A Meditation on America

A fair amount of space on the bookcases in my library are filled with books of history. Most of them deal with the history of my country, America. I suppose this is natural and proper, that a man would be most intrigued with the story of his native country. I have been so for the majority of my life. I love America. I feel a devotion to her and I'm grateful for the accident of birth that granted me all of the benefits that she conferred upon me when I was luckily not born in Afghanistan, Bangladesh or North Korea.

But my love for country has evolved along the way, been made more mature by the great tumults that have roiled us since the year of my birth, 1958. On many occasions my devotion has been tested. Often I have found myself disappointed by events, even embarrassed by what we have done, or failed to do as a country. But if the history of a country is like a balance sheet, I have confidence that we are still running a positive balance. It's easy to lose sight of the grand sweep of the greatness of a country if you succumb to recency bias. What we may look like today is but a dot on a ponderous timeline that stretches back 241 years.

As we celebrate America's birthday, these are the events of my lifetime which have formed my thoughts and feelings about what it means to be an American citizen. For you, these may not resonate at all. Other things may have impacted you more profoundly. Or, you may have lived through these chapters of American life and come to different conclusions. That's ok. I can only tell my story.

The first memory I have as a child that had anything to do with history, politics or government was the cold November afternoon when my older brother and sister got off of the bus early and scrambled past me into the house. I followed them and heard someone say that the President had been shot. I
was five years old. All I really remember about it was how quiet everyone was. Something bad had happened, and my Mom and Dad were very upset.

My next big memory was of John Glenn, the hero. I read about him in the Weekly Reader. I wanted to be an astronaut for a couple of years after that. So did everyone else.

I remember hearing about my Uncle John and my Uncle Harry, my Mom's brothers who were both hero's in WWII. Uncle John drove a tank for George Patton. Whenever I visited him when I was a child, I remember him being so gentle, nothing at all like the fierce combat veteran of my imaginations. He always had a certain sadness in his eyes. My Mom told me that he was a different person when he got home from the war, nothing like the brother who left.

In 1968, I was ten years old and paying closer attention. In June of that year, I found myself in my Grandma Dunnevant's trailer, watching Robert Kennedy get shot on a black and white television no bigger than a bread box. I saw Rosey Greer on the screen and I knew him as a football player for the Rams and was momentarily confused. All of the grown ups in the trailer were upset, some cried. Martin Luther King and now this...someone said. Something was wrong with my country. Young people were marching in the streets. I didn't understand it all, but I could figure out that people like my Dad were the enemy of the people marching in the streets. He was older, and couldn't be trusted, they said.


Then, less than a year later, we put a man on the moon. Another crowded room. Another black and white television, this one an RCA Victor with aluminum foil around the rabbit ears. That's one small step for man...bl>#%\ckkk...one giant leap for mankind. I was thrilled and proud to be an American. But alongside the thrill came questions...what the heck was going on? These people in the streets, burning down Watts and Newark didn't seem very thrilled to be Americans. They were burning the
flag. Thus began my lifelong quest to understand, to square the circle that was my big, brawling country. I began reading...a lot.

Our amateur boys beat the Professional Soviet hockey team at the height of the Cold War. A big night.

I cast my first ever vote in 1976 for Jimmy Carter. He was a Democrat, and he wasn't Gerald Ford.

College introduced me to a group of professors who loathed America. Well, they loved the perks of tenure and the abundance in the stores, but in their telling, America was the worst actor on the world stage, and we were  responsible for most of the world's problems. I listened, and read. Some of it made sense, most of it didn't.

Ronald Reagan came along. Owing to my youthful fondness for liberalism, I voted against him the first time, but he soon won me over. Adulthood brought me down on the side of freedom and individual liberty and the power of free enterprise as the best  system ever conceived to produce wealth and to bring goods and services to market. But, even then I sensed that capitalism wasn't enough. There was more to life than economics. For, despite the incredible accomplishments of my
young and confusing country, there were glaring weaknesses...mostly having to do with race
relations.

I watched Bill Clinton, with his southern charm and roguish manner stumble through his Presidency
and was horrified that he would be so foolish as to carry on with an intern...in the freaking Oval
 Office!! 

I watched George W. Bush grab that megaphone on that smoking pile of twisted metal after 9/11. I was with him that day, and so were most people. Then I watched him throw away all of that unity, all of that good will by settling scores in Iraq.

I marveled at the sight of Barack Obama taking the oath of office. Even though I never voted for him, something in me was stirred seeing such a dignified man become President in the shadow of the statue of Abraham Lincoln, the freer of slaves.

While all of this politics was going on, out there in the rest of the country, Americans were changing the world, rewriting its history. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did what my countrymen have done for 240
years...innovate, create and change the world. While Washington dithers, Americans produce and pursue their dreams with unrivaled success, assuring us a dominant place at the world's table.

