How Come the Chemistry Program Always Gets a Pass?

It’s 4 am. Its raining. My weather app informs me that it will be raining for the next three days. In a couple more hours Lucy will insist on being preambulated in the muck. There are seven more days left in February. If I were a Frenchman, this would Le suck. But, as it is, I am an American. Therefore, I blame it all on an unholy alliance between systemic racism and global warming. In exchange for this observation, I will earn valuable virtue points, and be hailed in some quarters as woke. Others will conclude that I am a moron. In America in 2019, it is very much a mixed bag to express an opinion. 

While the rest of the country is obsessed with one of two stories right now, I would like to discuss a third. If you watch Fox News the only story that matters at the moment concerns an obscure black, gay actor who conspired to stage a racist/homophobic assault on himself by a couple of MAGA hat-wearing thugs, ostensibly to highlight how hateful that crowd is and also to earn himself even greater levels of fawning adulation than he already enjoys as a black, gay actor. If you watch MSNBC, you are horrified by a 30 year Coast Guard veteran who was arrested with a huge cache of weaponry, a hit list of liberal politicians and journalists, and a computer trail of White Nationalist sympathies. But, neither one of these stories interest me. What concerns me this morning is this...

For those of you who might not know. My alma mater is a small, liberal arts university with less than 1,500 male students. Despite this, we compete on the highest level of college athletics for basketball. Our team has had great success over the past thirty years or so, making it to many NCAA tournaments. Etc. But, we aren’t even the best team in our own city. That title has been held by crosstown rival VCU for the past ten years or so. They not only have the better team and program, but measured by fan enthusiasm and buzz, University of Richmond is like Barry Manilow to VCU’s Drake. Anyway...this billboard has popped up in recent days, giving me a shiny, gleaming new reason to be embarrassed as a Spider fan. Chris Mooney has been the head basketball coach for ten years or so. I’ve never been crazy about him, but he’s fine. But some outfit called the UR Alumni & Spider Fans has decided that the only way to “SAVE” Richmond basketball is to fire the coach. To this end, they thought it wise and worth the considerable expense involved in having this eye sore erected along Interstate 95 so that the 25,000 people who pass everyday can witness our dysfunction. To whoever is responsible for this moronic stunt, a few words...

1. It’s the University of Richmond. We have 1500 male students. We’re lucky we even have a basketball team.

2. You guys need to get a life. I’m thinking that the odds that the guy who came up with this idea has had a date in the last year are about as high as the likelihood that our next home game will be a sellout.

3. This is basketball we’re talking about here. You guys just paid God knows what for a billboard to gin up support for firing a guy who coaches teenagers to play...basketball.

4. How about a billboard that addresses the real problem at UR...Save Richmond Chemistry...Fire Professor Dunnblat.

A Special Memory

So, tonight we will bring dinner to the Davis family. Pam is grateful for the snow day off from school so she can bring all of her energy to the task. I have no idea who took the initiative to set up this meal schedule...since in our circle of friends it’s always Kim who organizes this sort of thing. Nevertheless, we have been honored with the job tonight.

Before my Mother died seven years ago, followed by my Dad two years later, I had been largely unexposed to death. I had made it through over fifty years without losing someone very close to me. I learned a lot about how community works, about just how invaluable friends are. People who you would have least expected would show up big time in the clutch to provide exactly the thing you needed most. It was uncanny, and served as reassurance that you were going to make it through the darkness after all. All of this brings to mind two memories of Kim Davis.

When Mom died in her sleep in June of 2012, all of us were devastated. The first 48 hours were a horrifying maze of funeral home decisions, worrying about and attending to Dad and no sleep. Looking back at it now I can hardly believe we made it through. Right in the middle of all the craziness and grief, Pam got a call from Kim. Kim barely knew my mother, mostly knew her by reputation. So what words or wisdom and advice did Kim share with Pam?...Pam, I know it must be crazy with everything you guys have going on...I was just wondering if I could maybe drop by your house and let Molly out to go to the bathroom.

Every time Pam tells the story it chokes me up. Such a simple, unobtrusive gift of thoughtfulness and care. Kim Davis doing what she did...the basic, behind the scenes essential things that must be done.

A couple of days after the funeral, Kim showed up at our front door with a knockout rose bush in her hand...Sometimes its nice to plant a bush or a tree when someone we love passes away to remind us of them, she said.

One of the many reasons she will be missed.

