discovered that we are more motivated by “the negative” than we are the “positive”.  Neither Party has the monopoly on that:  the negative of Donald Trump drove more people to vote for Joe Biden than ever voted before.  But keep in mind, the negative of Joe Biden drove more to vote for Trump than any candidate for President except one: Joe Biden.  Neither candidate got all those votes because people were FOR them.

Until more Americans get invested in the primary processes, then that negative campaigning advantage will continue to dominate our politics.  As always, it’s up to us.  Neither gerrymandering nor even voter suppression can really stop “We the People” from voting.  And if we all did that, we could vote for what we want, not what we hate.

Education

It probably won’t come as a surprise to most that I am the product of a liberal education at a liberal arts school.  But, as you know, that doesn’t mean I was “indoctrinated” into a “liberal” political philosophy.  I came by that all on my own.  

So if liberal doesn’t mean that kind of “liberal” when talking about education, then what does it mean?  A “liberal arts” education doesn’t stand for one political philosophy or another.  It’s an education that challenges students with all sorts of philosophies and ideas, and demands that they explore all of them, looking for the good and the bad, and reach conclusions about them.  It is designed to get students to question their own fundamental beliefs as well as the ones they are studying.  

The “outcome” of a liberal arts education is a thoughtful person, able to identify the roots of ideas and use a range of knowledge to evaluate new concepts.  Liberal arts education does not aim for a particular political “stand”, but rather for a process of thought.

Denison

I went to a liberal arts college, Denison University in Granville, Ohio.  Denison required me to study beyond my “major,” American Political Studies.  I took courses in English and psychology, mathematics and fine arts, and Spanish (oh boy); as well as history, geography, anthropology and sociology. Oh, and there were several courses about government and politics.  

I was challenged on a variety of levels – and pushed to think not just about different ideas, but about different ways at looking at the same subject.  It wasn’t just “knowledge”, it was a process of thinking about that knowledge that I developed.

Teachers

A good example of challenging students was my two favorite history professors.  Professor Dennis was a traditional “conservative” (he later worked in the Reagan administration).  But sitting around a  table discussing the philosophies of the Founding Fathers in developing the Constitution, he wasn’t particularly interested in pushing his ideology.  Instead, he forced his students to challenge their own preconceived ideas, regardless of their own political stands.

Professor Kirby was an unabashed “liberal” in the political sense. He served as a key advisor to me as I navigated my “individualized major” of history, political science and education.  And he also guided my through an understanding of the development of modern politics – taking on a “poli-sci” student for a directed history study in 20th century Democratic politics.  Like Dennis, he wasn’t as interested in shaping me to a certain political philosophy.  He too challenged me to develop a “process” of thinking about how history shapes our current thought.

And those two professors were also good friends, willing to work together as much because of their philosophical differences than in spite of them.  They were like good “coaches”, preparing their students in a process of thinking.

A “liberal” education doesn’t “hide” ideas from students.  It lays those ideas “on the table” for discussion, dissection, and evaluation.  Ideas like Critical Race Theory would have been the exact kind of challenge that Drs. Dennis and Kirby would have put to their students.  Ideas then, and now, are not to be feared. 

Stifling Thought

There are two “movements” today that threaten educational development.  The first is the argument that education should be solely vocational – to “get a job”.  If all an education does is prepare a student for a particular job category, it fails.  It fails to teach a student how to think and process new ideas, and it fails to recognize perhaps the most important fact of our current lives:  change.  Jobs of the 20th century are disappearing, whether it was the manufacturing job on an assembly line, or the skilled trade jobs.  Try to find an appliance repair-person today, or a shoe repair shop.  

In today’s world, the job you have today may well not be the job you have a year from now.  Training for a single career doesn’t fit our changing world.  Training for change, for flexibility of thought and process, is a more useful course for the future.

The second movement is to “prevent” ideas.  Critical Race Theory, the idea that racism is embedded in our institutions and laws and not just in “personalities”, is one of those ideas that should be examined.  Instead, several states are literally writing laws to ban teaching about the idea.  Banning ideas is neither a “liberal education” nor an American tradition.  If our nation cannot stand the scrutiny of ideas like critical race theory, regardless of whether they are right or wrong or somewhere in between, then the problem isn’t the idea.  