Now, we have elected an entertainer, a successful business tycoon with the temperament of a carnival barker. It has been a wild six months. Some are ecstatic to have a street fighter in charge. Many love his counter punching, his coarseness, his bluster. Others are horrified.

But, I'm still an American. Politicians don't define me. The ugliness in Washington, now increasingly amplified by a thousand  electronic voices doesn't wipe away the triumphs of this great land. There is
much left to do to make us a kinder people. We have work to do to become more fair, more equitable. But the heart of America is decency. Sometimes we are too slow, sometimes some catastrophe has to shake us to it, but we eventually return to decency. We eventually overcome our self centeredness and exchange it for caring for one another. Every raging tornado in the Great Plains gives us a glimpse. Every hurricane that lashes the coasts brings out the spirit of loving kindness. We all know that we have it in us, the capacity for charity, the gene of courage which was bequeathed to us by our ancestors.

We are a mightily blessed people, blessed and cursed. It's my hope that the better angels of our character will eventually win the day.

The Tweet

This will be my last blogpost for a while. We've reached the halfway point of the year and I'll be heading to the Outer Banks in a week or so. There will be lots to do to prepare for that. Besides, sometimes you just run out of things to write about. What's worse is when you live in the United States in 2017 with Donald Trump in the White House and there are literally a thousand things to write about. The reason this abundance of material is worse is because most of it is not just bad stuff, but incandescently bad stuff. It's virtually impossible to keep up with. But you can't and shouldn't comment on everything. Not every raging dumpster fire requires my particular brand of kerosene. My voice doesn't always necessarily elevate the discourse. Still, sometimes I think...what hath man wrought?

This week, our President unleashed a couple of Tweets directed at a couple of morning talk show hosts from Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski...

"I heard poorly rated Morning Joe speaks badly of me (I don't watch anymore). Then how come low IQ Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe came to Mar-a-Largo three nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me? She was bleeding badly from a face lift, and I said no."

Ok, for purposes of this discussion, I will not attempt to answer the question of what the President of the United States is doing Tweeting at 7 o'clock in the morning. I will also concede that this particular couple of pundits have been rather vicious in their scathing denunciations of the President. Further, I am aware that an awful lot of people take a lot of pleasure in watching a President who fights back against the press, a guy who doesn't just sit there and take it.

But, people.....

Read the Tweet again. 

This, from the President of the United States.

I don't care of a couple of two bit commentators on a show that barely anyone watches called the President the bastard child of Barney and Cruella DeVille...why in the name of all that is holy would he lower himself and the Presidency to this level of childishness? 

But the fifth grade level immaturity isn't even the worst of it. What are we to make of the line about her bleeding badly from a face-lift? Who knows if it's even true? But if it is, his inclusion of this bit of information was intended to humiliate. There's a meanness to it, a smallness of character. What person do any of you know who would say such a thing publically?

I read this stuff and I think to myself, "Mr. President...can you, just for one day, just for one 24 hour period refrain from your particular brand of petty cruelty? Can you, for once in your life...be kind?"

It's come to this...all I want from my President is a hint of kindness. The bar has been officially lowered enough for a basset hound to leap over.

And with that, I'm checking out for a few days. Have a great 4th of July everybody!

My Summer Reading List

Now that summer has officially arrived, the time has come to prepare and purchase your summer reading list. And no, I don't mean the latest tortured Trump tweet or the most recent CNN retraction. I'm talking about vacation page turners, you know...real books.

This summer, I will be taking four weeks off. The week of July 8-15 we will be on Hatteras Island with the Dunnevant Oligharchy. Then from September 7-29 Pam and I will be on Quantabacook Lake in Maine. Yes, yes..I know...my white privilege is showing. But since I work for myself, these are not paid vacations, so I'm not a total bourgeois eliteist. Relax!

So, as is my custom, I like to buy a book to read for each week that I will be away. So far, I have bought only three, so I'm opened for suggestions for that last week. The first one I bought is an e-book. I feel guilty about this for some reason. I have a couple dozen e-books now, so this is nothing new. But I always feel bad that I didn't buy the flesh and blood version, the one I can hold in my hand and smell the ink from the paper. I get it...wave of the future and all. Besides, my gorgeous library book case is filling up fast and at some point will reach capacity. The e-book in question is called Teammate. It's written by David Ross, a fifteen year career backup catcher who's final season was spent becoming the most beloved member of the 2016 Chicago Cubs team which broke the 108 year title draught. Every summer, I have to have at least one baseball book. Candidly, I must admit that I have already started reading this one...and it's awesome.

