Service to Citizens

Rare is the politician who serves his term of office and then quietly goes home to retire. The popular example from ancient history is of Cincinnatus retiring after serving the citizens of Rome. With enemies attacking their borders, he was drafted and appointed by the Roman senate to be dictator, and, by exercising a little muscle, surely could have remained in that job until he died. After the danger passed, though, he resigned to go home and till his fields again.

George Washington's tenure as president could have been a lifetime job, too. He was the hero of the infant country, had the support he needed, and could have had himself crowned king, but he served his term and went home to Mount Vernon. (Some folks still liked the idea of having a king.) His act of resigning the job established the concept of limited terms, the wartime presidency of FDR being the exception.

Ulysses S. Grant lived quite destitute until he published his autobiography, the last of which he wrote on his deathbed. It was only through the income from sales of that book that his widow had something to live on. His book, by the way, is considered very highly as one of the best autobiographies ever written.

Harry Truman was a member of the club. He could have carved out a moneymaking career after his term but chose to go home to Independence,MO and live a modest, quiet life. At the time he didn't have a presidential pension; that perk had not been passed into law yet.

I don't know if there are other worthy examples. Contemporary politicians seem to be wealthy before they run for office or rub shoulders with the elite after the fact to make their bundle then. It's refreshing to see the Obama-Biden ticket, both came from humble backgrounds and neither is rich. Biden has been around a long while and never connected with the influence peddlers (His reported net worth is less than $200,000.) Obama's service work has not landed him in the rarefied air of wealth either.

Comeuppance

I liked Michelle Obama's speech Monday night at the Democratic convention. She came across to me as being very intelligent, yet comfortably plain spoken. The time or two I'd heard her speak before did not resonate that well with me, but I can imagine some of the pressures the spouses of candidates go through. They are unable to perform well all the time. I think many in this country have unspoken reservations about their color of skin and how dangerously close the Obama family might be to inhabiting the White House.

In some ways we can't be faulted for having reservations. As children we were raised in a culture that taught us songs like "Ole Black Joe," made us laugh with radio characters like Amos 'n' Andy, and read us stories like "Lil Black Sambo." Reservations became learned,then ingrained. I had a comeuppance on a cruise ship headed to Alaska nine years ago. Just prior to a big formal dinner event, we found ourselves riding in the ship's elevator heading to the dining room deck. Mary wore a nice dress, and I pulled on a blue blazer jacket thinking I was well enough dressed for the occasion. A black couple rode with us, he wearing a tuxedo and she a formal dress. I knew there was a rental shop on board so I casually asked him if he had rented his duds. He spoke in a very cultured voice when he answered. "No, I brought it along." I felt embarrassed for thinking the lesser of him. I've only worn a rented tux two or three times in my life; this gentleman owned one. When we entered the dining room we noticed our attire fit in with many of the diners, but we had all been upstaged by this couple. Later that evening in the ballroom I again noticed the well-dressed couple having a great time with their friends, all of whom were dressed formally.

Prejudice is a two-way street. It comes back at a person. I worked many years in a setting where I was in the minority and suffered through their put-downs. Ask Native Americans how they like Tonto. Ask them if they like celebrating Columbus Day. Ask Japanese-Americans if they were fond of being sent to internment camps during WWII. Ask Black-Americans to say nice things about their slave heritage. As time passes, and with room for even more open-mindedness, I do think strong feelings of the past have begun to moderate, and that can only be good for all of us. Go Obama!

Who Knows?

What would you get if you crossed an atheist with a Jehovah's Witness? Someone who knocks at your door for no reason at all.

What waits for us on the other side is a mystery. Our Christian teaching tells us, but that promise is not the same for everyone who lives on this planet. Many plan for the afterlife with different interpretations. What was it again that Moslem suicide bombers go to? One thing is for certain: we will all find out in the future. Strangely enough not everyone agrees with our beginnings either. An article appearing in my local paper reawakened curiosity I have had for a long time. Since I don't have an aptitude for either mathematics or physics, I've never been able to interpret for myself the findings or theories that scientists hold, but instead I've needed to read the ideas of scientists who phrase in language that this layman can understand.

