The Confederate Flag

There is a bubbling controversy here in Richmond, Virginia concerning an organization called The Virginia Flaggers. They have purchased a plot of land just south of the city adjacent to interstate 95 and it is their stated intention to begin flying an enormous 10’ x 15’ Confederate flag atop a 50’ flagpole which will be fully lit by floodlights at night starting next week. This has reignited the tired but still explosive debate over “hate vs. heritage”. Is the Confederate flag an offensive symbol of slavery or does it represent the brave sacrifices made by thousands of young men who rallied to defend Virginia from invasion?

According to Susan Hathaway, spokesperson for the Flaggers, “The sole intention of this is to honor our ancestors.” The local chapter of the NAACP has a different view espoused by its executive director King Salim Khalfani, “If those soldiers had been successful, I’d still be in chains.”

So, what to think? The claim made by Mr. Khalfani that he would still be in chains had the Confederacy won the war is a dubious one since the economic underpinnings of slavery were already unraveling before the war even started, but his larger point is valid. For African Americans, nostalgia for the old south isn’t exactly a hot topic of conversation. The feelings that the flag brings to mind for them are quite different than the simple devotion to ancestors claimed by Mrs. Hathaway. More likely, for African Americans, the confederate flag is associated with jacked up pickup trucks, gun racks and beer swilling teenage boys out on a Friday night looking for trouble.

I write these words from my study at home. On the wall to my right hangs a print of the famous E.B.D. Julio painting, The Last Meeting depicting Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on horseback talking just hours before Jackson would be mortally wounded in the Battle of Chancellorsville. Behind me hang portraits of the two generals and to my left is a picture of Jeb Stuarts plumed hat, riding gloves and pistol taken from him the day he died. In my library there are no less than eleven books about the history of the Civil War. It has always fascinated me and I have studied it as an amateur all of my life. The point is that I have great sympathy for the heritage point of view in this debate. But I must also say that my feelings about the flag and what it represents has gone through many changes over the years. I have come to the position that, like it or not, the flag carries with it a ton of baggage and is offensive to a sizable slice of our population. For this reason, I’m against this enormous display on such a highly travelled highway entering the old capital of the Confederacy. The symbolism is too heavy. I think of how I would feel if this was a giant Mexican flag erected by a Pro-Amnesty group and imagine it would be close to what African Americans feel towards the Stars and Bars. The vast majority of people who see it will not be thinking about the brave men who gave their lives defending their homeland from invasion, they will be thinking, “What the hell? Who put THAT up??”

The question of whether the Virginia Flaggers should be prohibited from flying it is another issue all together. As much as I would prefer that they found a less ostentatious way of honoring their ancestors, they have every right to fly this flag. It’s their land, their flag, and their decision. It’s a free country. But just as they have a right to fly it, those opposed have every right to protest against it. It’s called Democracy, and public conflict and debate is how we roll.

Bring it on.

A Tale of Two Children

God has seen fit to bless me with two children. I have a 26 year old daughter and a 24 year old son. They share the same set of parents…and very little else. In many ways the two of them are polar opposites, God’s peculiar brand of humor, as if to say, “Watch what amazingly unique people I can create from such unremarkable ingredients!”  In perhaps no corner of life are the two of them any more wildly different than in the area of organization. Kaitlin is “the cloud” to Patrick’s overstuffed filing cabinet. For example…

A couple of years ago, Pam and I drove down to Nashville to help Patrick pack up all of his worldly belongings into a U-Haul truck from Belmont University to Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. He assured us in the week leading up to the big day that he had been getting everything ready so moving day would be “no big deal.” What we found upon our arrival still gives me nightmares to this day. There was Patrick, standing amongst the most unruly collection of boxes, bags and plastic bins imaginable. In one particularly frightening box there was a large frying pan with a sliver of dried food still attached, an unfolded tuxedo vest, two boxes of tea, a spatula and a handful of sheet music, the very definition of “miscellaneous.”

