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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.  

Fourth of July

The Fourth of July – the day the United States celebrates its independence from the British.  Sure there’s all the technicalities – the Continental Congress passed the Declaration on July 2nd, a majority of states didn’t approve until July 9th, and the final state didn’t sign on until August.  But we have established the Fourth of July as THE day to celebrate.  Even in those first years we Americans celebrated with fireworks – and today we continue that tradition.

When I think of the Fourth, I go back to Cincinnati, when my parents took all of us kids to the fireworks in St. Bernard, Ohio.  Why St. Bernard, a little municipality squeezed in between Proctor and Gamble’s soap factory (“Ivory Dale”) and Vine Street?  Maybe it was Dad’s tradition – it was just down the road from Mitchell Avenue where he grew up.  Anyway, I still remember sitting on a hill watching my first fireworks and worrying about how loud the “booms” were.

No worries now; I am a fireworks guy.  I still stand with my head tilted back – mouth slightly open to catch any wayward mosquitoes — staring in awe.  It wasn’t on the Fourth, but that position got me in trouble at the 1973 Boy Scout National Jamboree.  They must have misjudged how close the crowded kids were to the launch site.  Ashes were raining down on us, and I got a real “taste” for the fireworks.  On the other hand, the booms were never again so close and loud – I liked it!

So here are three stories of the Fourth – mostly about fireworks and locations, but also about celebrating America.

Olympian Fourth 

In the 1980’s I spent several summers learning as much as I could about track and field.  I went to “camps” for athletes, and hung out with the coaches to absorb as much as I could.   One of those camps was at Indiana University in Bloomington.  I got the chance to “hang out” with Sam Bell, one of the top coaches of that era, and his world class  staff. Marshall Goss was a leading national pole vault coach, a high school teacher who coached at the college, and Phil Henson had a PhD in physiology which he applied to his world class jumpers. 

We were there over the Fourth of July, and on that evening, we took the “kids” and staff to see the local Bloomington fireworks.  I sat with the staff.  On one side was Sunder Nix, Olympic Gold Medalist in the 4×400 relay.  On the other side was Dave Volz, a world class pole vaulter who would eventually compete in the 1992 Olympic Games.  They were enjoying the fireworks just like everyone else – and yet they earned the uniform to represent the United States in world competitions.  It brought home to me the reality that great athletes are “regular” folks, enjoying the fireworks and the conversation.  

And it was an honor to realize I was learning from them, and from their coaches.  They were among the best in the world, and they were sharing all that experience and knowledge with a young high school coach from Pataskala. 

Road Trip Fourth

Earlier this year, I wrote about the “road trip” I took with three other coaches. We were in our twenties and decided to rent a van, and set off across the country.  Our route took us all the way to the Oregon coast, down to Mexico, and then back across the nation.  We arrived in Colorado around the Fourth of July, and decided to spend the holiday in Aspen.  

To get to Aspen from our hotel we had to cross over Independence Pass at 12,000 feet in altitude.  So we celebrated the morning of the Fourth with a snowball fight, then headed down to the festivities in Aspen.  They had the big field on the edge of town all prepped for a celebration, and the fireworks set up on the slopes above.  We established our “camp”, then one of the other coaches and I wandered off to explore the town.  One bar led to another, and by the time we got back to our “camp”, the combination of alcohol and altitude made navigation a little rough.

As dark fell, I remember amazing fireworks on the mountain, followed by even more amazing stars.  What I’m not so sure of, is the trip back over Independence Pass to our hotel.  But I wasn’t driving, and we negotiated the winding road safely.

Quiet Fourth

My parents lived an amazing life.  They had sixty-eight years together, madly in love.  They changed how American television worked, raised a family, and travelled the world.  It was only in the last few years that life got sadder.  Mom’s lungs began to fail, and she was tethered to increasing levels of oxygen machines.  Dad started to lose his memory.  So for the first ninety years they were great – for the last few years, not so much.

I don’t quite remember what crisis took me down to Cincinnati that Fourth of July weekend.  Mom was still at home, and Dad was doing his best to take care of her.  It’s really not fair:  the oxygen tanks require tiny washers fitted into the connections.  The hearing aids use the smallest batteries imaginable.  All when eyes are failing, and arthritis binds hands and fingers – no wonder Dad got frustrated.  Mom depended on him, and he was trying his best. 

So I was down at their house quite a lot. I wanted to see both of them, and give them a break from the pressure of taking care of themselves.  After a couple days though, it was time to head home. I left in the evening of the Fourth after dinner, heading back home to Pataskala, an early morning track practice scheduled for the Fifth.  But it was the Fourth of July, and I was a little sad to miss fireworks for the first time – ever.

Small Town Fourth

But I didn’t miss the fireworks at all.  It was a quiet drive up I-71 from Cincinnati – there isn’t a whole lot of traffic on the night of the Fourth.  The top was off the Jeep, and the warm summer air felt good.  And then I got my Fourth of July surprise.

Every small town in Ohio has its own fireworks on the Fourth.  They aren’t the “RED, WHITE, AND BOOM” grandiose celebration of downtown Columbus.  But they are fifteen or twenty minutes long, with a buildup to the “grand finale”. And since the towns aren’t too far apart, they stagger the starting time –  from sometime just after nine until ten.

So I cruised up I-71 in the open Jeep, watching multiple fireworks shows in multiple towns.  There were three finales, and they all seemed to be just for me. Small town America put on a great show.  But my last “finale” wasn’t quite as pleasant.  The kids near the State Route 56 exit were putting on their own show, firing bottle rockets at the passing cars on the Interstate.  That has a whole different meaning in an open Jeep!

The Dream Fourth

That experience led to my “dream” Fourth of July.  I want to rent a small plane (with a pilot, of course). Jenn and I will takeoff just as the sun sets on the evening of the Fourth.  Then we’ll fly out over rural Ohio, watching the fireworks shows from overhead, different towns at different times – and high enough to stay out of the line of fire.  It’s got to be a spectacular view.

That’s my dream – but this year it’s a “regular” Fourth.  The fireworks here in Pataskala are on Saturday night (the Third), and with five dogs in the house, we’re going to stay close to home.  But we’ll get to see some of them – and, in this time of such deep divisions, remember once again the celebration of Independence that unites us.  

Happy Fourth!!!!

America’s Dad

Bill Cosby is the fallen icon of comedy and fatherhood who turned out to be a drug inducing rapist. He was released from prison on Wednesday.  It was a shock release – shock to those who thought that Cosby, with a long hidden history of drugging and attacking women, had finally been brought to justice.  And I bet it was a shock to Cosby as well – though he and his counsel played off the decision as if they truly believed justice had prevailed.

There doesn’t seem to be much question that a man that many, including myself, admired for decades, was privately abhorrent.  The evidence is too strong, the number of women willing to accuse him too long, and the stories all too similar to be somehow “made-up”.  It’s clear to the world he did what they say he did.  He used his good name and influence to lure younger women to his home, and then he drugged and attacked them. 

 America’s “Dad” is a pervert.  It certainly is a sign of our times.  But when you get through the disgust and betrayal, there is one more fact that may go unnoticed.  Bill Cosby’s lawyers were right.

The Fifth 

The Fifth Amendment is familiar to everyone.  You have the right to refuse to testify against yourself.  You cannot be forced to risk criminal punishment by answering question “against your interest”.  We all know the Miranda drill:  “you have the right to remain silent, anything you say can be used against you in a Court of Law”. 

The exception is well known after years of Trump subordinates and the Mueller Investigation.  If you have “immunity” from prosecution then those words can’t be used to convict you, and you can be compelled to testify.  We hear about this process daily.  The Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg seemed to be on the verge of an immunity deal, in exchange for incriminating testimony against the Trumps.  He finally turned that “deal” down, and now faces criminal charges himself.  

Immunity

Cosby was never offered immunity.  But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said he was put in the same position by the then District Prosecutor Bruce Castor.  That name may be vaguely familiar. Castor was the lead defense attorney in the second Donald Trump impeachment trial.  You might remember him for seeming “eccentric”, so much so that Senators who supported Trump caucused immediately after his opening statement to try to “clean” things up.

Castor made a public declaration that he would NOT prosecute Cosby.  In fact, he put out an official media release to make sure everyone, including Cosby and his lawyers, would know.  By making that decision, he fully intended to remove Cosby’s Fifth Amendment protection for a civil proceeding.  Cosby would no longer have “the right to remain silent”.  Under pain of perjury he would be required to answer questions in the civil trial, where he was being sued for the same kind of actions.

Cosby did answer questions in civil court, answers that did in fact incriminate him in the future criminal action.  He was charged by a later prosecutor who didn’t feel bound by Castor’s decision. Cosby’s own testimony in the civil case WAS used as evidence in the criminal case where he was convicted and sentenced to ten years in jail.

Court of Public Opinion

No one believes Bill Cosby is innocent.  But if Cosby’s conviction was allowed to stand, then any time Prosecutors couldn’t get a possible criminal to answer questions, they could simply refuse to prosecute – then change their minds after some civil case when the suspect was required to testify without the Fifth Amendment shield.

It’s hard to imagine anyone who has so squandered the public trust as Bill Cosby.  We’ve been let down before:  Jared the Subway spokesman, PeeWee Herman the children’s show host, the Today Show’s Matt Lauer.  But none of them set themselves up as such a cultural icon as Cosby.  From the sweaters to giving advice to young Black men, Cosby won his spot in America’s consciousness.  And now we know what he was doing to women, at least sixty that have come forward, during his comedic career.  No one is pushing to get Cosby back on TV, or on the stage.  

He will slink away in shame. Folks will speak with outrage about what the Courts did.  But the real failure in this case was not Cosby’s lawyers, nor the prosecutors who followed Castor.  And it’s really not Castor’s fault either.  To give him the benefit of the doubt, he was trying to clear the way for a successful civil action when he didn’t see a winnable criminal case.  

Cosby characterizes this as “justice for all Black men”.  But that doesn’t in any way alter what he did.  The world won’t see him as a victim.  And certainly the sixty women lost once again.  The only winner:  the Fifth Amendment and procedural justice. 