The major areas of persuasion in the ongoing argument of how we came to be include theories of creation, evolution, and intelligent design. The subject of the aforementioned article is a physics professor at Montana State University. I never think of MSU as being on the cusp of scientific research, but Neil Cornish studied with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University in England. That alone gives his work credibility with me. He speculates, "there is a cosmological horizon that we cannot see beyond - what came before the big-bang... " I think maybe he subscribes to the intelligent design group. Anyway, the subject set me scrambling to my bookshelves to pull out references to the topic. I find it fun and stimulating to read ideas that give body to the theories. Everyone thinks they're right, of course. so an argument constantly rages.

In the book Honey from Stone the author states, "knowledge is an island. The larger we make that island, the longer becomes the shore where knowledge is lapped by mystery...The extension of knowledge is the extension of mystery." I once heard a Jewish rabbi say, when asked how God came into existence, that that argument entails an infinite regression, and no one can think in rational terms that far back.

The arguments stated with my limited thinking are 1. Creation - God made it all in seven days, 2. Evolution - a gradual development to our present state from the simple to the complex, and 3. Intelligent Design - God set the evolution process in motion. Of course, the Atheist or Free-Thinker viewpoint should be mentioned as rejecting religious beliefs as incompatible with reason. And I'd better not forget to list agnostics, deists, and infidels. Maybe I'd better stop thinking about it and just have faith in a better day a-comin'.

A Well-turned Phrase

I love to read and mull over a well-turned phrase. I enjoy some of them so much that I've written them down in notebooks to refer to them. One of my favorites was written by a regional author, Frederick Manfred, in his book Duke's Mixture. This scene comes from a gathering of some fellow authors at a lake: "One day Robert Bly was holding forth, and after a half hour got about a wild horse and began riding over us all with his provocative theories and strong opinions... Finally Tom McGrath had enough. Robert happened to touch on one of Tom's territories with his sharp hooves..." I still remember when I read it for the first time and how well I thought the author used his words to explain how the participants reacted in this setting. Here are some more from a variety of sources.

- I saw FEAR in front of me like a monster.
- He possessed a bull-huge heart.
- Voices can become as angry as a blizzard...
- Knowledge is an island. The larger we make that island, the longer becomes the shore where knowledge is lapped by mystery.
- For the first time I became sensitive to things unsaid, that the waves of sandhills rolling toward the town held a stormy and faintly ominous look.
- And I realized that those golden wild horses of other days had slipped more deftly out of my uncle's rope than he knew, and would never be caught again.
- I await myself in the future. Anguish is the fear of not finding myself there.
- Let us cross the river and rest under the shade of the trees.
- Some day you will be one of those who lived long ago.
- The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.
- Why, a good rain would keep these folks entertained for weeks.
- Where you see a man plowing there will be gulls following him and pecking at the furrow.

Just Havin' Too Much Fun

The wind blows steady and the red line in my thermometer stays high in its little tube. I'm hoping expert predictions of higher priced natural gas this coming winter are wrong - 30% higher. Does the incessant chirping of these crickets outside my bedroom window mean anything? I remember lots of deep-snow winters, maybe another one is due.

Yesterday I sent draft copies of my book of poems to artists for cover design (that would be my two sons). I'm glad it's reached this state because, in its printed format, I noticed a few glaring problems that need rewrites, maybe even substitution. I have time, though. A phone call yesterday gave me another assignment, anyway, that's going to take up the next month of my time.

The local cancer society started an annual festival, for what reason I'm not sure, but they've been looking for entertainment. Someone gave them my name as being a cowboy poet, so here came the phone call wanting my participation. Rank amateur that I am, I still couldn't say no. So I'll be preparing for that event over the next few weeks. I am going to make it clear, though, that I don't want to be tagged as a "cowboy poet." I think a "country poet" handle fits more comfortably. Two half hour shows need to be prepared for. I pulled out the old six-string guitar last night, and it felt clumsy. I've been playing a little four-string lately, so I will adapt that for my purpose. I'll just tell the audience that I left it out in the rain and it shrunk.

Moon Shadows

Warm temperatures, dry ground, and clear skies have hung around here for a few days now. Saturday night we attended the Chuck Suchy and Family concert a few miles south of here and watched a full moon rise in the uncloudy sky. The full moon's presence
was not a phenomenon unrelated to the concert since Suchy has been setting the date of the event to coincide with it. The audience sat facing south towards the wall of the hundred year old Bohemian Hall which made it easy to watch the moon start its nighttime arc in the sky.