Mourning With Those Who Mourn

I walked in the door of my home last night at 6:30 after a long and tiring day. There was an odd stillness and quiet, the smell of dinner wasn’t in the air. Pam ran to me with tears in her eyes and told me the awful news about a dear friend who had passed away earlier in the afternoon from a massive heart attack. Life has moved along in slow motion ever since.

She was 58 years old. She was one of the healthiest people I’ve ever known. She leaves behind a husband, three children, and five grandchildren. She also leaves behind a grieving community of people lucky enough to be counted as her friends. One of the reasons we grieve is because Kim Davis taught all of us what being a friend really means. Almost a year ago to the day it was Kim who saved our friend Leigh Ann’s life when she found her collapsed at home. It was her calm, quick action that saved her life. For the next month it was Kim who took charge of all of the details of caring for Leigh Ann and her devastated family. It was Kim who poured out every ounce of strength she possessed to make the intolerable tolerable for her best friend. Now, in an irony that is almost impossible to comprehend, this time...it was Leigh Ann who found Kim.

Life is full of disappointments. Each of us must endure news that stings and shocks the system. When one so dear, so vibrant, healthy and full of life dies so suddenly, it serves as a bitter reminder that we all exist on borrowed time. All of us eventually, in the words of Shakespeare, will shuffle off this mortal coil. We accept this fact intellectually but seldom spent a lot of time preparing ourselves for its truth. Most of us prefer to think of death and dying as the province of old age. But, yesterday it came for one of us...and we are heartbroken. Like the apostle Paul, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed...”

Every group of friends needs someone to whom they can point and say, There is what a good person looks like. We all need to know someone who models for the rest of us what it means to be loyal, generous, and kind. We all need living examples of what real Christianity looks like in person rather than merely in theory. Although she would have been the last person to claim any kind of sainthood for herself...for so many of us, Kim Davis was that person.

Her absence will leave a gaping hole in her family’s life. She will be mourned by the friends she leaves behind. But we don’t grieve like those who have no hope. Yes, we mourn. But we also celebrate a life well lived.

Freeloader

A very rough two weeks of feeling like garbage seems to be mercifully coming to an end. I hesitate to celebrate just yet since I went for a similar head fake from this dreadful cold five days ago only to fall into an even nastier abyss of misery. This time, I confidently tell myself, it will be different. So what better way to get back into the swing of things than writing a blog about...U.S. tax policy??  Clickclickclickclick...(thats the sound of 100 of you bailing on this post). For those of you who remain...

Saw the story over the weekend where Amazon earned 11 billion dollars in 2018 on which they paid an effective tax rate of -1% ( they actually got a 129 million dollar refund). I immediately forwarded the story to my accountant with the admonition...Go Thou and do likewise! Depending on your political philosophy this bit of news either infuriates you or instills great admiration for the savvy of Jeff Bezos. As it happens I am firmly in both camps. 

Do I admire Jeff Bezos and his team of tax lawyers and accountants for figuring out a legal way to use our Byzantine mess of a tax code to their favor? Am I in awe as to how they could figure out a way to combine a series of legal credits, rebates and loopholes to obliterate their tax bill? Sure I am. When I meet with my accountant every year, I have never once said to him, Ok, Carl, listen up...I’ve had a really good year but I’m very concerned about the deficit and debt in Washington, so this year I want you to arrange it so that i fall into the highest tax bracket available. This year, I want to pay more taxes than I’ve ever paid, ok? Actually, my charge to him is to earn the exorbitant fee he charges for his services by doing exactly the opposite. Each year he saves me far more in taxes than he charges for his service, so every year, I play along. However, after all of his accounting jujitsu I still pay lots of tax. He helps me to lower the effective rate, but he never eliminates it. Ending up paying 0% has never and will never be available to me. Actually, if it ever did happen, I would feel like a freeloader. There is, after all, a price to be paid for freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Does the fact that Amazon pays 0% federal taxes infuriate me? You bet it does. Something tells me that every single one of the hundreds of businesses that they have put out of business via the process of creative destruction—-paid plenty in taxes. I hear all of the Amazon apologists argue about the millions and millions of dollars that Amazon invests all over the country, the construction projects that a burgeoning business spins off, the billions of stock options dolled out to their employees etc, etc. All of that is well and good. But, here’s the thing. I am one of those dinosaurs who still considers himself a champion of the free market. When I see the way cities and states all across the fruited plain have prostrated themselves at Amazon’s alter, all undercutting themselves trying to buy a headquarters, I recoil in disgust. Amazon has become an online retailer without equal and has generated an other worldly 29 billion dollars of profit as their reward. Why should taxpayers have to pay for for their headquarters building? This is exactly how I feel when I hear some football team owner threatening to leave the city unless the taxpayers build him a new stadium. WTF??