It’s us.

Email

I get lots of email.  Most of it is Democratic fund raising efforts for various candidates throughout the nation.  Then there’s the “the thing” – I’m turning sixty-five (Holy S**T) in September.  I had no idea how many different ways you can “buy” Medicare coverage, from the Auto Club to my house insurance provider, but now they’ve all sent me “offers I can’t refuse”.  Somehow, I once had the idea that Medicare would save me money on health insurance.  Now I understand – in my case it will cost me an additional $1800 a year (though my existing insurance will cover more of my costs – so if I have a “bad” year, I’ll be ahead).  It’s better than paying more for private insurance without it – I think.

But I managed to get in on some “Right-wing” mailing lists as well.  Those emails don’t come to Martin, usually it’s Jane or Dale (yeah – I don’t know why), but it’s full throated craziness.  There’s the emails from Jim Jordan and even “the turtle” McConnell.  And there’s the new ones from something called “GOPUSA”. For a while thought it was some Chinese site – GOPU-SA, but then I re-read the title and got it.  I’m not a regular reader, but I occasionally dip in to see what “the other side” is saying.

Thirteen Long Minutes

Which is really the long way around to say that I found this “right-wing-nut” guy named Bobby Eberle (didn’t he race in NASCAR in the late sixties?).  He has a You-Tube broadcast, aptly named “The Thirteen Minute News Hour”.  I listened to him for the first time today while tending to the barbecue ribs I was smoking.  His Fifth of July broadcast was about “how the radical left is ‘Un-proud’ to be American”.  The basis of his claim?  Interviews with young women, many of them of color, asking how proud they were to be American.  And ALL the ones he showed said they weren’t “proud to be American”.  So there is the proof – I guess.

His point was that it is the fault of the “leftist teachers and media” that these Americans aren’t proud of America.  He blamed “critical race theory”.  And he said that the Fourth of July is supposed to be a day of national unity – and if you’re not “united” in the “Proud to be an American” stand – well then there’s something wrong with you.

From the Beginning

The phrase “Proud to be an American” evokes memories of the weeks after 9-11, perhaps the last time when Americans were united in the face of crisis.  It’s the  beginning of the refrain from the Lee Greenwood song, “God Bless the USA”.  It was the right song at the right moment, but ultimately it was co-opted by the political right, and finally by the Trump Campaign.  So if you are “Un-Proud” to be an American – then you back the terrorists of 9-11?  That’s the illogic progression.

Bobby Eberle can’t get past his own belief in the infallibility of America.  Any questioning of the orthodoxy and “mythology” of 1950’s 8th Grade American History class is tantamount to treason.  The thing that folks like Bobby don’t get is that even the Founder Fathers, Authors of the Constitution, recognized not only their own flaws, but the flaws of the nation they were creating.  They put it right up front in the preamble of the Constitution, right after We the People:  …in order to form a more perfect Union…”  It wasn’t perfect from the start, and it’s not perfect now.

More Perfect

And it’s not hard to see how many Americans today aren’t so “proud” of America.  They see an America where George Floyd was murdered on video, and hundreds of thousands of Americans were sacrificed to COVID for politics.  Their America includes a nation that ignores climate change, puts Black men in jail, and allows institutions to trap folks in debt.   They see all of the imperfections in our “perfect” Union, and recognize there’s a lot to not be proud of. 

In the language of addiction there is a term:  enabling.  It means to accept and even encourage behaviors that makes the addiction worse.  False pride that denies flaws enables those flaws to continue or even get worse, like addiction.  And that means more and more folks get “left out” of another Americanism – the American Dream.  

Mr. Eberle confuses pride with loyalty.  You can be loyal to a nation, willing to work to improve that nation, trying to make it “More Perfect”, without pride.  Pride is in accomplishment, the results.  And many Americans feel that our nation has not lived up to its promise, and that our current outcomes don’t include them.  

That doesn’t mean they aren’t “loyal” to the United States.  But it does mean they don’t claim a false pride in a nation that fails to include them in its promise.