This is another in the series of stories written by my Mom, Babs Dahlman. This was originally written for “UnQuotes”, a group of Cincinnati Women who got together to share papers and research from the 1960’s through the 2000’s. This is Mom’s writings, and I have only very gently edited it (Marty Dahlman).

Whilst in England last August, I heard a most intriguing story of a recent search for the Holy Grail.  It so intrigues me, that since I have spent many hours reading and studying about the Holy Grail.  I will eventually come back to the fascinating story that I heard, but first, perhaps, I should try and define the Holy Grail.

The Holy Grail is represented invariably as the Vessel in which Christ celebrated the Last Supper.  It is, therefore, a Passover or Sacramental Vessel, and according to the Legend, its next use was to receive the blood from the wounds of Christ when his body was taken down from the Cross.  The Vessel then supposedly was carried westward in safe guardianship to Britain and there remained under successive Keepers.

In the days of King Arthur, Arthur assumed the responsibility of carrying on the Legend, with which object he brought about the Legend of the Round Table and the flower of Arthurian chivalry.  Percival, Lancelot, Galahad and many others set out to find the Sacred Vessel.  Sir Galahad was the noblest and the most virtuous knight in the Legend of King Arthur’s Round Table.  

There was one seat at the Round Table which was reserved for the knight so pure that he would someday find the Holy Grail.  The seat was called Seat Perilous.  One day, Sir Galahad’s name appeared on the seat, and from that time on he occupied that seat.  He saw a vision of the Grail.  The Grail appeared suspended in the air and covered with a cloth.  Stirred by the vision, he went on a search for the Holy Grail and legend has it that he eventually found it.  Sir Lancelot also searched for it, but being morally imperfect, did not find it.

From a very early age, I have always been fascinated by the tales of King Arthur and his Knights, and whenever I go to England, I always make a pilgrimage to a town called Glastonbury where, supposedly, Arthur and Guinevere are buried.  There is something about Glastonbury!

Stand before the place of the High Altar of the Benedictine Abbey Ruins, beneath which are the reputed graves of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, and you feel the romantic stories of the Round Table must be true.  Pause on the site of St. Mary’s Chapel and you stand where history claims the first Christian Church was built in England, a wattle and daub shed, maybe, but none-the-less the ground is holy.  Enter the vast and once ornate Abbot’s kitchen, with its enormous chimneys and ornamental roof lantern and it is not difficult to imagine the medieval brothers busy at their chores.

Not too far from the Abbey is a garden called the Garden of the Chalice Well.  The garden is terraced on rising ground and the trees and flowering shrubs cluster around the Chalice Well Head.  The Well is fed by a spring which rises from the Chalice Hill.  Legend cites this hill as the place where Joseph of Arimathea buried the Cup used at the Last Supper, which he had carried with him to Britain.  Sailing up the Bristol Channel, his small boat grounded on the slopes of the hill and he thrust his staff, giving birth to the Flowering Thorn.  Water flows from the spring at a rate of 1,000 gallons an hour, at a constant temperature of 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and has never been known to fail.  This is no ordinary water, however, for from the 14th Century until today, healings are claimed to have been due to its influence and it is still used for baptisms.

Down half a dozen steps from the pathway through the garden is a paved courtyard.  Here, the water falls over the stone into a channel reddened by its passage, and thence into a shallow bath.  While scientists attribute the colour of the water to its chalybeate qualities, being rich in iron, religious mystics will see herein a symbol of the Chalice presence. Hence, its alternative name of the Blood Spring.

Three hills can be seen from the garden – Chalice Hill, Tor Hill and Weary All Hill.  The garden lies in the lee of the Tor, on which stands the ruined tower built on the site of an ancient chapel to St. Michael.  The garden itself is laid out over the place where it is believed Joseph had his hermitage of twelve huts.

Legend preserves the story of Joseph and the sacred Chalice, and romance recalls the age old quest for the Holy Grail.  The Sacred Thorn, originally chopped off by a Cromwellian soldier, continues to bloom each winter from a cutting planted in the Abbey Grounds.  In fact, every Christmas a spray is cut from the Holy Thorn and placed on the royal breakfast tray for the Queen and the Queen Mother on Christmas morning.  The only indigenous shrub which resembles the thorn bush grown in Syria, but many slips have been taken from the Glastonbury Thorn and cultivated in English gardens.

History is in this place.  Legend flourishes here.  Its romance has covered many a page.  All being in antiquity and much is beyond mortal proof.  But, there is something about Glastonbury.

And so, I come to the modern day search for the Holy Grail.  Whilst in England this summer, I met an old friend and he told me of his quest to find the Holy Grail.  Unlike King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, his quest was not fruitless.  For, after many miles and much research, he bicycled down a twisting valley to an Edwardian house in an English village, where in a glass topped case lies the remains of an ancient olive-wood cup that many thousands of people firmly believe is the Chalice of the Last Supper, and therefore, Christianity’s most sacred relic.  Could it possibly be genuine?  It is easy to be sceptical, but the cup has a curious history, and before you judge its authenticity, it is well to go back to the legend entwined in Tennyson’s lines in the “Idylls of the King”:

The Cup the Cup itself from which our Lord

Drank at the Last Supper with his own.

This from the blessed land of Aramat

After the day of darkness, when the dead

Went wandering over Moriah – the good saint

Arimatheaen Joseph, journeying, brought to

Glastonbury.

Where the winter thorn

Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord

And there awhile it bode, and if a man

Could see or touch it, he was healed at once

By faith of all his ills.

Probably the older of England’s oral traditions – a story passed by word of mouth through generations – is that the Cup used by Christ at the Last Supper on the eve of his crucifixion was brought to this country by Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy Jew, a friend of Jesus, who helped to bury Jesus in the rock-hewn tomb.  Joseph was engaged in the tin trade which flourished between Palestine and Cornwall in the A.D.  

As I have already said, legend says that he sailed up the Bristol Channel until his small boat bumped to a stop on rising ground among the meres of Somerset, at a place now called Glastonbury, but which was once an island known as Avalon.  He buried the cup there under a spring, and a wattle and daub place of worship was built on the site, which became the first Christian Church of Britain.  

When Joseph died, he pledged his son, Josephus, to guard the secret hiding place of the Holy Grail, as the sacred chalice came to be called.  This he must have done, if the story is to be given any credence at all, for five centuries later, the stalwart figure of Arthur strode into the legend and his court of chivalrous knights were sworn to defend the Holy Grail, though none but Sir Galahad ever claimed to have seen it.

King Arthur was mortally wounded after a battle in the year 542, and was buried with his Queen Guinevere at Avalon.  In 1190, after the monks had established a monastery on the site of the original wooden church, a stone slab was unearthed at Glastonbury with a Latin inscription stating, “Here lies buried the famed King Arthur in the isle of Avalon.”  Later, workmen unearthed an early Celtic coffin – a hallowed out oak tree trunk – containing the bones of a man of giant stature with the remains of a woman at his feet.

Controversy continues to rage at this finding, over the belief that Joseph of Arimathea was also buried there.  But a reliable document in the English College at Rome, written by William Good who was born in Glastonbury in 1527, states that the monks never knew for certain the place of this Joseph’s burying.  They said the body was hidden most carefully and that when it should be found the whole world would wend their way thither on account of the miracles worked there.  Another thing William Good said was that he remembered seeing a stone cross, with a bronze plate on which was carved an inscription relating that Joseph of Arimathea came to Britain forty years after Christ’s Passion with eleven or twelve companions, and that he was allowed by Ariviragus the King to dwell at Glastonbury which was then Avalon in a simple and solitary life.  

So there is some documentary evidence to support the oral tradition, but he made no mention of a wooden chalice.  Nothing further is known of the Holy Grail itself until the year 1539 when Glastonbury Abbey became a victim of Henry the VIII’s anti-monastic power.  The glorious building was despoiled at the brutal hands of the King’s men.  Afraid for the safety of the ancient relic, Abbot Richard Whiting entrusted the sacred Cup into the hands of his Prior and six monks who were told to flee into the mountains of Wales and deliver it into the care of the Cistercian monks at Strata Florida, a medieval abbey situated in Cardiganshire.

As the monks sped northwards and westwards with the Cup, Henry’s soldiers were dragging poor Abbot Whiting on a hurdle to the top of Glastonbury Tor where he was publicly hanged for allowing his brethren to escape with the treasured relic.

On their way to Wales, the brothers rested for a time, according to tradition, at a tiny hamlet called Ozleworth, set among the Cotswold Hills above Wootton under Edge in the Gloucestershire country.  There they placed the wooden cup in a niche in the Church of St. Nicholas, a medieval chapel forming part of Ozleworth Park, now owned by Lieutenant Colonel W. H. Ferguson.

This was verified by a former rector of the church, the Reverend George Worthing, who said that when the Abbey at Glastonbury was threatened, the monks were sent out to hide the treasures, including a wooden chalice which was probably kept in a niche in the tower.  

Although the legend speaks of no other place, it seems likely that the monks would have crossed the River Severn by way of Gloucester, where the Benedictines had an Abbey before Henry’s troops confiscated it. 

Once over the river, the monks pressed deeper into the Black Mountains until they arrived at Strata Florida, fifteen miles from Aberystwyth on the coast of the Irish Sea.  The monks were given sanctuary and were able to hide their treasure for a few years, but Henry’s men were still searching for them, and in due course they approached the Cistercian monastery.  

The monks, ever faithful to their promise to protect the Holy Grail with their lives, were forced to flee again.  They scattered into the countryside and found refuge with an old Welsh landed family, the Powells, Lord of the Manor of Nanteos, a small village in the Paith Valley, three miles from Aberystwyth.  The monks remained there in hiding and safety until the end of their days.

As the last of them lay dying, he handed the Cup to the head of the family, exacting a deathbed promise that the Powells would be faithful custodians of the Holy Grail until such time as the Church shall claim her own.