Then, I always get one history book. This also is a hard habit to break. Once a history major, always a history major, I suppose.

The Loyal Son promises to be a real barn burner, since it's about the strained relationship between Benjamin Franklin and his illegitimate son who became governor of New Jersey and devoted loyalist while his Dad was becoming perhaps the most famous American patriot in the world. Can't wait to tear into this one.

Every year, I look for a novel, not just any novel, but something rich and compelling. I prefer intelligent, sophisticated writing, and I'm hoping I have found it in A Gentleman In Moscow. I have heard about this Amor Towles guy and his debut novel from a couple years back called Rules of Civility, which I have not read yet. He's supposed to be quite the writer. He intrigues me because he was a twenty year veteran of my business before he decided to devote himself to becoming a writer. Hmmm.... Anyway, here's a blurb from the flyleaf:

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the Count's endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

I'm onboard. If it's as good as all that, I'll buy his first book as my fourth.

Here's what I won't be reading on vacation...

1. The Drudge Report
2. Investors Business Daily
3. The Wall Street Journal
4. The world's third shortest book...French Army Victories of WWII
5. The world's second shortest book....Famous Jewish Athletes
6. The world's shortest book...21st Century American Statesmen

A Healthcare Debate

Republicans in Congress are stumbling, bumbling, and fumbling along trying to repeal or replace Obamacare. Most of them ran for reelection promising one or the other. Now that the vote is getting near, the debates have begun in earnest. For the Democrats, Bernie Sanders is leading the charge...which is odd since he doesn't even want Obamacare, he's all in for single payer.

So far the debate has gone something like this:

Libertarian: My objections to the concept of single payer is that it essentially places the government atop a giant monopoly, and asks it to run this enterprise efficiently. We already have a single payer system in this country, administered by the government. It's called the VA and is about the most corrupt organization in America. Additionally, I'm not all that keen on having to wait an average of 38 weeks for an MRI like they do in Canada. I just don't have a great deal of confidence in the government's competence when it comes to providing a service at a reasonable cost. The cost estimates, for example, which were predicted by the CBO for Obamacare were wildly inaccurate. The rollout of Obamacare, with its bizarrely dysfunctional website was emblematic of what most people experience at the DMV or the Post Office, not a hopeful sign of things to come.

Progressive: You're mean, and you want to kill people.

Libertarian: Our government has managed to rack up twenty trillion dollars worth of debt. What are the core competencies this government possesses that make you think it ready to take on the role of healthcare provider and administrator for 300 million people?

Progressive: You hate poor people.

Is America Out of Ideas?

I just saw a commercial on the internet for a new shampoo whose featured ingredient is...caviar.

America is officially out of ideas.

I can remember a day when the presence of caviar was sure fire evidence that you had stumbled into the wrong party. Instead of taking the right turn at the bowling alley to get to the FCA mixer, you had gotten lost on the interstate and wound up at Claire Worthington's debutante ball at the Country Club of Virginia. Now, they're dumping the stuff into shampoo for its alleged 24 hour moisturizing properties. Thurston Howell III is probably spinning in his grave.

But somewhere, somehow, somebody sitting around a conference table at some multi-national health and beauty aid company blurted out, Hey, how about we grind up fish eggs into our shampoo? This daft idea carried the day, and now, BAMM...Caviar Shampoo is a thing.

I'm wondering what this development is going to do to the price of caviar. Face it, up until now there has been a limited market for the stuff. It's very much a 1% indulgence. It's relative rarity is what makes it so expensive, I would think. But, if there's now a company using caviar in the mass production of shampoo, maybe the supply starts to get disrupted, causing the cost to skyrocket. What then? What will be the price point on the shampoo? I mean, you can up-market shampoo all you want, but at the end of the day...it's still just shampoo. Will people be willing to shell out, say $50 for a bottle? Sure, rich girls wouldn't hesitate to instruct their servants to pick up a bottle, but what about your average Jane Doe? Or maybe, this fish egg shampoo winds up being the next big thing in the beauty aid game, providing the multi-national company with the insentive to build giant caviar farms,  flooding the supply, therefore driving down the price of caviar. What happens then? If caviar becomes as cheap and abundant as tuna fish, what reason would the rich have for pretending to like it? I foresee the potential for great mischief here.

All because the Western Woman simply must have moisturized hair.

There's an Elephant Man in My Mirror!!

Woke up this morning feeling very strange. The world looked a bit odd. My face felt...out of place. Then I looked in the mirror and discovered that my right eye was swollen shut. I will not horrify you by sharing a photograph. Suffice it to say that the extreme puffiness made me look like the Elephant Man. What the heck?

