Put the Damn Blog Down and Do Something

When I was a young teenager in the 1950s, I spent a lot of time reading. I was, and still am, an introvert. My daddy would frequently worry about me, and would tell me to “put the damn book down and go do something.”

I have found this to be good advice on several counts, not the least of which is that reading is dangerous. For example, I actually have read Ayn Rand’s novels and articles. They “scared the pee wadding” out of me. Now I see that other people have read her as well and have built empires in this country, having been born-again into her religion. I have read the works of her disciples, leaders in the political arena, and see that they are serious and espouse a philosophy that is absolutely foreign to everything I’ve been taught in books and church during the last 68 years about what it means to be human. That is beyond pee-wadding fear.

Also, I have actually read the Bible (Old and New Testaments in several translations) and, having been in similar situations a time or two, can relate to the acid trip John experiences in his “Revelation”.  But I also have read the writings of the prominent leaders of the Catholic, Protestant, and Mormon religions, and can’t relate to these Christians (sic) who have made careers out of the worship and evangelism of hate, self-aggrandizement, money, and power.

I’ve read too much I think.

The second count upon which I think my daddy’s advice was good is that reading leads to writing, which is even more dangerous. Putting one’s words out into the marketplace of words (I would say ideas, but they are in short supply these days) is to invite either disapproval or condemnation. Or worse yet, promises of “I’ll pray for you”.  Or worst, silence.

I may have written too much.

Of course my father also meant that I should be actively out in the world as opposed to what he saw as being passive—sitting in my back yard reading. At the time I thought this was good advice, so I moved out of the back yard and into church, school, and the world. I was still an introvert, but an engaged one.

I’m heading to Kentucky next week to commemorate my 50^th high school reunion. In a month, I’ll be celebrating my 68^th birthday. In honor of these two events, I’ve decided to once again take my daddy’s advice. This introvert is leaving the back yard of my books and blogs and going back out into the world to do something.

I’ll be back when I have done whatever it is that I will have done.

I wish all y’all peace, love, and the presence of good people in your lives who are not out to shoot you for disagreeing with them (or knocking on their doors, or walking in their gated communities).

And the absence of Ayn Rand evangelists and dangerous Christian fanatics disguised as leaders of the faith.

Rich People and Dirty Boots

My daddy used to frequently remark that you could tell the folks who actually had money from those who wanted to have money but weren’t there yet by listening and looking. If they bragged about their money, they didn’t have any. If they had shit on their boots, they probably had a bit of money, but wouldn’t go round bragging about it. As a kid, I found this observation fascinating and wise.

I’ve been reading the Holy Bible and Aristotle’s The Rhetoric this week, thinking about my daddy, and wondering about rich people.

Where and when I grew up, it seems to me the people who had more money than most of us went to some length not to rub our noses in it. For example, the folks who paid for me to go to summer church camp did it without fanfare.  Christmas baskets were put together for the poor and delivered matter-of-factly and neighborly, without explicit or implicit judgments made toward the giver or receiver.

Of course, we all know what Jesus is noted to have said on the subject of money and wealth—"the love of money is the root of all evils"l (1 Timothy 6:10), and “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24) remind us of two passages.

Jesus was a kind and gentle soul. Aristotle was not. On most subjects, Aristotle, most certainly not a Christian (Christianity had not been founded yet), held positions that were about as far away from Jesus’ as could be. However, in The Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle, as he talks about what one needs to know about wealthy people in order to persuade them, what he has to say is strong:

Wealthy men are insolent and arrogant; their possession of wealth affects their understanding; they feel as if they had every good thing that exists; wealth becomes a sort of standard of value for everything else, and therefore there is nothing it can’t buy.… Rich men also consider themselves worthy to hold public office; for they consider they already have the things that give them a claim to office. In a word, the type of character produced by wealth is that of a prosperous fool. There is indeed one difference between the type of the newly-enriched and those who have long been rich: the newly-enriched have all the bad qualities mentioned in an exaggerated and worse form—to be newly-enriched means, so to speak, no education in riches. The wrongs they do other are not meant to injure their victims, but spring from insolence or self-indulgence, e.g., those that end in assault or in adultery. (pp.127-28)

The people of means that I remember in Providence, Kentucky, those from “old money” and from “new money” did not fit Aristotle’s description. For that I am thankful.

But I sure as hell see evidence to support his view today in the U.S.

Despite our Western Cultural religious and philosophical traditions and underpinnings, I wonder what happened to us, and why it is that today we have come to worship wealth and wealthy people? Especially when they flaunt their wealth and rub our noses in it.

I hear rich folks bragging about their money and possessions, but despite my best attempts to find it, I ain’t seen no shit on any of their boots yet.

Wonder if today’s world is making Aristotle look like an even more brilliant man.

And making my daddy’s wisdom obsolete.

Raccoons and Conflict Management: A Case Study

It was Two A.M. on a dark morning in suburban Denver. I had been in conflict with a family of five raccoons. In formal conflict management terminology, what we had was a conflict of needs. They needed my plums. I needed them to be gone. I tried reasoning with them: “When you eat my plums, I feel put upon, because they are my plums and you steal them”.