And so, the Cup remained safely in their hands throughout the years.  After the present Nanteos Mansion was built in 1739, the Cup was occasionally shown to distinguished visitors, such as the poet, A. C. Swinburne, and the famous composer Richard Wagner, who during his stay at Nanteos, is believed to have had the inspiration for his opera, “Parsifal”, published in 1882, a year before he died.  The opera tells the story of Sir Parsifal, a holy knight of the Round Table who helped to save the Holy Grail.

In the 400 years the Cup was at Nanteos, it has been a source of wonder to the country folk around, and talks of miraculous cures abound.  Some have been documented in notes left by the villagers which still are with the cup today.

Most of the cures were dated in mid-Victorian times, but others quite recently, but so few people know of the Cup’s existence and of its whereabouts – a secret all who are pledged to keep.

A family tree in the hall of the Nanteos mansion traces the Powells from the 13th century to the year 1951, when the last of the line died at age 89. 

There was litigation among distant relatives over the inheritance of Nanteos and while this action was being contested in the courts, the olive-wood Cup was removed secretly to the vaults of the bank until Mr. Powell’s cousin, Eliz Mirylees, inherited the estate.  The Cup was once again in the care of the Powell family who guard it today.  In 1967 they sold Nanteos Mansion to the Bliss family and moved, taking the Cup with them – somewhere in England.

It is there after a long search that my friend traced it.  Major James Mirylees, a devout churchman, had died and his wife was too ill to appear when my friend called at the family home.  One of the three daughters, Clementine, kindly admitted him to see the relic.

It is stored in a small wooden case the size of a shoe box with a sliding glass lid.  Approximately five inches in diameter and three inches deep, about the size of a grapefruit bowl, but little more than half of the original Cup remains.  Over the centuries, cure seekers or over-zealous pilgrims have nibbled away at the rim as they drank water from the Cup.

That is why the present owner has so far refused to allow a further fragment to be removed for carbon dating tests which could prove once and for all whether it is 2000 years old.  For some, proof in not necessary.

Only one expert on Palestinian archeology has ever see the Nanteos Cup.  That was the late Sir Charles Marston in 1938.  He would not dismiss the possibility that it was indeed the Holy Grail, but he refused to pronounce on it with any degree of surety for or against.  Since then, the cup has melted further and further into the misty backgrounds of the countryside.  First in Wales, and now in England, as the Mirylees family has tried to find peace from the constant stream of people who, until a few years ago, had bombarded them with heart rending pleas for water from the Cup.

The family was planning to move again to cover their tracks from Nanteos.  Yet, they have never denied anyone the right to see the cup, once the searcher discovered its whereabouts.

The Cup itself is no grand chalice, rimmed with gold and rubies, but a simple wooden drinking vessel.  As such, it seems wholly credible that it could be the kind of plain bowl that Christ would have used for his Last Supper on earth, rather than the grand silver goblet  depicted by artists centuries ago.

No one will know for certain if it really is the Holy Grail, but the many letters testifying to its healing powers make it an object of reverence as well as deep mystery.  

Facts have placed it back as far as Glastonbury – only Faith can take it beyond.

The Holy Grail inspired some of the finest poetry of the Middle Ages.  European poets established the basic parts of the Holy Grail story between about 1180 and 1240.  These poets may have adapted the legend from the tale told much earlier by pagan Celtic people.  The Celtic story described a magic cup that provided food and drink for anyone who used it.

Chretian de Troyes, a French poet, wrote an unfinished poem about the Grail that later writers completed.  Chretian’s became the best known of the Grail stories. His Percival, called “Tale of the Grail” is the earliest known version of the legend.

Wolfram van Eschenbach of Germany wrote an important account of the legend based on at least part of Chretian de Troyes.  His rhymed “Parzival” is considered a masterpiece of medieval literature.

Sir Thomas Mallory wrote “Le Morte D’Arthur”.  He describes the life of King Arthur of Britain and the Knights of the Round Table.  I also includes an account of the Knight’s quest for the Holy Grail.

The American poet, James Russell Lowell, wrote the best known modern story of Launfal, “The Vision of Sir Launfal”.  In this tale, Launfal dreams of searching for the Holy Grail.  Launfal does not find the Grail, but he learns its meaning when he helps a starving leper.  The leper teachers him that the Grail symbolizes charity and mercy.

Or course, the best known of Arthurian tales is by Alfred Tennyson.  His “Idylls of the King”, among which is the Holy Grail, is one on the most popular known.

Duty

I coached middle school wrestling in the 1980’s. It was part of my job to remind my squirrelly young charges that when the National Anthem was playing, they needed to be quiet, stand, and pay attention. They were thirteen and fourteen and would likely have just kept wrestling or talking if I didn’t intervene. Even as a high school coach, I would growl to my “more adult” athletes to respect the anthem – and the flag.

I stand for the National Anthem. I think about all of those friends and former students who risk their lives to protect what our Nation.  And I think of the “kids” I coached who are standing watches in the night of Afghanistan and Korea, or in Iraq, or Lebanon in the past.   I remember the friends now gone, who sank into rice patties in Vietnam, or froze in Korea, or parachuted into Occupied Europe.

More Perfecting

But I was really a twelve year old kid myself when I recognized that the National Anthem and the US Flag represented so much more than gallant actions and sacrifice in history.  In 1968, two of my track heroes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, used their Olympic medal ceremony to present the grievances of American Black people to the world.  For that they were thrown off the US Team and removed from the Games.  But they also demonstrated what the US Flag stands for:  a promise of a better future and a symbol for what is wrong but could be right.

It took a while for me to absorb those conflicting actions: that you could respect the flag and still use it as the basis for protest. That there was even a difference between raising a fist (or kneeling, or turning your back) or burning or trampling the flag. And that in spite of those differences, all of those actions, even the disrespectful ones, represent something unexpected.

They represent the BEST of America – that we stand not just for patriotism, but for idealism.  That we are a nation striving, as the Constitution says, to become “more perfect”.   That our ideals are strong enough to allow for criticism and protest and even disrespect, even in public, even as we strive to reach that perfection.   We stand (or kneel, or trample) for freedom of speech, for your right to say what you believe.

USATF

In the past few years, Americans have grown to expect protests around the Flag.  In fact, many sports organizations have tried to find ways to keep their athletes from being put “in the middle”.   The NFL and the NBA have created ways to allow their athletes to use the “bully pulpit” of their athletic standing to voice political and social views, without confronting “the Flag” issue.  

United States of America Track and Field (USATF) is the governing body for Track and Field in the US.  USATF sets up the process and runs the competition for the National Championships. They select the United States Olympic Team.  It was their meet, their organization, and their officials at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field – “Tracktown – USA”; picking the team over the past two weeks.

It might come as a surprise to the casual observer that the Awards presentation at the USATF Olympic Trials does not include a Flag Ceremony.  Like the Olympic Games, USATF recognizes the three top finishers in each event.  They all qualify to be on the Olympic Team (assuming they have achieved the Olympic event qualifying standard), and are also recognized as the top three in the Nation.  

But a Flag Ceremony would be redundant.  All of the athletes involved in the USATF Olympic Trials are American – to raise the US Flag each time would be repetitive.  Unlike the actual Olympic Games, where nations are unofficially competing against each other, in the Trials, it is individuals competing to win a place on the Team.

Rule 39

The Hammer Throw is a field event. Using a heavy steel ball attached by cable to a handle, the athlete spins in a ring and tries to throw it as far as possible.  Gwen Berry is a hammer thrower and has been one of the top in the nation for a decade.  She represented the United States in several world competitions, and has made the finals each time, including the 2016 Olympic Games.  She won the 2019 Pan American Games – and used the medal ceremony to protest US systemic racism by raising a fist at the end of the US National Anthem. 

The US Olympic Committee and the USATF acknowledged her “right…to peaceful expressions of protest in support of racial and social justice for all human beings”. But the International Olympic Committee (IOC) placed her on a twelve-month probation for the action. Gwen placed third at the Olympic Trials last week. She stepped up to the podium for recognition of making the 2020 (21) Olympic Team. As she was being recognized, the National Anthem began.

Meet management played the National Anthem at the beginning of each evening session – usually at 5:20.  They claim it was a coincidence that the hammer awards ceremony was interrupted by the music. Perhaps the meet announcer was not aware of what the awards announcer was doing.  A coincidence:  that the one athlete already “highlighted” for protesting during the Anthem was on the stand.  A coincidence:  that the one athlete already sanctioned by the IOC was put “in the middle”.  

On one of my “go-to” television show “NCIS”, lead Special Agent Gibbs has a series of life “rules” he constantly refers to.  Gibbs’ Rule 39 states: “There is no such thing as a coincidence”.

Priority

Gwen Berry was caught off-guard.  She hopes to medal in the Tokyo Games.  And if she does, she definitely will protest in the medal ceremony.  As she says:

“My purpose and my mission is bigger than sports. I’m here to represent those … who died due to systemic racism. That’s the important part. That’s why I’m going. That’s why I’m here today.” (ESPN)

But she wasn’t prepared for Hayward Field.  She turned from the flag towards the crowd, and ultimately placed a black t-shirt with the words “activist athlete” over her head.  She thinks she was setup by the USATF.  It certainly seems that way.

You may not agree that National Anthem protests are appropriate.  You may think that there might be “better” ways to make the point.  But it’s the United States – and we don’t have the “right” to tell others how to protest.  And even more importantly, we can tell the world that protest, criticism, even condemnation from within is not only “OK”; it’s a sign of a healthy democracy.

We certainly need some positive signs of that these days.

In the Day

When I was a kid back in the 1950’s, most homes in Cincinnati weren’t air conditioned.  We were lucky; our house in Clifton  (just north of the University) had a giant attic fan that would pull air throughout the house.  In the summer we always had that fan going, the windows open, and other smaller fans as well.  But Cincinnati is a “river city”.  Like sister cities Louisville and St. Louis, the river valley holds the heat and humidity.  Eighty degrees feels oppressive because of the high humidity.  And the “dog days” of ninety-plus degrees August were miserable.