Contrast this with our experience two weeks ago when we made the same trip to move Kaitlin home after two years of grad school in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. We walked in to her bedroom and there were boxes taped up and labeled with permanent marker, “Coffee Mugs”, “Non-perishable kitchen supplies.” A hearty group of able bodied and similarly focused friends had been recruited for the task of packing the U-haul, among them an engineer with an amazing gift for geometry who made packing the truck a breeze. Once home it took three rooms upstairs to contain all of Kaitlin’s stuff, but within the week she had single handedly gone through it all, designating this pile for Goodwill, that for the dump. Imagining Patrick navigating a similar challenge is practically unthinkable. He simply lacks the linear thinking skills necessary to organize and execute such a thing. He would open a box to empty it only to be distracted by a notation on some random piece of sheet music found inside, then run to his keyboard to get to the bottom of it. Two hours later, the next item in the box would be discovered.

So, you can imagine the level of guilt that my wife had that we were not able to be in New Jersey yesterday for Patrick’s move from first year apartment to second year rental home. There was a U-haul involved, and the dismantling and reassembly of desks and beds, and she wasn’t there to help him plow through it all. So imagine our shock when he sends us a picture of his room last night at 10:30. There was his corner desk with his $5000 worth of musical technology up and running. There was his bed in the foreground…MADE. There was a picture hung on the wall, and white Christmas lights strung along the ceiling. We could actually see the floor! He had done it, he had successfully moved and organized his new home without his mother’s guiding hand. Although I have my suspicions about just how much of this he did without some sort of assistance, probably from at least one female friend, still, it was a very impressive picture, more proof that he is closer than ever to becoming an actual grownup.

Amazing.

I Finished My Novel

Back in February of this year I began writing a story. It centered around the single idea of what it might be like to be a gambling savant. From there it began to flourish into something more than a story, and before I knew it, the thing was off and running. Yesterday morning, six months, thirty chapters and many plot twists later, I have a completed novel on my hands. Each chapter has a title, but the overall work does not, and it needs to be proofed and edited, but the hard part is over.

Although it was a great feeling to finish it, to resolve the thing, to wrap up some of the loose ends, there was also a tinge of sadness. When writing a novel you create a small universe, and populate it with characters of your own design. You endow them with personality, strengths and weaknesses. You introduce conflict; mitigate that conflict with humor where you can, but sometimes it feels better to let the conflict run amok. You discover that your feelings change about your own characters as you’re writing; ones you were quite fond of at first begin to disappoint you like rebellious children. Then you turn on them, meting out literary justice. Then, while driving down the road, or taking a shower, an idea overwhelms you and you suddenly know exactly what will happen next and you can’t wait to write. But eventually the ark of the story begins to exhaust itself and it must wind down. You must find a way to end it. This is the hardest part. There are so many ways you can go. You write the final chapter a hundred times in your head but none of them feel right. A week goes 

by, then two weeks. Then in a flash of inspiration, it all comes to you while you’re cutting the grass. You sit down at your laptop and in two hours, it’s all over. You’re happy with the result, but sad because the world you have created has come to an end. Your characters become frozen in place like a museum exhibit.

So, now what do I do? For me writing is a hobby, a marvelous diversion, but not my profession. I don’t know the first thing about getting anything published. I’ve heard about self-publishing but don’t know enough about the process. Obviously, I like my work but I have no idea whether it’s even good enough to publish. Is there a market for a book that features gambling, dying parents, an ugly divorce, one unsuccessful suicide attempt and one successful one, adultery, ghosts, a gorgeous redhead, mysterious dreams, spiritual transformation, the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius, and a dog with unexplained powers?  Guess I’m about to find out.

Losing My Feel For Church

It’s the dog days of summer. You have your shoulder operated on, go on vacation, help your child move home from grad school, and before you know it you realize it’s been a while since you’ve been to church. You’ve gone maybe two or three times over the past two months, and one of those times involved a nasty fall going up a flight of stairs. This is after going practically every Sunday for the better part of 50 years. What happens when you discover that you haven’t missed it?

You miss the people. You miss seeing those with whom you have shared your life, the wonderful people who have loved and cared for your kids almost as much as you have all these years. You miss the fellowship. But you find that you really don’t miss…church.

For one thing, you discover that having a full two day weekend is nice. You can get away overnight some place; get some things done around the house. The weekend doesn’t seem quite so manic, so fleeting, and as a consequence, Mondays aren’t so dreadful.