Sleeping with an open window these past few nights has let the loud sounds of a multitude of crickets enter the bedroom. I think on Sunday night their volume even woke me up, but maybe it was my sixty-six year old bladder crying out for attention. Whatever, when I walked past the window I parted the shades to look out and saw a strong outline of the house against the lawn, a moon shadow. Last night I paused to look at it again. Two days past full, the shadow already seemed a bit fainter, but it was unmistakably there.

The fact that I'm getting older and living in a city environment both seem to work against my awareness of nature and all its facets, but I remember life on the farm opened my senses to the seasons, weather, moon cycles, etc., and I still see a bobber dancing in the moon after Grandpa brought me home from a day of fishing. Cat Stevens wrote and sang a song titled Moon Shadows, "I'm being followed by a moon shadow...," a song about finding hope in any situation.

Birthday

Today is wife Mary's birthday, and we have a full weekend of activities planned for her. It began last night with tickets, fourth row center, for the Garrison Keillor Rhubarb Tour. It was a great night of entertainment, a three hour show that included lots of singing and, of course, one of his famous, long, rambling monologues that had the large crowd of several thousand laughing out loud and often. Instead of the tightly scripted and timed two hour radio show format that we saw on the UND campus a couple of years ago, this one gave us a bit more with an extra hour. Keillor is a true genius. Blessed with terrific memory, his ability to talk and sing extemporaneously amazes me, and he surrounds himself with great talent. Susie Bogguss, one of our favorite country singers, came to Bismarck with him and Keillor's band can play any licks. He also features a sound effects man standing beside him who reacts with appropriate sound and gestures when Keillor tells wild, improbable stories, some of which are intended to stump the sound effects guy but which never do. Three hours passed by quickly.


Today started with my gift-giving of a new bracelet for her to wear. I think she likes it. This noon we will eat lunch with some of her family, and then this evening, per her choice, I'll take her to her favorite eatery, The Texas Roadhouse. Later we will attend an evening session of a bluegrass music festival in Bismarck and listen to some good music.

Tomorrow, Mary will attend a breakfast meeting of her rose club at the zoo, and in the evening we plan to drive a few miles south of Mandan to attend our state troubadour's concert at the Bohemian Hall. Chuck Suchy and his family have performed there each summer for the past several years. Suchy has attachment to the hall since he grew up and has lived in that rural neighborhood all his life. He wants to keep the memories of good times there alive and talks of social events he remembers attending as a boy. Whatever, he possesses unique talent as a guitarist, songwriter, and singer and puts on a good show under the stars.

If she has any energy left come Sunday, I plan to take her to a movie --- Tropic Thunder --- for even more entertainment. Happy Birthday, Mary !!!

Standing in Two Worlds

Some things do not seem so long ago. The world I was born into was not so complicated as I’m finding it now. (For example with a few wrenches and a screwdriver a shade tree mechanic could tear down a an oil-burning tractor engine and put in new piston rings). Not many people can work on a vehicle at home anymore. We had an experience last week which I hope I do not have many of. Mary called me from Kohl’s Dept Store saying our car would not turn over when she tried starting it. With that, I jumped in the old pickup and drove over, not knowing if I would need to call AAA for a tow to a mechanic or what. As I stood there with the hood raised a gentleman waiting for his wife to come out of the store strolled over. We talked it over and came to the conclusion that our car had a dead battery. I did not have battery cables for a jump start, but Lowe’s is in that same complex of stores so I went in and bought a set of jumper cables. He assisted me in getting it started, and I had every intention of having Mary drive it home, and then I would then go buy a battery in downtown Mandan. She killed the engine. It needed to be jumped again. I raised the hoods again and hooked the cables up and told her to turn it over. Nothing. I reversed the cables. It started. Then she said some lights won’t go off, ABS and brake, the AC stopped blowing cold, and on driving it home discovered the cruise control didn’t engage. I had committed a stupid error of judgment by not being patient and hooking the jumper cables up correctly.