There was always the “fallback” position – the Esquire Theater.  A few blocks away in the Clifton business district on Ludlow Avenue, there was the old movie theater with that marvel of modern living, air conditioning.  When the August heat got too much to bear, Mom would walk us up Clifton Avenue to Ludlow and we would go watch the matinee at the theater.  I can’t say I really remember the movies, though there were always cartoon features at the beginning or end.  It was the age of Disney – Mickey and Minnie, Goofy and Donald. 

And on those really hot days the movie was followed by Graeter’s ice cream, only a couple of doors down the way.  For me – a chocolate mint soda (made from mint ice cream with chocolate syrup, not chocolate with mint syrup) would fully cool me down.  Then it was the hike back up Clifton to home.  

Sure that’s the old, “In my day we walked to school in three feet of snow, uphill, both ways” kind of story.  But it’s true.

Heat Wave

Today there’s no need for the Esquire to Graeter’s expedition just to get cooled down.  I’m sure you can still find a house in Cincinnati, or here in Pataskala, without air conditioning – but there are very few.  Regardless of the outside air temperature (it’s already 83° at 10am today) it’s a cool 65° here in the house.  Sure we like it cool – but the dogs are the thing.  They, and especially our eldest dog Buddy, don’t tolerate heat.  Even at 65° we are still chasing Buddy out of the bathtub – the coolest place he can find.

But there are other parts of the nation where air conditioning is still considered a luxury.  More than twenty years ago, I took a group of track athletes to the Northwest for a series of meets.  We ran the National meet in Seattle during a critical heatwave.  The temperature was pushing 90°, and Seattle was miserable.  The track officials debated changing the schedule to avoid the heat, running earlier and later.  The TV and radio were full of messages to take care in the heat, drink plenty of fluids, or get out in the water all around the Seattle area.  

To us “mid-westerners” 90° wasn’t a big deal.  It was a lot less humid than the same temperature we’d been practicing in back home.  But, with many homes unairconditioned and folks unaccustomed, it was a crisis.

Global Warning

So what the Hell are they doing about 110°?  

Seattle, Portland, all of the “cool Northwest” places are caught in a massive heatwave.  If you need to gain a grasp of global warming, here you go.  It’s not just that it’s hotter than it’s ever been before (it is).  It’s that weather anomalies, from storms to droughts, heatwaves to blizzards, are becoming so much more common.  The “world” doesn’t change overnight – but the world is changing, and the evidence is right before our eyes.  Here’s something to consider.  Lytton, British Columbia, Canada  is located north of the entire continental United States.  Monday, they set a national heat record – hottest ever in the recorded history of Canada.  It hit 47.9° in Lytton on Monday.  Oh – wait – that’s Celsius.  47.9° Celsius is 118° Fahrenheit – in Canada.  You can cook that Canadian bacon right there on the sidewalk – fast!

Our Lying Eyes

Sure it topped 100° in Lytton once before – in 1941.  And those who deny global warming will cling to that sweaty fact – “It’s just a freak heatwave, like back in ’41”.  But if you are keeping track of what’s happening in the world, those “freaks” are getting more and more consistent.  In fact, “freak weather” is now the norm.  Ask the drought plagued folks of California, or the constantly flooded folks in Houston, Texas.  And while we’re on Texas, what about the freeze that “broke” the Texas energy grid last winter.  Just another “freak”, right?

In our political divided nation, it’s always difficult to get something done.  We couldn’t even agree on how to combat a world pandemic.  But this looming crisis in our world is growing critical.  The time to “dodge” permanent climate change is growing short.  And, like a lot of other “facts” today, the evidence is right before our eyes.  

We just have to believe them.

Frankenstein

Most of us haven’t seen the original black and white  Frankenstein movie.  But we know the story of the mad scientist who stiched together body parts, then found a way to “shock” them into life.  “He’s Alive, He’s Alive!” is the famous line – followed by “…now I know how God feels,” foreshadowing the catastrophic outcome of his experiment.    

But we (our society) does this process all the time.  It doesn’t happen in the dungeon of some dark castle on the hill. Instead, it’s in Secretaries of State offices in state capitals all over this land.  It’s the process of bringing a new entity to legal “existence”, creating a new legal “life” where there wasn’t one before.

It almost sounds like magic:  “Abracadabra”, and something exists with legal rights and responsibilities.  We even have a magical sounding term for it:  incorporation.  That derives from the Latin term corpus meaning “body”.  From that root we have the terms: corpse (a dead body), corps (lots of live bodies), corporate (bodies organized in some fashion) and corporeal (dealing with the body, not the spirit).  So to “incorporate” something is actually to “create a body” – “It’s Alive, Alive!” 

But there’s no magical conjuring going on in the basement of the Secretary of State’s office at 22 North 4th St in Columbus. Nor is there a “mad scientist” waiting for lightning to power a “creation machine”.  Fill out the necessary legal papers, and submit $99 ($150 if you’re in a hurry) and you can create a corporation, an actual entity in the eyes of the law:  It’s Alive, Alive!”

Incorporation

Corporations have been around since the 16th century.  And they add strong value to the economy.  They allow real individuals to combine their wealth and “risk it” on some commercial enterprise.  By combining, the real individuals protect their personal wealth, only risking whatever they invested in the “corporation”.  So if the enterprise, the corporation, were to fail (die), the most the investors would lose would be all that they invested.  

This is different than a partnership or a solely owned business, where the owner(s) are wholly liable for all of the businesses’ debts, all the way to their own personal fortunes.  Partnerships and solely owed businesses aren’t entities in the same way that corporations are.  

In fact, corporations can “take the fall” if they go bankrupt, rather than take all the investors down with them.  Partnerships and solely owned businesses cannot. No legal “being” is created to “take the fall” for the partners or owners.  That’s why one form of incorporation is called an LLC, Limited Liability Corporation.

You are now thinking:  what sin did I commit to end up in this “Intro to Commercial Law” class on the “Our America” online law school?  But understanding the legal standing of corporations is important this week. That’s because Cyrus Vance, the District Attorney of Manhattan, New York, is about to bring criminal charges against the Trumps.  And these first ones aren’t probably against Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, or Eric, Don Jr and Ivanka, or even old Number 45 himself.  These charges are against the “Trump Organization – Incorporated”.  The organization, a legal “body” is going to be charged with crimes.

Enron and Andersen

“Corporations” can’t go to prison.  So the ultimate penalty for a corporation’s crime, is to take the lifeblood of that paper incorporation – money.  Corporate fines can be such that the corporation ceases to exist – ask the Arthur Andersen Company, one of the “Big Five” accounting firms in the United States until 2002.   Arthur Andersen Company hid evidence as part of the Enron scandal.  The Corporation was found guilty and sentenced to the maximum $500,000 in fines and five years’ probation.

You remember Enron, right?  Enron was a natural gas and electricity “broker”, that made energy trades into financial instruments (derivatives) to trade on Wall Street.  They hid incredible losses from their investors ultimately amounting to $74 billion. They also lost their employees the entire pension investment.  Enron itself declared bankruptcy – the “corporation” died.

That, along with a series of other crimes committed and multiple millions of dollars in fines, put Arthur Andersen out of business as well.  If you were an officer of that corporation you might lose your business. But it’s probably better than getting charged with crimes yourself. Ask Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, the chief officers of Enron.  Both served several years in Federal prison.   The Arthur Andersen Company dissolved, but part of it was “reincarnated” as Accenture.  It is incorporated and headquartered in far away Ireland.

First Step

A Manhattan criminal trial against the Trump Organization could require the dissolution of the corporation itself.  Oh, did I forget to add that when a corporation is indicted for crimes, all the folks that loaned money to the corporation want their money back – now? We know that the Trump Organization is famously indebted to multiple banks. And, as the Enron case proved, just because the corporation is charged, doesn’t mean that the individuals that ran the corporation can’t be held personally liable for crimes. 

The corporate charges might just be the first step in criminal actions.

Mom

I’ve written a lot about my Mom, Babs Dahlman.  She’s been gone almost ten years: Friday would have been her 103rd birthday.  I’ve told some of her childhood stories of England, and about her exploits as an agent for Special Operations Executive in World War II.  She wrote many of those stories herself, and I am still working at getting them online for folks to enjoy (The Dahlman Papers).  It’s a body of work, and still more to come.

My Mom’s life was lived in phases.  There was her childhood, growing up in post-World War I England, still an Empire.  That ended with the beginning of World War II.  Then there was the crucible of her generation, “their war”.  Mom lost many of her closest friends in the early part of the War, including her fiancé.  She chose to fight back and joined the Special Operation Executive, an impromptu clandestine service in the British government.  

Most of her comrades from the SOE didn’t survive the war, but Mom did, and fell in love with “an American” as the bombs fell on London. They both had “adventures” in the last year of the war as the Nazi Reich collapsed. And when it was finally over, Mom committed to going to the United States with her new husband, Don, and to a town in the Midwest called Cincinnati. Dad arranged passage for Mom on a returning Liberty Ship, the Francis D Culkin. It was in January of 1946 that Phyllis Mary Teresa O’Connor Dahlman, “Babs” to all who really knew her, stepped off the boat and into several feet of snow in Portland, Maine.

Partners

Before it was “fashionable”, my parents had an “equal” relationship.  They were a team, whether it was in their first business venture, or raising three kids.  Dad from the very beginning wanted to have his own business.  So soon after they arrived in Cincinnati, they started a small one with a big title: The United States Bottling Company.  

They had a building by the Ohio River in Kentucky, and the two of them were literally “the head cooks and bottle washers”.  Mom would mix batches of their soft drinks, pouring bags of sugar into vats and stirring in the flavorings.  Dad would help, but mostly he did what he always did best:  sell.  Dad went from store to store, convincing them to purchase the drinks for sale, delivering it to them, then picking up the used bottles – to wash and refill.  In 1950 when my grandfather from England came to visit for several months, he walked from their small apartment in Cincinnati through downtown and over the bridge to help with the manufacturing.

At the same time they had two children, my sisters Terry and Pat.  So they were raising the kids, wrestling sacks of sugar, and driving all over Cincinnati marketing their product.  But they also found ways to have a great time together, dancing to the Big Bands and partying with both Dad’s old friends from before the war and making new ones as well.  