But, of course, there’s guilt, the linchpin that holds life together. You know that you should be at church. It’s not good for your spiritual health to miss the assembly, the gathering of like minds. The dangers are formidable and profound. You can become indifferent, estranged from other Christians, adrift.

No one from church has seemed to notice your absence, no one has called. This is one of either the benefits or curses of attending a larger congregation…anonymity. But even that doesn’t bother you because it saves you from having to explain to someone that you’ve basically lost your feel for church.

One of the reasons is that you know exactly what will happen every week. It’s not like there will be anything different this Sunday from last. After 50 years you’ve heard every sermon 16 times. You do miss the music since it’s the only thing that ever stirs anything like real emotion. You also miss the huge stain glass mural that dominates the architecture. Whenever your mind begins to drift, which is every two minutes, you stare at the thing. You look into the face of Jesus who looms over you and you think about your savior and what it means to be a disciple. You wonder what he must be thinking right now as he peaks inside the million churches across America gathering to worship him. Is he as mystified by the unrelenting boredom as I am?

But soon, summer and its more hectic schedule will be over, and you will run out of plausible excuses for not being there. You will get with the program. “Do not forsake the gathering together”, the early Christians warned. You will take it to heart. There will be plenty of time for staring into the stain glassed window come Fall.

A Blast From My Past

So, last night I had just eaten dinner and had settled in nicely to watch an episode of Mad Men when the door bell rang. It had completely slipped my mind that Andrew Hemby and Andrew Cannada were coming over to visit. Earlier in the week I had mentioned it to Pam but neither of us had remembered. But there they were. Ten minutes later, just like in the old days, Matt King lets himself in, unannounced and uninvited. I felt 45 again!

Although Hemby had promised to bring me a bag of Nicaraguan coffee beans, he showed up empty handed. Some things never change, I suppose. We spent a couple of hours together catching up and debating my views on gay marriage, the church and Hemby’s pending nuptials, pending in the sense that the only thing missing is a bride. I can’t tell you how proud I am of these three boys.

Andrew Cannada, or “Swift” as he will always be known to his friends is a Doctor, having just graduated with a degree in Physical Therapy. He is married to a wonderful girl named Angie. Matt King is a teacher and also happily married to Sandra, another amazing girl. It is clear that each of them followed my advice and married up, out kicking their coverage by a mile! Andrew Hemby is a consultant for an IT firm and doing very well, all the while trying to decide if he wants to go over to the dark side and become a lawyer.

I spent four years of my life teaching these guys Sunday School back in the day. They were three of over 200 kids that I had the privilege of knowing through the large and boisterous youth program at Grove Avenue Baptist Church. These three were among the best and brightest that I ever taught. It comes as no surprise then that they have all grown into outstanding young men. Listening to them talk last night was an inspiration. Here were three guys who are thinking and caring about important things, trying their best to make a difference in the world. They are working hard, serving their communities, and carving out lives for themselves in a  screwed up world.

I’m getting a little bit tired of hearing negative things about the “millennial” generation. I know all the statistics and I’ve heard every joke there is about the kid who came home from college and took up residence in the basement and hasn’t been heard from since. Most of these jokes are told by members of my generation…the Boomers, the last generation on earth who should feel obliged to criticize anything. We are in the process of handing these “millennials” the most dysfunctional America in history, the one that “we” have been in charge of for the past 15 years. As I sat listening to these three last night, my confidence in the future was given a much needed boost.

So, hats off to the law firm of Cannada, Hemby and King, and hats off to their parents, who clearly did something right.

But Hemby, you don’t promise a guy Nicaraguan coffee beans and then pull the rug out like that. Bad form, bro. Apparently, my work is not yet done!

Do We Live in a Strange World, or What?

This is a very strange world we live in, so much more so than I remember it being when I was a kid. It’s not that it’s better or worse. I’m generally not one to sit around rhapsodizing about the “good old days”. When I was a teenager there were no smart phones, no computers, no internet and no such thing as the Cadillac CTS, so, come on! But still, I can’t escape the feeling that our world has grown exponentially weirder year by year since the sixties in ways great and small. Just a few examples follow.