It was late Friday afternoon, and I did not try to find a mechanic, thinking I can wait until Monday. We drove the car all weekend as is, but I asked a car salesman acquaintance of mine if he could recommend a good private mechanic. Yes, he could, and I looked him up first thing Monday morning. Some good old boys over the weekend had told me, “Oh, boy, I hope you didn’t burn out a computer unit,” or “Man, you can really screw the engine up if you hook them up wrong!” I left the car at the shop full of fear that I had set myself up for a costly repair bill. Luck was with us! Our new found mechanic was a true fixer. In the end he did not install a single new part. Instead, he patiently went through a full series of diagnostics, downloaded schematics off the internet, eliminated this, by-passed that, etc. His final analysis found a wire leading into a fuse box under the dash had gotten fried. He pulled it out, scratched off the sooty coating, took a dental pick and scratched the inside of its socket, put it back together, and it runs perfectly. His bill: two hours of labor. I shudder to think how some mechanics would have started sticking new parts into it, and in the end might still not have found the problem.

Now, if I could get someone to show me how to run the damn publishing program I bought for this computer so I can print my chapbook of poetry!

Prejudice

"Reason has very little influence in this world: prejudice governs." William Tecumseh Sherman in a Civil War letter

I ran across this quote a few weeks ago and thought and thought about it and have decided it rings true. One of my dictionaries says it means a judgment or opinion is formed before the facts are known. A Ford is better than a Chevy? Mandan is a better place to live than Bismarck? Blondes look prettier than brunettes? Robert Frost is a better poet than Carl Sandburg? Private health insurance is better than universal health care? Lawyers are mostly a crooked lot? The US of A is the best place in the world to live?

All of these examples can be argued because they cannot be proven to the satisfaction of everybody. I walk on thin ice regarding one of them - my wife is brunette. It is in the eyes of the beholder, a person's opinions lean one way or the other. Hardly anyone cares enough to find conclusive proof to support his contention, even if it exists. Most of the time we exhibit an automatic reflex in matters of argument. People often think of prejudice in matters of race relations, but it goes further than that: religion, ethnic foods, governmental systems, etc. Ask a Christian what is the true religion and an ingrained answer will automatically pop out of his mouth. A preacher might stand and "preach" of the proofs he has, but a Muslim mullah could do the same thing.

I don't know the context of the Union General Sherman's written statement or what prompted him to write it. I have read Sherman is still detested in the South by some because of the havoc and destruction his invasion of the South caused during the Civil War; he laid waste a path 300 miles long and 60 miles wide, but it hastened the end of the Civil War. We in the North for the most part say that was good, while a reverse opinion is held by some who live down there. Prejudice!

Takin' It Easy

Like Johnny Cash sings, "I was sittin' here thinkin' about old times," I often find myself doing just that now that I no longer head out the door each day to work at a job and am free to do whatever interests me. I think I've got some of the same Norwegian blood as the man I will relate in this true story. We were at a 50th wedding anniversary party a while back for a couple who lived close neighbors to Mary's family while she was growing up. One of this couple's daughters had been widowed and then found herself a new man, a Norwegian bachelor farmer. She is of the stout German stock that doesn't like foolishness, when it is time to work you need to get it done, and now! A group of us sat at a table, and she related a story of her new husband who she told does things in a slow, sometimes dreamy manner, and even occasionally works a team of draft horses in the field. On their farm both a small flock of sheep and small herd of cows ran, and the new couple split wintertime chores, she looking after the cows and he the sheep. One morning they went out to do their chores. As she finished her share she went back into the house to work at household jobs, and waited and waited for him. Finally she worried herself into going out to check on him. She found him laying on a haystack. She wondered what in the world he had been doing. "Oh, I thought it was such a nice day, so I lay down to watch the clouds sail by." Her German blood roiled up by this foolishness said, "You gotta be shittin' me!"

At times I feel those same looks from my wife, but some of us are built that way. I often tell Mary that I like to take it easy, but when I nod off for an afternoon nap she is almost as incredulous as her old neighbor. Whatever, I do have several things I am working at, and I find myself further along than I thought on one of them. I have written lots of poems over the past few years, and I plan to self-publish a booklet containing some of them. Both of my sons are good with drawing pencils so I have asked them each to furnish a few line drawings to illustrate the book. One son and his family will be here this weekend to attend a wedding, and I want to give him a draft to look at and be inspired to draw appropriate pictures.

I have been aiming at a publication date sometime next winter, but after taking inventory, I was surprised to find I have more than enough on hand now. So I will be busy for awhile getting it all put together. It will be a chapbook in form. The origin of the term chapbook comes from old English peddlers called chapmen who took their wares - pots, pans, cloth, thread, etc. - on a horsedrawn cart and roamed around selling to folks in the countryside. Some of the items they sold were small, inexpensive tracts or booklets of reading material, thus the word chapbook took on meaning in our present day as a small, inexpensive, self-published book of poems. Now I'm ready to take a nap.