The 1952 Ohio River flood wasn’t the worst, but it was bad enough to drown the United States Bottling Company.  They sold what little was left to a company from Atlanta, Coca-Cola, then searched for another industry to make their mark.

Television

Dad went into the new broadcast medium replacing radio called television.  He started as a “local” salesman, selling commercials for the new station owned by Crosley in Cincinnati, WLW-T.  When he wanted to close a deal, he brought in what he called “his best asset”.  It might be at dinner in a local restaurant, or around the table at their apartment or later the home on Glenmary Avenue just down the road from the Cincinnati Zoo.  But when Dad wanted to “impress” the buyer – he introduced him to Mom.

Mom didn’t learn to cook in England.  But when she came to the United States, folks always wanted to see what “English cooking” was all about.  So Mom had help, The Settlement Cook Book,  and with that, her charm, Dad’s wit, and a fully stocked bar, many sales were made.  Business and family were always one and the same, and often the now three children (I showed up in 1956) were a part of the sales pitch.

I was going through some of Dad’s papers recently and found a 1974 note from a business associate.  The letter discussed their business agreement, then thanked Dad for including him in a family dinner with his “liberal children”.  I guess things haven’t changed much.

When Dad grew frustrated with his career at Crosley, Mom backed his move to a different career track in television, selling programming. Dad worked for the Fred Ziv Corporation, producer of many early television shows. You have to be a certain age, maybe even older than me, to remember Highway Patrol or The Cisco Kid or Sea Hunt. Ziv had those shows and others; they were some of the top series of the late 1950’s and early 60’s. Dad was travelled all over the country to sell them to individual stations.

Mom’s Corps

He went on the road on Monday, and often wasn’t back home until Friday night.  Mom was home with us kids.  It was a lonely life for both of them, with Dad calling from hotels in such exotic places as Dubuque, Iowa or South Bend, Indiana.  But Mom had help from the fast friends she made in Cincinnati, her “corps” of women who were always around.  Maggie lived just up the road from us, Libby and Helen were not too far away.  

Mom didn’t drive.  It’s hard looking back to understand how she could jump out of burning airplanes and secretly bring bombs and radios into occupied Europe, but couldn’t drive a car.  I never got the story completely straight, something about 1942 and a bad car accident with friends hurt.  Dad would always try to “teach her”, especially when we were on vacation in rural Canada.  And Mom would try, but really didn’t have her heart in the effort.

So she knew all the cab drivers in Cincinnati, even into the early 2000’s. And if a cab or the bus wasn’t going to work, Maggie would volunteer. We kids sang a “car” song about Maggie – set to “You Can’t Get to Heaven”. As an adult now it tells me a lot about what was going on back then.

 “OH you can’t get to heaven, in Maggie’s car, ‘cause the gosh darn thing, stops at every bar!!!”

Family Business

Dad moved us all to a Detroit suburb for a year.  I remember it as being one of the best.  We went to parks or lakes every weekend and spent a lot of time together just having fun.  I built a NASA spaceship from refrigerator boxes in the backyard, and got my hair cut like my hero, John Glenn. I didn’t know he was going bald.  Much later, I learned it was the toughest financial year Mom and Dad had.  But as a kid, I never knew it.

Then it was back to Cincinnati and WLW – this time Dad was in Dayton.  A couple of years later we moved there, then after six years back to Cincinnati.  It was the “family business”, we went wherever Dad needed us to go.  And everywhere we went, Mom and Dad found new friends.  There was always a group of people around the table for Friday or Saturday dinner.

Friends

And that was Mom, always drawing people together. There were the “official groups”. When we lived in Dayton, it was the Dayton Opera Guild. In Cincinnati, there was “Unquotes”, where members presented papers to each other over a variety of subjects. Sometimes it was a professional subject or their most recent trip. Mom wrote a paper on the Knights of the Templar and the search for the Holy Grail. It required research, and on a trip “home” to England Mom investigated castle ruins trying to ferret out where the goblet went.

Mom was a founder of the “International Group” made up of men and women who came from overseas to work for the big industries in town, particularly Proctor and Gamble. There were too many countries represented to remember, but as a sampling: Tamara from Russia and her husband Carlos from Argentina, Peter from Texas (kind of a foreign country) married to Luce from Belgium, Paul and Elisabeth from the Netherlands, Marguerite from India and her husband Robert. And there was Dick and Lois, both American, but who worked decades overseas for Proctor and Gamble.

The Table

They became more than just “associates” in the clubs.   They were friends, often gathered around the handmade wooden table that graced all of Mom’s dining rooms (now in my niece’s dining room).  The conversations covered every conceivable topic, from politics to travel.  Sometimes it got a little tense.  One night an engineer for General Electric was describing an exotic airplane.  The chardonnay was flowing, and we learned all about what would be called the Stealth Fighter – years before the government acknowledged its existence.  I was waiting for the FBI to break down the doors.

Mom and Dad told stories as well.  Most of their friends were too young to have fought in World War II; it was their parents’ war.  When Mom was released from the Official Secrets Act in 1970, we began to hear her “spy” stories.  And both she and Dad would talk about their international adventures, whether they were flying in hot air balloons in LeMans, France; toasting with akvavit in Sweden; or accidently videoing lots of Chinese feet on the Great Wall.  

Life in Love

Mom and Dad were a team in Dad’s work – from being part of a “crowd scene” in a 1950’s production at WLW-T, hosting celebrities at midnight in Dayton, or “checking out” one of Dad’s potential salesmen.  If he couldn’t make it through a Dahlman family dinner, he probably wasn’t up to the task of selling the Phil Donahue Show nationwide.  

When I asked Mom if she felt she missed something by not having a “career” of her own, her answer was pretty simple. She proved herself in the war. She and Dad were a partnership – and together they made a family, a successful business career and a life. And for sixty-eight years they loved each passionately, literally until death did they part. She didn’t miss a thing.

Mom died almost ten years ago.  Dad left us five years after that.  I’m not a religious man, but I’m sure they’ve found a way to be together again.  There’s a big dinner party on a Friday night – and a group is still sitting around a table, hours past the main course and even dessert, pouring another glass of wine and telling the stories of their lives.  Mom and Dad have some of the best.

Surprise Attack

Bullies like to wait and attack their unsuspecting victims by surprise.  Not only does it make their personal violence more threatening, but it makes it impossible for the victim to prepare a defense, or sometimes even cry out for help.  A bully lurks around the hidden corner in the boys restroom, or behind the shelves in the locker room.  

And a bully looks to others for “applause”.   The bully is “taking care” of a self-designated “problem”; making sure that the victim is punished for some imaginary infraction.  Bullies don’t attack in the light of day, but they do want to perform in front of an audience.  Some will approve, others will disapprove but in silence.  Both reactions empowers the bully to do more.

There is no more classic bullying behavior than to “pick” on those that are different.  The bully finds out the one who has little other support.  In school it was the kid who didn’t fit in.  Maybe it was race, ethnicity or religion, or maybe it was family or associations.  But more often it was some form of gender identity.  The boy who seemed effeminate or physically immature, the girl who is too “manly”.  Bullies are often afraid of what they do not understand.  How could someone else be “different”? There must be something “wrong” with them.  The bully gains their self-value by attacking others for their differences.

State Legislature

The bully attacked in the Ohio State Legislature yesterday.  A simple bill to correct an injustice in how collegiate athletes could earn money was on the floor.  It changed Ohio law to allow what many other states, and the US Supreme Court, already mandate.  An athlete in college could make money from their own name, image and likeness (NIL), something that under current law would make the athlete a “professional” and no longer eligible for college athletics.  

That was it – unanimously passed by the Ohio Senate and sent for confirmation to the Ohio House of Representatives.  The Athletic Directors of the Ohio State, Cincinnati and Dayton all approved.  More importantly, Ohio State Football Coach Ryan Day was the “closer”.  He said Ohio State would be at a recruiting disadvantage without the change.  What legislator wants to be “the fall guy” for  OSU losing to Michigan? 

Then the bully struck.  Jena Powell, the Representative from Arcanum, a small town in the farm fields near the Indiana border north of Dayton, launched a surprise attack.  She attached an amendment to the NIL bill, saying that transgendered athletes are banned from participating in women’s high school and college sports.  They would be required to participate on male teams.

Fake News

This is major issue – if you’re sole source of news media is Fox News or OAN or Joe Rogan.  As a “real” problem for “real” athletics, it barely exists at all.  But Representative Powell used the NIL Bill to be the bully and launch a surprise attack on some of the most vulnerable members of our society – the adolescents who are trying to live their true gender identity against “the norm”.  

They aren’t much risk to “win” events, or take scholarships away from “real girls”.   Search the nation:  two cases in Connecticut, one in Texas, one in North Dakota – out of the millions of high school and collegiate athletes out there – four cases where transgendered girls had athletic success.  In the past six years, there have been eleven transgendered girls competing in Ohio high school competition.  No one knew, and there wasn’t an issue. But Representative Powell and her Republican confederates were going to “solve” that problem for the state.  

Fear

I’ve written about transgendered athletes before.  They are “different” than the norm, and easy to use to create fear.   In fact, in March I wrote a whole essay about the use of Fear, fear of the unknown and the different, fear of a changing world to “fire-up” a political base.  It’s about creating a “straw-man” issue, generating an undeserved fear of an unlikely consequence, and using it to leverage votes.  It’s the act of a bully.

But let’s be clear about a couple of things.  There is no hidden “reserve” of boys waiting to compete as girls to win medals.  What we know now that we didn’t several years ago, is that there are multiple reasons why a person may be anatomically one sex, but mentally another.  They deserve a chance for a normal and fulfilling life.  They don’t deserve to be attacked for political gain and to be bullied by the Representative from Arcanum or other authorities.  

Late last night, Ohio Senate Republicans attached the NIL legislation to another bill, nullifying the amended House bill.  Good for them for standing up to the bullies.  Sad for Ohio that we too had to fall into the trap of using fear for political gain.