This had not worked. So, on this dark morning, I heard them chirping away with that happy, full-bellied chirp for which they are notorious.

I live next to a large piece of open space, thriving with foxes, coyotes, owls, geese, hawks, exotic water birds passing through, AND RACCOONS. The law is clear. Humans may not kill these residents. We may harass them, however, if they invade our tax-paid pieces of property and irritate us. 

The point needs to be made: I like raccoons. They are intelligent, playful (mostly), industrious, family-values kinds of animals. They are also not aggressive, unless rabid or cornered. I thought.

They also taste good, if cooked by Danny “Stick” and/or Tanya Thomason. Stick has passed away and Tanya lives in Kentucky, so even if I broke the law it would be a waste.

But on this morning I had had enough. I jumped out of bed and crept down the stairs, careful not to wake my cat—he’s a grumpy SOB when awakened—and grabbed my weapon of choice. What I figured was that the sight of me sans pants, shirt, or toupee, holding my trusty Daisy-Red-Ryder-BB gun-with-the-compass-on-the-stock would cause this family sufficient harassment as to cause them to go elsewhere.

With gun and flashlight in hand, I crept onto the deck. Neighbors were all asleep, or light-less anyway. I saw a big raccoon in the tree and shot three shots. At least two offended him enough that he scampered down. Noise of others following suit caused me pause, but I just kept cocking and shooting at large objects in the tree, and bright eyes lit by my flashlight, then at large objects and eyes on the deck.

Then the large objects disappeared. The raccoons were now under the deck.

OK, now what? I had visions of little hand-like claws reaching up through the deck cracks to get at my toes, but brave Kentucky hunter that I am, I stood my ground, quietly, with toes upturned.

Then, at the end of my flashlight’s beam I saw five raccoons. A little chill went up my spine. My deck sets close to the ground. The raccoons were standing on this ground, so what I really saw was five pairs of eyes and five pairs of front paws gripping the edge of the deck. The five had spread out down the short side of the deck, and around the corner onto the long side. Yes, these non-aggressive family-values animals were trying to surround me. They seemed pissed, and poised to take care of this plum-eating-interruptus-fool.

I quickly cocked and shot as fast as I could, expecting the worst, and escaped through the sliding doors back into the safety of my suburban middle class home.

I wonder if my daddy, Stick, Tanya, and my Kentucky hunting friends, and their hounds, are laughing. I know I heard what sounded like laughter from my deck, through the plate glass, as I reached for a shot of bourbon to calm my nerves.

In conflict management theory, conflicts of needs may be resolved when one party’s needs are shown to be more important than the other’s. It was clear to me in this instance who’s needs were greatest.

I don’t like conflict.

50th High School Reunion

In the Spring of 1962, 40 of my friends and I set out from Providence High School to make a place for ourselves in the world. In the Summer of 2012, some of us will gather, as we have gathered every five years since 1962, to celebrate one another, catch up, tell stories, and remember the half a Century that has passed since we left P.H.S. 

I do wonder why people go to their high school reunions. I have friends who have never been to one and vow never to go to one.

I know why I go. It’s a life marker for me. I really don’t think about Billy Wilson, for example, as I go through my normal everyday life, year after year. However, every five years, he, and Dorris Burton, and several other people who I really liked in high school, seldom saw after high school, and who I will never see again because they have passed away, come barreling into my consciousness, full-blown, in 3-D and color, as they were in the Spring of 1962.

Over the years I have watched the folks who did come the reunions grow and develop, and become successful in that world into which we were thrown in 1962. I’ve also watched them suffer the pains of divorce, death of loved ones, and debilitating diseases. Every five years, this group of people gets a snapshot of our friends living their lives.

We knew each other when most of us had outhouses, and we remember those cold, cold winter mornings that taught us about bladder control if nothing else. We remember coal: having to get the clinkers out of the stove in the mornings, take the ashes outside and bring in new buckets.  Many of us had coal miners as fathers. At least one of us had a coal mining mother. Several of us made careers related to coal.

We now share memories of people. All of us remember Mrs. Hooks, and Mr. Lane, and Mrs. Crowe, and Mrs. Rayburn, and Mrs. Dorris. We remember the old gym into which we were packed to watch old black and white movies, hear recitals, attend pep rallies. We remember football, basketball, baseball, and track, at which several members of the class of 1962 excelled.

We remember band teacher Joe Allen, who came to town and became a real-life Music Man, transforming the school and the town, generating excitement and parental involvement on a grand scale.

These are people with whom I spent significant time from about 1950 through 1962. Hell, that’s longer than some marriages last.

I find that I don’t have much in common with most of my classmates anymore. What we do have in common, however, I believe is important: memories of a time shared during those formative years of our lives. I use the reunions to review my current life in light of those memories. It's sort of a present-day reality check using a shared rear view mirror. 

This time we will be reviewing memory snapshots in a rear view mirror that spans half a Century. 

When all is said and done, I go to high school reunions because I like these people. I like who they were and who they have become, and spending a day or so with them every five years makes me feel good.

That is why, in the Summer of 2012, I will drive back to Kentucky, and back in time to 1962 and the twelve years before that, to share stories and memories with people who were there with me “in the olden days”.