For the past half hour I have had an ice pack plastered to the thing, and that has helped. It is still a bulbous mess, but at least I can see out it. It doesn't itch, thank God, and it's not emitting any bodily fluids, so I've got that going for me. Still, today will be a wearing sunglasses inside sort of day.

You would think I could come up with something more interesting to write about on this Saturday morning...but I got nothing. It's been one of those weeks. Summer has this strange way of distilling the tumultuous roar of life down to its essence. It gets hot and thick outside, where even breathing seems like a chore. So, you slow down. Then, people start going on vacation, families packing up their cars all up and down your street in shifts, the Smiths one week, the Joneses the next. Your time is coming. Your life becomes all about counting down, making lines through the days on the calendar until it's your turn. People stop watching the news all day. They would rather surf the web for fun stuff to do during your stay in Virginia Beach. The news will still be there when you get back, so you disengage. It's therapeutic.

The down side is, if you have a blog, you find that your hot-take tank is on empty. It's just too humid out to bother with thinking. 

How Bad Can It Be?

Just got back from a very fun couple of days playing golf with my brother up in Gettysburg, Pa. Beautiful course, good people, fun time. But, this blog isn't about any of that. No, this blog is my first attempt at being a travel writer. I've always wanted to give travel writing a try, but the only time I've ever been tempted is after a bad experience, and who wants a travel writer with a bad attitude? Nevertheless...here goes.

When Donnie first asked me to play in this fundraising golf tournament for the really cool touring choir that he's in, he assured me that he was going to take care of all of the details, like booking us a room in Gettysburg, for the night before the tournament. I was nervous at this bit of news. I have had the great fortune in my life to travel all over the place and have become quite the snob about accommodations. I'm kind of a Hilton Rewards Club sort of guy. When Donnie and I were kids, our father had very different priorities when traveling. Dad's tastes were decidedly low brow...think, Econo-Lodge meets the Bates Motel. Whenever the Dunnevant kids were anywhere near an interstate highway, we thought fine dining consisted of a pecan roll from Stuckey's. So, naturally, I was dubious of the sort of place my older, less traveled brother might pick. He assured me that all was well..."Don't worry, little brother. I've booked us a room in the Eisenhower Hotel and Conference Center." Sounded pretty impressive. I mean, it was named after a former President and perhaps this country's best strategic planning General, and, it had a conference center. How bad could it be?

What neither of us knew was that the Eisenhower Hotel and Conference Center was badly misnamed. A more apt description would have been the Eisenhower Inn, Motor Lodge, Kitsch Emporium, and Laudromat. Driving up to the place unleashed a raging bout of cognitive dissonance. Instead of a Conference Center, I saw a parking lot full of restored American Motors hotrods painted up from a palette of incandescent colors found nowhere in the natural world.  It was like we had traveled through time back to 1962. There were Ramblers, Hornets, Gremlins, Pacers and even a couple AMX's. I half expected George Romney to jump out of the uranium green Gremlin parked by the front door and offer to take our bags. No such luck, not a bellhop to be found. But just inside the front door hung a lovely portrait of the 34th President. About the time I was close enough to the portrait to get a good look, I noticed.....the smell.

I don't want to give anyone the impression that the place was a dump. No, it was actually quite clean...always a plus. But there was a distinct aroma to the Eisenhower Hotel and Conference Center, and it wasn't anything you'd find at Bath and Body Works. Bath Iron Works? Maybe. It was a combination of several bad smells, really, producing an aroma that was clearly worse than the sum of its parts. Think...two day old cabbage, moth balls, with just a hint of rotten egg. It's like you arrived at a church basement fellowship hall, two days late for a covered dish supper where no one had done the dishes.

But, the Dunnevant brothers are nothing if not resilient, so we soldiered on. I mean, if old Dwight was good enough to plan and execute freaking D-Day, the least we could do was suck it up and stay in his stinking hotel for one lousy night, right? How bad could it be?

Our room was number 138....which almost matched the room's temperature. Only one of the key cards worked. Once inside only two of the lamps worked. The two queen sized beds were neatly made and reasonably comfortable. To add some light into the cave-like darkness, I decided to throw open the heavy, thick curtain of the sliding glass doors. Our view was quite the shock. There, no more than four or five steps from the glass doors was the very large indoor pool, filled with equally large and loud teenagers blowing off some steam after a long year of school. What architect came up with this design, I thought? Look, Marge...we can keep an eye on the kids while they're swimming right from the comfort of our bed!! All I can say about how I slept is, it's a lot harder to fall asleep while people are taking turns doing cannon balls twenty five feet from your pillow than it sounds.

To be fair, the Eisenhower Hotel and Conference Center had the look of a place that was probably, in its day, something very special. Unfortunately for us, it's day was probably about the time when it's namesake only had one star.