Dean of Students

Hey old friends, fellow Deans of Students maintaining discipline in public high schools:  the United States Supreme Court is talking to you.  They are talking about the absolute bane of your existence – social media.  I remember:  sitting in the office, looking at screenshots and seeing  the often profane and explicit messages from one student to another. I tried to find some way to “make it right” for the student attacked, and for the parents who were unable to protect their child.

What school rule applied?  Do you suspend a kid for writing on social media on their personal phone in terms that you surely would “boot them” for if they said it out loud in the cafeteria?  How did the school become the social media “police”, and where did we gain the expertise or the authority to make those decisions?  And finally, while you see what’s in front of you – what are you missing that you can’t see?  Where is the entire “message chain”?

The Facebook Era

It was easier when I sat in that chair (with school purchasing, probably the same one).  That was the “Facebook Era” – the only “social media” that mattered.  Facebook wasn’t really ready for any of this, the tools to block or hide posts were clumsy and difficult to use.  As “the Dean”, I had a “dummy” account, one not directly connected to my personal accounts, that could be used for “investigations”.  It was originally for threats; an outgrowth of the Columbine violence.  We had to know what was going on out there.  No school wanted to have a joke like “the trench coat mafia” in last year’s yearbook turnout out to be the terrorists in this year’s library (that happened at Columbine).  

But that “dummy” account opened a whole new world of potential problems.  Sure we caught the rumors of kids bringing weapons to school.  We could intervene early, before some kid took action, before he (almost always a he) had a chance to do something irrevocable.  But we also were flooded with bullying, blackmail, and hate that used to be whispered conversations on the back of the bus.  Now it was public, often without attribution, and permanently saved in the cyberworld.  Do we act on it all?  Could we act on words typed in the middle of the night, in a kid’s bedroom?  How far did “disruption of the educational process”  go?

Tinker

“Disruption of the educational process” is a term of art.  It’s the language of the Supreme Court in Tinker versus Des Moines, the foundational case dealing with students and their freedom of speech.  Essentially, Tinker guarantees students the freedom to express themselves, as long as that expression doesn’t disrupt the “educational process”, the primary task of public education.  Tinker stated that schools have an educational duty to allow students freedom of expression as an “…important part of the educational process”.  

The balance is between “disruption of the educational process” and the limits of “in loco parentis” (the school’s authority in place of parents).  Mom or Dad can confiscate a phone, or punish their child at their discretion.  But schools have to meet a higher standard to take disciplinary action for “speech”.  And that standard is based on whether the “speech” disrupts the school from achieving its primary goal – education.

Pizza Hut

When I was teaching back in the 1980’s, I used to raise the “Pizza Hut” question to my government classes.  If a school team went to Pizza Hut and had a food fight – of course it was the school’s problem.  The school was directly in loco parentis.  But if some seniors went to Pizza Hut after the game and had the same kind of fight – was that still the school’s problem?  What if it was “our” kids and another school’s kids?   A food fight isn’t “free speech”, and as long as it doesn’t happen in the school cafeteria, it isn’t disrupting the “educational process”.  So where do we draw the line?

Mahoney

The Supreme Court gave us some guidance yesterday.  In Mahoney Local School District v BL, a student, BL, failed to make the varsity cheer squad.  On her personal phone from a local store over the weekend, she posted on Snap Chat making profane comments about the cheer squad and took a picture giving “the finger”.  Snap Chat posts go to a limited number of friends, and are supposed to “disappear”.  But other cheer squad members took “screen shots” of her comments, and brought them to the attention of school authorities.  The school suspended the BL from the junior varsity cheer squad for the remainder of the year.

There were no threats, personal or otherwise, to the cheer squad members or coaches.  BL was simply expressing her dissatisfaction at not making varsity, as thousands of kids have done for decades or more.  The difference:  it was on social media.

What If?

Had BL walked into the cheer coach’s office and used the profanity and the hand signal, then clearly the school could (and should) discipline her.  If she was in her bedroom talking to a friend and did the same thing, then clearly it would NOT be the school’s concern.  But putting something on social media ultimately made it “public”.  Her posts became the topic of discussion for ten minutes in Algebra class.   School authorities felt it threatened the cohesive of the cheer squad.  That was enough for them to feel they should take action.

But the Supreme Court said the school was wrong.  The majority opinion made three points.  The first – it was off-campus, and therefore the school had less authority “in loco parentis”.  The second – the school does not have authority over student speech twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. 

And in the third  and most important point – the decision said:  “…the school itself has an interest in protecting a student’s unpopular expression, especially when the expression takes place off campus, because America’s public schools are the nurseries of democracy”.

Teaching Free Speech

The Court ruled that BL had the freedom of speech to say what she said, where and when she said it, on Snap Chat.  They ruled the school didn’t have authority over her at that time.  And, in fact, the Court ruled the school needed to protect her right to say those things, as an educational exercise in democracy.

So Dean, where does that leave you now?  If BL had threatened the Cheer Coach, you could still discipline her.  But what about the next BL, who makes racist statements on her “chat”.  Is that also protected – or does it threaten the cohesion of the multi-racial cheer team enough to allow for disciplinary action?  And what about that all-encompassing phrase in all our student manuals:  actions “un-becoming” of a co-curricular participant.  The Court didn’t answer that – so you’ll still have to do what you think is right.   

Glad I’m in my “office chair” — at home.

Fifty Plus One

We are a nation divided.  The chasm of that divide is nowhere more apparent than in the United States Senate.  There are many who say that the Senate is anachronistic, representing a “false” America.  In a nation where the term “one person, one vote” is taught as unassailable doctrine, the Senate is an institution founded on the exact opposite.  In the Senate, one in 700,000 has as much say as one in 52 million.  

But the Senate “representation” is more of a mirror image of America than even the House of Representatives.  America is divided; by race, by economic class, by political party, and by allegiance to the false ideology of the 45th President.  And so is the Senate.

There are forty-eight Democrats in the Senate, two independents who organize with the Democrats, and fifty Republicans.  Only by virtue of Constitutional tie-breaking by the Vice President does the Democratic Party control the assembly.  On any “party-line” issue, every single vote counts.  If Democrats can gain a tie, they can win.

But the arcane rules of the Senate allow a single member, with the support of forty others, to prevent passage of any legislation (Filibuster). So to get most things done, it requires not fifty plus one, but sixty votes.  And that simply doesn’t happen much.  

Wedge in the Crack

A “wedge” issue is one which further divides the nation.  And any issue involving voting rights drives right to the heart of our current crisis.  The United States has “papered over” the Insurrection of January 6th.  Some Congressmen even pretended that the rioters were “tourists” wandering the halls of the Capitol improving their knowledge of US History.  But underneath the thin veneer of “moving forward”, the lies about a stolen election that drove the Insurrection are unresolved and un-refuted.

The falseness of those lies really doesn’t matter.  A majority of Republican voters, and a LARGE majority of Republican primary voters, believe the 2020 election was stolen (MTP). Whether Republican Senators know better or not really doesn’t matter.  They want to get re-elected, and in order to win their primaries, they must agree with their voters.  

These lies are enabling state legislatures throughout the nation to institute restrictive and suppressive new voter laws, laws aimed at reducing the number of Democratic votes.  And even more importantly, those laws allow those same state legislators to overturn the results of fair elections.

On the Democratic side, suppression laws may well determine which side controls the House and the Senate.  Both Republicans and Democrats learned the lesson of the Georgia Special Election of January 5th, the day before the Insurrection.  If everyone can vote – Democrats have a much better chance of winning.

Play to the Base

So both sides in the US Senate are bound to “play to their base”.  The want to stand in “support” of their voters.  So there is little room to compromise, or to reach some “bipartisan” deal that might be possible on some less controversial issue like spending trillions of dollars on infrastructure.  It is absolutely no surprise then, that the Senate split 50-50 on the “For the People” voting rights act that would have prevented many of the state legislative restrictions.  It failed – unable to gain the sixty votes needed to overcome the filibuster rule.

Republicans can tell their voters that they held firm.  Democrats can demonize Republicans as using “arcane” rules to thwart the will of the people.  Nothing moves forward.

But we know there is a path forward, one in control of a few Democrats.  Should they decide that the “arcane” filibuster rule is done, they can, by a fifty plus one vote, be done with it.  But those Democrats have also made a political calculation.  They have determined that their voter base values “bipartisanship” more than action.  They can hear the opposition ads now if they remove the filibuster rule: “ Joe Manchin is a puppet of Nancy Pelosi and the Socialist Democrat Left”.  

Play Out the Game

The “For the People Act” is not over.  Manchin will bring a “compromise” bill to the floor of the Senate in the next couple of weeks, one that gives Republicans the national “voter ID” they have wanted to decades.  But the likelihood of getting ten Republicans to agree and overcome the filibuster rule is almost non-existent.

So why go through the motions?  There are a few of possibilities.  First, perhaps Joe Manchin knows something the rest of us don’t.  Perhaps he has found a wedge in the Republican side, among the retiring members, that could gain him his ten votes.  Maybe he can use the ultimate negotiating tool – the filibuster itself – to leverage their support.  Vote for this bill, or I will have to vote to modify or even end the filibuster. That might be his ploy.

And maybe Joe Manchin will actually allow himself to be dragged into filibuster reform.  He has said that voting rights are the most important law he could pass, and it is within his power to get that done.  Maybe he needs the visual of getting dragged, kicking and screaming, across the line of filibuster reform, to make the change.

Or if not that, then at least Manchin will have “reached across the aisle”, striving to find of bipartisan solution to our most divisive issue.  He will have “played to his base”, standing as the Senator in the middle from the state that is so far to the right, for normalcy in times of hyper-partisanship. 

Fish or Cut Bait

The Senate will “play out the game”.  But as the clock winds down, it will be time for those Democrats placed in the middle to “fish or cut bait”.  For the past five years we have waited for acts of political courage, of Senators (and Congressmen) to stand up for the right instead of the expedient.  It has happened far too infrequently and our nation has been sorely disappointed in the “fortitude” of our leaders.  