Of course, there is an easy fix to this problem, but neither side will even consider it...conservatives (are there any of you left?) because the current system empowers the well connected and rewards those with the most diabolical lobbyists...liberals because it isn’t sufficiently progressive (although, how progressive is a 0% tax rate for Amazon?)...and that is a flat tax, no deductions, no write offs, no fancy accountants. So instead of real tax reform, we chip at the edges of our 7000 page tax code every couple of years which only has the effect of making it even more complex and exploitable. Here’s a life lesson for all of you big government types...private sector accountants are always sharper, craftier and more effective than government accountants. Always have been...always will be. To level this playing field, you’re gonna have to put them out of business....flat tax.

“Hold My Big Mac...”

Two weeks ago, in my state of Virginia, we suffered a political earthquake that had all three of our highest ranked elected officials embroiled in career threatening controversies, which had made us the laughing stock of the country. Our Governor and Attorney General were dealing with racist photographs from their college days, our Lt. Governor, credibly accused by two women of sexual harassment. The air was thick with talk of triple impeachment. At that time I wrote the following:

Ralph knows that the people of Virginia, like the rest of America, have an attention span of a toddler. Sure, the fire might be hot for the first 48 hours, but each day after that it cools. Ralph also knows that the Press also has a short attention span. They might be in high drugeon when the story breaks, but after a few days it’s like...squirrel!!!

Two weeks to the day that all this broke, this political earthquake has vanished from the newspapers. Welcome to America in 2019.

One of the most enduring legacies of the Trump Presidency will be the magnificent cover he has provided for all manner of political misbehavior throughout government. Each day’s headlines scream out the latest outrage that would have been enough to doom previous Presidents. But, just about the time that all the players have their talking points ready, Trump has moved on to the next outrage, leaving the commentariat gasping for air and back to scribbling out talking points. I have come to believe that this is the signature genius of Donald Trump. Flood the zone with outlandish, fact-free, anti-constitutional and boorish behavior, then watch with glee your enemies trying to keep up with it all. Its fiendishly clever, and provides lesser political lights valuable cover for what would have been career ending death sentences. So, there’s a governor in Virginia who posed in blackface in his medical school yearbook, you say? Psshht, that’s so two weeks ago, bro.

So, the President has declared a national emergency at the southern border to circumvent the will of Congress, and decided to divert funds earmarked for drug interdiction from the Defense Department to fund his border wall? And this has your knickers in a knot? Somewhere in the White House the President is turning to one of his aides and saying, Here, hold my Big Mac and hand me my cell...

Mrs. Winston

This blog has had a field day with L’affair NoirFace, and for that I will forever be in the Governor’s debt. The man has been and continues to be...comedy gold. But, the fact that I have relentlessly made fun of it all does not mean that i think it’s actually...funny. It is anything but. It is a stain on our State and an embarrassment to all Virginians. Generally speaking, the more I crack jokes about something, the stronger my underlying feelings are on the subject.

I would never presume to lecture African Americans about how they should feel about all of this. I can’t possibly understand their prospective upon learning that their Governor, advertised to them as a reliable liberal, turned out to be someone who not only appeared in that terrible picture, but then butchered his response to the news with a parade of awkward, tone-deaf lying. They would be forgiven for shrugging their shoulders and saying, We just assume that anyone his age, Democrat or Republican probably did the same thing! So when that poll came out saying that 57% of African Americans in the state do not want him to resign, I’m cool with it. But if I were African American, I would be furious, not just with the betrayal, but with the shameless, insincere groveling, as if he thought their support could be purchased with mere trinkets, word salads and pandering.