Our government shuts down 21 embassies in the Middle East and warns Americans abroad to avoid going to “American type places” because of some grave terrorist threat. But we here nothing about it from our President’s lips until he goes on the Jay Leno show. The President of the United States goes on the Jay Leno show for the fifth or sixth time of his tenure in office. It seems like the most natural thing in the world for the leader of the free world to be mucking it up with a comedian on late night television, joking about his “bromance” with John McCain. Strange.

From family values conservative Mark Sanford to flaming liberal Anthony Weiner, it seems that no personal failing disqualifies anyone from public service anymore. Sanford, when governor of South Carolina, lied to his own staff about his whereabouts, then uses tax-payer money to fly to Rio De Janeiro to hook up with his soul mate, leaving his loyal wife and house full of children behind. In the days of my youth this would have been a shameful disgrace that would have forced him out of office and the public eye…FOREVER. Meet the new Congressman from South Carolina’s first Congressional district! Strange. Anthony Weiner’s escapades have been well chronicled here, and incidentally would have been impossible when I was a kid since we didn’t have Twitter. Nevertheless, there he is running for mayor of New York, capitalizing on great poll numbers among young women. Strange.

On the very day that Major League Baseball announces that A-Rod will be banned from the game until the end of the 2014 season, he makes his season debut for the New York Yankees. Wait, what?

Johnny Manziel, a college football player who as a freshman single handedly put his University, Texas A&M, on the map and enriched said university immeasurably, is about to be declared ineligible by the NCAA for taking $7500 from an autograph broker for signing his name to a bunch of memorabilia. It seems that everyone associated with this kid has made a boatload of money off of his football exploits, except Johnny Manziel. Strange kid, even stupid kid, but an even stranger and stupider system.

But, there’s no point pining for the past. This is the only world we have, so we should make the most of it, I suppose. Still…what a strange day and age.  

I Give Up!

http://doug-thetempest.blogspot.com/2013/04/outrageous.html

 

Back then, I thought it “outrageous” that our elected officials would have the nerve to exempt themselves from the most egregious provisions of Obamacare. I found it unimaginable that Republicans would go along with such a scheme. Fast forward to today, and I stand amazed at the manifest foolishness and hubris of the ruling class.

Just for a moment, let’s put aside any discussion of the merits, good or bad, of Obamacare. I would like to ask my readers who support the law to explain to me how you could possibly support your Congressperson exempting his or herself from its consequences in a manner unavailable to anyone else? If this law is such a breakthrough, so beneficial for our nation, then why shouldn’t ALL of us be subject to its proscriptions?

Before Obamacare, members of Congress and their staffs were covered under the Federal Employees Health and Benefits Program, perhaps the richest plan in the history of Western Civilization. So, naturally, any one size fits all plan that would replace it would be less generous and more expensive. So, Senator Chuck Grassley back in 2009 sponsored a bill that would mandate that any health care law passed would INCLUDE all members of Congress. What better way to communicate to the American people that we are all in this together? The provision passed his committee unanimously. But, after the 2000 page monstrosity that famously, nobody actually read, was passed into law, the results of its provisions soon became clearer. Suddenly, members of Congress discovered that they would be paying LOTS more out of pocket for their coverage and in addition would have fewer choices, etc. In other words, details matter, and these details were unacceptable to the ruling class. So, Congresspersons who make $174,000 a year and their highest paid staffs discovered that they would NOT be eligible for any Obamacare subsidies. Democrats and Republicans alike began whining to Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner, “We won’t be able to afford this! Our staff people will leave for the private sector, this is an outrage!!!”

Reports in this morning’s Wall Street Journal suggest that President Obama himself magically worked out a deal with some Personnel Management bureau that will provide ,out of thin air, a $4900 subsidy for individuals and $10,000 per family to help Congresspersons and their employees “cope” with the transition from their gold-plated health plan to Obamacare. In other words, the greatest achievement of Barack Obama’s Presidency is good enough for us, but not quite good enough for our betters in Washington. Provisions must be made for the ruling class that are unavailable for we mere citizens.

Now, I know there are those of you out there who think that Obamacare is wonderful, and long overdue as a matter of justice and compassion for the uninsured etc.. etc… But would someone please justify what has just happened for me, because what little faith I have remaining in government is about to disappear forever.