They will be tested once again here in the next few weeks.  And like Charlie Brown with Lucy and the football, we will all be lining up to take our swing again.  Perhaps this time, we will kick the ball through the goal.

Supreme Court

The anguished cry was heard throughout the athletic world yesterday.  “It’s the death of amateurism, the end of College Athletics as we know it”.  And it might well be.  The United States Supreme Court cracked open the NCAA monopoly on money in college athletics.  The Court ruled that Universities cannot be restricted to offering only tuition and living expenses scholarships for athletes.  The Court narrowly defined that those schools could also offer other academic expenses, and even provide for “bonuses” for better grades and graduation. 

The good news:  for “revenue sports” athletes, the Court has narrowly opened the door that they should get a piece of the huge financial pie their efforts create.  How big a pie is it?  In the year before COVID, the Ohio State University grossed over $220 million in athletics revenues.  $60 million of that was in ticket sales for football alone. Ryan Day, the head football coach at OSU, makes over $5.6 million a year.  And that just puts him third in the Big Ten Conference.

All About the Benjamins

Why shouldn’t the athletes get more value?  If the head coach is worth millions a year, why should the recruited athlete, the one scoring the touchdowns and risking the injuries, only get $53,000 if they’re from out of state and $29,000 in-state?

There are two kinds of sports in the NCAA, and it’s not male and female.  It’s revenue, sports that produce enough money to cover all their costs and scholarships, and non-revenue.  In simpler terms:  it’s men’s football and basketball and a few women’s basketball teams at a select twenty-five schools in the nation, and there’s every other sport.

As a high school athlete I participated in track, swimming and wrestling.  All of those sports at the Division I level of the NCAA are “non-revenue”.  At the Ohio State University, all of those sports depend on the profits of the football program to continue in their present form.  The NCAA threat:  if they are forced give greater financial compensation to football and basketball players, then non-revenue sports may be cut to pay for it.  So while it might be fair to those few “paid” players, it may be the death-knell for the track and swimming and wrestling teams.

Play for Pay

Division I is the “top” level of NCAA competition in all sports.  Division I schools offer limited scholarships in the sports they offer.  While there are 85 scholarships on the football team, there are only 14 for women’s soccer (only 9 for men’s soccer).  For “my” sports:  men’s track, has 12.6 scholarships (18 for women);  and swimming and wrestling have 9.9 ( There are 14 in women’s swimming, women’s wrestling is just getting started).  

And what about those NCAA schools not in the twenty-five money makers?  Let’s take Ohio University.  When you look at their financials it seems that each of their sports, revenue and non-revenue, break-even.  But that break-even amount includes a subsidy by the University; 55% of the total athletic budget.  Only the “twenty-five” big money schools can finance athletics without non-athletic funds.

True Amateurs

Sports don’t have to be all about money. Athletics at the high school level, and at Division III colleges (my alma mater Denison University is one) doesn’t have scholarships. Athletes truly meet the “amateur” criteria, and while there is some limited revenue produced by athletics, most of the costs are covered as a “cost of doing business” by the University. Money is still important, but it isn’t the driving force that the Division I schools face. Division III schools can allow as many on their teams as they want, without trying to balance scholarship costs.

And maybe that’s how it should be.  Three major professional “revenue” sports have models that allow younger athletes to develop and try to “make it” outside of the collegiate ranks.  Minor league hockey, baseball and basketball circuits all provide their own pathway to “the big leagues”.  Football is the one major sport that depends on the college ranks as their “minor league”.  

However, for non-revenue sports, there isn’t really a pathway to the “top” except through the college ranks.  There is no “minor league” track and field circuit – if you’re good enough to “go pro”, you go, otherwise, it’s a college team or out.  College serves as the final developmental step for those athletes.

America’s Way

The “American Way” is about fairness.  And it is only fair that the superb athlete at the college level have the opportunity to benefit financially from their talents.  But it’s not as simple as just basketball and football.  It’s about the role that athletics should play in our collegiate system, and the way we develop athletes in all sports.  The NCAA can’t have it both ways.  They can’t “laud” the benefits of amateurism, while themselves benefitting from the incredible financial windfall of those amateurs’ efforts.  Whatever side of the “pay athletes” argument you’re on; that can’t be fair.

Sixteen Months

It’s been sixteen months since the COVID-19 pandemic became apparent.  Here in the United States, today we are breathing a deep sigh of relief.  If you watch our behavior, at the store, at the playground, in the movie theatres and the restaurants; the pandemic is over.  While some parts of the rest of the world are still suffering, in the US, the hospitals are nearing normal levels, and we are moving ahead.

But, of course, it’s not over.  Like the measles and polio, the COVID-19 virus hasn’t gone away.  In fact, the virus has mutated to become even more infectious with the  “Delta Variant”.  While it’s easy to say that’s someone else’s problem – the virus still remains an American problem as well.

Miracles of Public Health

Why?  Because the United States, after performing miracles of both vaccine development and vaccination efforts, has stalled.  That’s not a political question, it’s a fact.  We have the vaccines, and we now have the capacity to vaccinate everyone.  You can go to your doctor, to your pharmacy, your grocery store, or your local public health agency and get protected.  But we are struggling to reach even a seventy percent vaccination level.

A year ago we were talking about something called “herd immunity”.  At the time, the concept was used as an excuse for not taking reasonable preventive measures like social distancing and wearing masks.  The idea:  let everyone get COVID, and for those who survive it, they will have some term of immunity to the disease.  Then we can go on about our normal lives.

The politics of COVID and America, unnecessarily cost hundreds of thousands of lives.  Now we are faced with a similar situation.  We don’t need folks to risk getting sick.  We just need them to go to the local store and get vaccinated.  The current vaccines in the US:  Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson, are effective against the Delta strain, and are amazingly safe.  How safe are they?  Every form of vaccination can have side effects, but the COVID vaccine side-effects are literally measured in single digits per million people.  And even more than that, those side effects so far are almost always recoverable.  

Put the Fire Out

We have a chance to put COVID “out”, just like we put polio and smallpox “out”.  But it’s not going to happen here in the US, because there is a significant segment of the population, near thirty percent, who are “averse” to getting immunized.   So instead of reaching “herd immunity”, and perhaps more importantly, putting COVID “out” so those who legitimately can’t tolerate the vaccine are out of danger, we have allowed “the shot” to become a political issue.

In Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio there are old coal mines on fire.  They have been burning for decades, heating the ground, causing sink holes and smoke leaks.  They cannot be put out – they are burning through ancient seams of coal that stretch under roads and towns and houses.  

Instead of putting COVID “out”, we are letting it fester like those old coal mine fires.  Instead of polio or smallpox, COVID is going to be the measles, breaking out and taking its toll on the unprotected, year in and year out.  Only it’s not the measles, it’s so much more serious, and deadly.

You’re Doing Me

And for those of us who are vaccinated,  it seems reasonable to say that those folks who are making the choice to avoid “the shot can pay the price.  But there is an additional problem.  Allowing the continued transmission of COVID vastly enhances the chance that the virus will mutate into something the vaccines do not prevent.  So not getting vaccinated, just like not wearing a mask was six months ago, isn’t just a “you do you, I’ll do me” thing.  It’s putting us all at increased risk, more of a “you do you and it will screw me” thing.

But the current politics of America has somehow devolved to the “freedom” to not get  vaccinated against a deadly disease.  We can, with only a couple of clicks on the Internet, find all of the justification needed to not get protected.  It’s stupid, and it’s selfish.  And it’s America today.

This is the next installment in the “Sunday Story” series of essays –no politics – just stories. It would be my Mom’s 103rd birthday on June 25th. Happy Birthday Mom!!!

Dawn Forty

At the moment we have five – that’s right – five dogs in our house.  I’ve told the stories before, but the short version is we had two rescue dogs, Buddy and Atticus.  Then there was the first “foster fail”, Keelie, found on I-75 in Northern Kentucky, who came to be fostered but bonded so much with all of us that she stayed.  And then there was Louisiana, a full story of his own (Lou’s Saga), who came to rehab.  He and Keelie bonded so tightly that we couldn’t let him go either.

Now there’s a new rescue pit bull puppy, CeCe.  Our group, Lost Pet Recovery, pulled her from a storm sewer over near Dayton.   She’s a sweetheart, and will make someone a wonderful adoptee.  But she’s not going to stay –  five is more than we care to handle, and a puppy is still a puppy.

But it’s five dogs right now, and the day starts with a push from Lou, a lick from Atticus, and a scratch from Buddy – all around 5:40 am.  And it’s not just open the door and let ‘em go in our fenced-in backyard.  Lou still has to be walked, and so does CeCe.  So 5:40 means get up, get dressed, and get outside.

Red Skies

This morning I stumbled behind Lou, searching for “land mines” in the half-morning light.  I finally got the chance to look up, and there in the east, it was a full orange sky.  The sun wasn’t visible yet, just below the horizon, but the clouds were fully lit.  I was reminded of my Mom, full of sayings from her upbringing in England.

“Red sky at night, sailors delight.  Red sky at dawn, sailors take warning”.   That’s a phrase that went trans-Atlantic long before Mom stepped off the boat, the Liberty Ship Francis D Culkin, in Portland, Maine in the winter of 1946.  And the phrase still has meaning, by our second outing around 7:00 am, the clouds were gathering for the storm of the day.

Hacking

There’s nothing worse than a dog with a cough.  First of all, it gives us nightmares of Atticus, who had “Kennel Cough” so badly when we first got him, we thought he was going to choke to death.  A midnight run to the dog Emergency Room at MedVet up in Worthington to be greeted by vets in full hazmat suits made the illness even more memorable.  So when Keelie started hacking the other day, our first move was to the records.  She has had all her shots, including Bordetella, the official name for Kennel Cough.  

But she was still coughing, and it brought another of Mom’s sayings to mind, an English nursery rhyme. 

I have a little cough, sir,
In my little chest sir,
Every time I cough, sir,
It leaves a little pain, sir,
Cough, cough, cough, cough,
There it is again, sir.