This entire sorry episode has gotten me thinking about the first influential African American in my life, my 4th grade teacher at Elmont Elementary school in Hanover County, Virginia...the estimable Mrs. Winston. She was a force of nature who came steamrolling into my life like a wrecking ball. In those days, I hadn’t had much exposure to black people in general, and never a black teacher, one who exercised authority over me. To put as delicate a spin on it as possible...I wasn’t exactly a model student at Elmont Elementary. I found it nearly impossible to sit still, had the attention span of a gnat, and an advanced talent at crafting paper airplanes and getting into fights on the playground. In other words, Mrs. Winston would have been forgiven for writing me off as a lost cause, and shuffling me off to her fifth grade teaching colleagues with a condolence card. But no...that wasn’t Mrs. Winston. For reasons that I will never understand, she took a liking to me. Although it frustrated me at the time, she decided that I had too much potential to continue on my present course of being a jackass. I became her project in 1968. Her plan was simple...she determined to make my life a living hell by refusing to accept anything from me but my best work. This meant after school detentions for even minor classroom infractions, whereby i would have to write on the chalkboard...I will stop being a Jackass...50 times while listening to her lecture me about education, behavior and manners. The upshot of all of this was straightforward... I fell in love with Mrs. Winston. Her relentless nagging made me for the first time in my young life a good student. I’ll never forget the tears that welled up in her huge expressive eyes when she showed me my report card with straight E’s for Excellent.

But 1968 was a different time. Towards the end of the year, my church was having a revival all week. Back in those days this was rather commonplace, and every revival had a pack the pew night whereby each family was tasked with filling an entire pew with friends and neighbors. One day after school, I marched myself up to Mrs. Winston and excitedly extended an invitation...Mrs. W, will you come sit with me at the revival meeting Friday night?

Here’s another thing I will never forget, the look of sorrow and sadness that came over her beautiful face. She looked down at me with an expression I had never seen before. Did I say something wrong? Was she mad with me? She asks me to sit down beside her, held my hands and said something close to the following. It’s been over 50 years so I hope my memory is reliable...Douglas...first I want to thank you so much for inviting me to your church. I would love nothing more than to be your guest...but not this time. When I couldn’t hide my confusion and disappointment she offered an explanation...Douglas, a revival meeting is an important thing. Serious business! Everyone needs to pay attention to the preacher...and I’m afraid if I go with you, more people might be paying attention to me than the preacher. We wouldn’t want that, would we?

I didn’t understand. I went straight home and told my Dad, who was the pastor of the church, what Mrs. Winston had said. Tears came into my father’s eyes. He sat his 4th grade son down and explained to him for the first time about segregation in the church, and how many people aren’t comfortable worshiping with people of others races. He finished with this observation...Son, listen to me. Your teacher is a very wise woman. She’s right about how people would be paying more attention to her than the preacher. But you know what else? If Mrs. Winston had come with you...I think she would have been the most holy, Godly person in the whole building.

For me, every single time something comes up about race in America, I always think back to my profoundly wise 4th grade teacher. I think...What would Mrs. Winston think of all this. Although America has made much progress since 1968, when I think of the sorry mess that Virginia finds itself in in 2019 I am profoundly grateful that Mrs. Winston is in heaven and not alive to see how far we still have to go.

Leaked Notes From Northam Staff Meeting

Notes from Ralph Northam’s senior staff meeting at the Governor’s mansion Tuesday morning, the 12th of February 9:00 am...

Governor enters meeting in high spirits, no doubt buoyed by overnight polling that shows his approval rating steadily rising among African Americans...calls the meeting to order with, Yo! You feelin’ me?.....Asks if someone can find him a Cliff Notes version of Roots, claiming that the book is..like reading the freaking phone book.....Gov. then presents a list of brainstorming thoughts he has come up with of ways that he can lead a State-wide conversation on race that can restore his good name...

* Order Executive Mansion chefs to institute Soul Food Saturday’s, where only African American inspired dishes are served

* Floated idea of hosting State dinner honoring all of his favorite African American singers and actors like Smokey Robinson and Sidney Poitier. (It was then suggested that the Governor might want to consider younger, more current stars. He agreed and suggested perhaps Mr. T and Gary Coleman)

* Floated the advisability of hiring Jesse Jackson as a consultant and liaison to the African American community.

* order rainbow colored t-shirts for all staff emblazoned with...I’m Down For The Struggle on the front and We Shall Overcome on the back

Several senior staff suggested that while all of these suggestions were very interesting, that perhaps more concrete and practical things should be done through the advancement of an agenda that might actually help address the real concerns of the African American community like education and job opportunities.....Governor rolls eyes and declares, Come on people, this is no time to get bogged down in the policy weeds. We need to keep our eyes on the prize and that prize is my  ego and my legacy. If you people think I’m gonna let one bad photograph tarnish my image as a good liberal, you all have another think coming. No, what we need are grand symbolic gestures that are photo-opp worthy. So, lets all hunker down and make it rain up in here with some ideas, yo?!