Speaking Truth to Power

Let us now turn to praising those who see world events and would-be leaders for what they really are and then inform us so that we get the proper perspective. John McCain recently spoke at the biker's rally in Sturgis, SD and told the crowd that he would rather speak to 50,000 bikers than to the 200,000 Germans in the crowd that Obama addressed over there. Yes, on the surface that does seem to be an appropriate comment since Germans don't vote in our elections. But last evening on the Countdown with Keith Olbermann Show on MSNBC he and Rachel Maddow interpreted the situation quite clearly: Obama's crowd of 200,000 people came expressly to see and hear him speak, while McCain's crowd stood waiting for a Kid Rock concert to begin which gave him a captive audience.

The most entertaining part of McCain's presentation was when he offered up his wife Cindy to be a contestant in the rally's Buffalo Chip Beauty Contest. You could hear the crowd roar as they hooped it up over that prospect. If John only would have known beforehand he never would have mentioned it. The contest is a semi-nude affair where all the contestants are issued a banana (your imagination can draw that picture). A self-respecting man of national prominence would not have suggested his wife's participation in such a contest if he had prior knowledge of it. Mrs. McCain, standing near her husband, looked embarrassed and acted like she knew the score. Maybe the following story describes what occurred when they were alone again.

Three men were at a bar. Two of the men were discussing the control they had over their wives, while the third remained uninterested. After a short while, the two men turned to the third and asked,"What about you? What kind of control do you have over your wife?" The third man turned to the first two and said, "Well, just the other day I had her on her knees!" The two men were dumbfounded. "Wow, that's incredible! What happened next?" they asked. The third man took a healthy swig of his beer, sighed and grumbled, "Then she started screaming at me to get out from under the bed and fight like a man!"

Snow in August

It's funny how in this August heat and humidity my mind turns to snow, ice, and blizzards, but that is just what it has gone and done. I was talking on the phone with my brother Howard yesterday to see how things are going out there since they plan to move and be nearer their son's family in Idaho. He said he was in the process of losing some weight and for some reason I mentioned to him that I remember seeing a picture of him standing rail thin on a snowbank in the folks' yard when he was a college student. Of course, I used to look much slimmer back in those days, too, but it was the depth and quantity of that snow in the picture that struck me the most.

I think the photo was taken by our mother in the spring of 1966 when we had such a terrible blizzard in early March which shut the whole state of North Dakota down for three days and left mountainous snow drifts in its wake. Dad was attending a meeting someplace and could not make it home which left Ma alone to fend for herself during that time. I was teaching in Bowdon, ND, and I and my roommates were mostly housebound for the duration of that storm. The night the storm began to blow had found us at someone's house so we were surprised to see the heavy snowfall when we left to go home. The wind was kicking up heavy drifts already, and I realized I would not be able to drive my car all the way. I had gotten to the front of a church near where we lived and parked on the south side of a large brick sign on its front lawn. Fortunately, I found after the storm ended that the sign caused the snow to part, (insert an image of Moses on the Red Sea here) and my car stayed clear of snow for the entire time. Many cars were completely buried in town town and often only a radio antenna could be seen sticking out. When the wind died and the sun came out, we found streets completely filled with drifts, so much so that National Guard front end loaders came in to help clear them.

That storm made a deep and lasting impression of those of us who experienced it. I have a book titled One to Remember: The Relentless Blizzard of March 1966. Obviously, the two authors, Douglas Ramsey and Larry Skroch, were deeply affected since they went through the work of compiling memories of the storm in a written form of 661 pages from family stories and photos and state newspaper archives. I read where my cousin's wife, Eileen Larson, near Lisbon was reported to have climbed a snowbank and stepped down on the garage roof and shoveled four feet of snow off the building to keep the roof from caving in. She stated it was touching the hi-line wires in their yard and that it was not safe for their son to play out due to the danger of snow cliffs which resembled the needles of the Black Hills. My aunt, Lorraine Devitt, worked at her job in the nursing home in Lisbon for over 30 hours before she could be relieved to go home and rest.

Story after story, hundreds of them, are recounted in the book. Since that storm I have been a great respecter of their power and fury. Each winter I make certain the trunk of my car holds lots of survival gear. Those hard times might come again when I least expect them.