Mom knew a lot about coughing.  She had asthma as a child, and one of her mother’s remedies was to find a road construction project, and have Mom inhale the fumes by hanging over the tar barrel.  Mom knew all about “Vick’s Vapo Rub” and the electric “Vaporizer”, the steam machine that she put in our bedrooms when we were sick to help us breath.  I can still remember falling asleep to the gentle hiss of the steam escaping the steel coffee pot-like base.

That’s a story that came back around.  Mom never smoked, but it was pulmonary fibrosis, a hardening of the lungs, that ended her life after ninety-three years.  The “little cough” became more than she could bear.

Pots and Kettles

In our modern age of gas and electric stoves, the outsides of pots and kettles remain clean.  It took my first camping adventure as a new Boy Scout to really grasp one of Mom’s favorite phrases: “…that’s the pot calling the kettle black”.  We made a traditional Scout dish, Dinty Moore Beef Stew dumped in the big pot, and cooked over the open fire.  It takes a lot of stirring, otherwise half of the stew will end up burnt to the bottom of the pot, and the rest will taste like you’re eating ashes.  

But it was the cleanup when us newly minted Tenderfoot Scouts learned a hard lesson.  The black ash from the burning wood adhered to the outside of the pots.  It took steel wool pads and a lot of scrubbing to get the pot even close to being clean again.  But somehow, the “leaders” pot came clean almost right away.  They waited for us to get done scrubbing, then explained that they “soaped” their pot.  They put a thin layer of liquid soap all over the outside of the pot, to make it easier to wash off the black layer of soot.

Mom grew up in 1920’s England.  The main source of fuel for both heating and cooking was coal, and my Nana (grandmother) had a coal fired oven.  Maybe that’s another reason Mom had such a tough time breathing.  Anyway, the pots and kettles were always covered with soot from the burning coal.  The pot could “call” the kettle black, but the pot was just as black as the kettle.  It was another version of “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”.

Noses and Faces

One of Mom’s favorite phrases was “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face”.  I never really got that one as a kid,  I guess I didn’t get the whole “spite” thing.  In fact, I think I heard the expression wrong anyway – I always thought she said “despite your face”.  What would that mean, you cut off your own nose, despite the fact it’s on your own face?  It just didn’t make sense.

Eventually I got the meaning – don’t get so mad at your face you cut off your nose and make it look even worse.  As a “hot tempered” guy myself, I heard the phrase from Mom a lot.  Don’t do something in anger that would make the situation even worse.  But I never got the nuance of the “spite” part.

It was actually when I started to do a lot of the writing in “Our America” that I finally got the real sentiment of the phrase.  “Word” spell checker constantly corrected my use of the word “inspite” (it just did it again) because I thought it was a single word.  So I always corrected it to “despite”, with a similar but not exact same meaning.  One day I accidently put a space in “in spite” and “Word” was happy – and I finally got it.  To spite – to be angry – at yourself.

Saints

Mom was raised Roman Catholic.  When she fell in love with a Jewish man, my Dad, her religious teachings came in direct conflict with her heart.  It wasn’t that she couldn’t marry Dad, but she had to promise to raise their children in the Catholic Church.  That was something that Dad couldn’t agree to.  So they had a civil ceremony three months before D-Day in 1944. The “legendary” story was that the priest came over to tell Mom she was ex-communicated from the church, and my Bampa (grandfather) punched him in the nose.  I guess I got my hot temper honestly.

When Mom and Dad raised us in Cincinnati, we attended the Episcopal Church.  Episcopalians are the American version of the Church of England, the Anglican Church, which is as close to Catholicism as you can get without actually being Catholic.  Dad would fall asleep, but Mom and my sisters and I would attend Sunday services until we were in our teens.  

Mom’s Catholic upbringing would come up in surprising ways.  She was a woman of faith, and her faith included that she could ask for heavenly intercession to solve real world problems.  We were vacationing in Canada and attended the village festival at the small town of Bruce Mines.  Somewhere in the dark, wandering back to the car, I lost my glasses in the high grass.  My vision was pretty bad (worse now), so not having glasses even at a young age was a problem.

Lost Things

The next day we drove back to Bruce Mines, and began searching the field for my glasses.  Mom “raised the stakes”, praying over and over to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things, to find my glasses.  After some seeking, St. Anthony came through, and we plucked my glasses from between the stalks of grass.

In fact, St. Anthony almost always came through.  The only time I remember him failing, was when Mom put my driver’s education certificate in a “safe place”.  After  I completed my time behind the wheel, I needed that piece of paper to actually get a license, but it was nowhere to be found, not even in the secret drawer in the circular table in the living room.  We even “moved up the heavenly chain” to St. Jude, the patron saint of impossible causes, but to no avail.

I had to file to the state to get a new copy, and it took months to get the paperwork straight.  I was sixteen, with a car waiting for me in the driveway, so I was impatient.  The Saints failed us, and I had to wait until the end of February (my birthday is in September) to actually get my license and go out on the road.  

That failure haunted me.  When Mom passed away, and Dad moved to Cleveland, I went through the paperwork in the house with a fine toothed comb.  Sure, it was forty years later and twelve cars later.  But I still wanted to find that certificate.  Divine intervention didn’t work. Perhaps it was superseded by maternal intervention to delay my solo driving efforts. 

 I guess I won’t find that one out, at least for a while. But I have faith that someday I will get to ask the question.

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

On Board

I probably won’t come as a surprise to most folks who read “Our America”, that I participate in a “political” online discussion board.  Sometimes that board can get out of control. Occasionally there is a reasonable discussion, but mostly it’s folks venting their views.  When I write, I try to take a “moderate” approach –tempering idealism with practical politics.  It’s tough – sometimes I feel like I’m the “President of the Joe Manchin fan club” – and I’m not.  But there does seem to be a lot of my fellow Democrats who are willing to – as Mom would say – “cut off their nose to spite their face”.  Kicking Manchin out of the Democratic Party does not solve any problem, but it does mean that the Democrats lose all control in the Senate.

Wide Awake

So in the middle of last night I was in a discussion (hoping to fall back asleep).  The issue:  what conservatives think about their “liberal” friends.  In case you missed it, I am a liberal, in the classic, 1960’s Robert Kennedy/Hubert Humphrey sense.  I don’t even like the term “progressive”, it’s an alternative definition accepted because Republicans somehow managed to demonize the word “liberal”.  It’s my term, it’s my ideology, and I’ll call myself what I want, and what I am: a liberal.  So there.

The “conservative” defined a “liberal” as someone who is uninterested in individual liberty.  Conservatives, he said, believed in the rights of individuals.  Individuals ought to be able to do what they want, without government interference.  He essentially quoted Jefferson’s inalienable rights – life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. (Yes – I know Jefferson said happiness, but Jefferson was paraphrasing John Locke – and Locke used the term property as a symbol of economic success.  Jefferson meant economic happiness, kind of the same thing.)

Personal Freedom

“Liberals”, in his interpretation, believe it is the role of government to intervene and restrict those rights.  And by doing so, they violate the very tenets of American governing philosophy:  the ascendence of the individual over the group. Conservatives believe in the absolute importance of individual freedom, so much so, that when the government tries to “take from the individual” to aid another individual or group, it’s just wrong – to them it’s Un-American.

As a liberal, I agree with my conservative friend on the importance of individual freedom.  Where he and I differ is a matter of balance.  In his view, individuals need to have the “freedom” to deny their services to others based not just on their ability to pay, but on their identity, or their race, or their gender, or their ethnicity.   “My freedom is to not serve you in my restaurant, or bake you a wedding cake, or allow you to stay in my hotel. It is more important than your freedom to your sexual identity, or your ethnicity or race”. 

Separate but Equal

This is the same argument used in the Jim Crow Era – the famous “separate but equal” of the Plessy versus Ferguson Supreme Court case.  That was about Black people riding in “White” railroad cars in Louisiana. The state had a law separating cars by race. But ultimately the railroad was a privately owned company – and the railroad owner had an inalienable right to happiness.  The Court ruled that as long as that individual provided a “separate but equal” car, then it was OK.   Plessy codified Jim Crow segregation from the 1890’s until 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled that separating by race was inherently unequal, taking away the individual freedom of those separated out.

As a liberal, that’s my point.  Individuals freedom is not as simple as “I do what I want”.  It also has to deal with how one person’s actions impacts another’s freedom to do what they want.  And that is not just an individual liberty balance, it’s also an economic balance.  If one has a greater economic power, then they are able to exercise their freedom “more” than those who did not have the means.  

Means Testing Freedom

Freedom shouldn’t be based on the ability to pay.  Freedom should be exactly as Thomas Jefferson wrote:  an inalienable, granted by our Creator, right.  So government has a bigger job than just saying – you have freedom, go for it.  Government must balance the freedoms of all individuals, and guarantee the optimum freedom to all.  That “optimum” may not be “maximum” freedom, because “maximum” for one may well infringe on the “maximum” for another.  And that’s the balance that liberals look to the government to provide.

And liberals would expand on Jefferson’s “happiness”.  If you can’t feed yourself, or your children, you aren’t happy.  If you can’t express your ideas and beliefs in the public space, you aren’t happy.  So it’s more than just a balance of individual rights, it’s an economic balance to provide a “base line” of “happiness” for all.  And that’s where my conservative friends jump off of the train, segregated or not.  They believe that our government goes “off the tracks” when it tries to balance economic opportunities for all.  As a liberal, I believe that the government has a duty to make sure that the basics of life:  food, shelter, health, and education are provided.  

I don’t think my conservative friend agrees with that.  He used what he thinks is a “derogatory” word to describe my version of Jefferson’s ideal:  socialism.   I don’t agree with that description, I believe it is what every enlightened democracy should provide for all its people, a social-capitalism.  Social-capitalism is Jeffersonian individualism tempered by recognition that not everyone can economically “compete” equally.

That’s the discussion that went on a 2:47 AM.  Then it was time to get back to sleep – counting railroad cars instead of sheep – and have sweet social-capitalistic dreams – Good Night!!