Confederate Statues

Woo Hoo! Thanks to our Governor, my Facebook feed will be filled to overflowing with rants about Confederate statues for at least a week, or until some fresh new abomination appears to divert our attentions elsewhere. This is 2020, after all, and every time we think it can’t get any worse, 2020 says, “hold my beer.” I will have nothing further to say on this subject. I have written about it at least three times that I can recall: 

https://doug-thetempest.blogspot.com/2017/08/my-assistant-is-well-known-for-her.html

https://doug-thetempest.blogspot.com/2017/08/hurricane-harvey-is-set-to-pound-coast.html

https://doug-thetempest.blogspot.com/2017/08/a-brief-follow-up-to-yesterdays-post.html

But maybe there have been more that I don’t recall. I will say that this is one of those subjects about which my opinion has changed over time. How I felt about the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue as a thirty year old was different than how I feel now. That’s happened to me a lot over the years. Things happen. History unfolds for me, it is an ongoing, dynamic thing, and how I think about it also changes. I have friends who as far as I can tell haven’t undergone a single change in opinion about anything over their entire lives. I marvel at their impenetrable resolve, their unflappable confidence in opinions forged as a heady adolescent that were able to withstand decades of challenges undeterred.

Of course, I am also no weather vane, constantly pulled this way and that by every idea of the moment. Some things I have been resolute about, even become more convinced of their truth; the Gospel of Jesus Christ, my Mother’s love, the power of kindness, the perfection of sausage, the beauty of music, the magic of art, the supremacy of baseball, and the allure of Maine.

But when it comes to politics and history, I am swayed by events and the preponderance of facts. I am moved by the story that raw numbers tell. I tend to judge issues based more upon their actual results than their intentions. Because of this, my views on a few things have changed because of...new information...not available to me ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. But that’s just me.

So, no pontification from me on the removal of statues this week. If you want my views, try the three links above. Meanwhile, I have sausage links to think about!

Has Anyone Been on a Virtual Doctor’s Appointment Yet?

We interrupt the regularly scheduled dystopian nightmare that is 2020 to bring you this special edition of The Temptest:

VIRTUAL DOCTOR’S APPOINTMENTS

Recently, my brother took an unfortunate tumble down a flight of stairs. He’s a big guy, 6’4” and probably 230. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, so it was quite a trip. By the time it was over he was bruised up pretty badly, his glasses were broken and his face covered in blood. Don’t worry, he’s ok now but for a while there it was scary. I’ve probably told him a thousand times to walk down stairs, but he’s the oldest. Does he listen? Of course not.

Anyway, yesterday he sends the family a text getting us caught up on the latest. In this text he told us of a virtual appointment he had just had with his doctor. The minute I hear “virtual doctor’s appointment, I didn’t hear anything else. What a concept. My mind—a carnival fun-house of the bizarre in the best of times—began churning with the possibilities. While everyone else who received the text was asking him follow up questions about his recovery and being appropriately engaged, I found myself typing this:

“Wonder how a virtual appointment with a proctologist would work? ...‘ Nurse, bring me Mr. Dunnevant’s file. It’s in the back room, near the rear of the office. Yeah, I’m thinking that virtual proctologist thing would be difficult...no if’s and’s or butts about it.”

I could actually feel the collective eye roll from all the women in the family, none of whom would even dignify my take with a response. But my big brother gets it. He shot back with:

“I wasn’t particularly impressed with the magazine collection in his virtual office.”

To which I thought, but did not respond: “Yeah, how many times can you read 2017 issues of Rectum Illustrated?”

Once allowed to go down this tricky proctologist road, my mind wandered back to when I was seven years old in our cramped New Orleans apartment watching our grainy RCA black and white television with the tin foil wrapped around the rabbit ears. It was a Sunday morning and I was sitting crossed legged on the floor waiting for my family to leave for church when I turned the set on and was introduced for the first time to one Earnest Angley, faith-healer.  Dude was dressed from head to toe in a white suit, complete with white shoes and a white belt. His sweat covered face was staring into the screen, his hands extended towards the camera as he implored his viewers to believe that they could be healed. He was so confident on this point that he explained that the viewer did not even have to be in his live audience to be healed, that his miraculous powers could work through the television set....

“I am asking you to believe and claim your healing, friend. Get up from that sofa and place the part of your body that afflicts you on your television set and I will heal you!!”

With this odd, 55 year old memory brought into my head for reasons that defy understanding, I imagined some guy with hemorrhoids backing up into his television set waiting for his miracle. Then the famous words of the prophet from 4000 years ago came to mind...There is nothing new under the sun. Indeed, virtual doctor’s appointments aren’t new at all. Earnest Angley was doing them years ago.

Now, we return you to the regularly scheduled pandemic and civil unrest.

An Opportunity Lost

I left the house around 3:30 yesterday to take out my building frustrations on a bucket of golf balls. It’s hard to watch your city being torn apart. But as much as I hate the violence and destruction, what I hate even more is the sight of a police officer’s knee on the back of George Floyd’s neck. I throw my dusty golf clubs in the back of my car and drive the peaceful streets of Short Pump to hit golf balls at Bogey’s Sports Park to forget about it all for a while.

But I can’t. When I pull into the parking lot I notice a black man, middle 40’s maybe, with his two elementary aged kids playing putt putt. For the Christians in this audience what follows will be familiar. For everyone else it will sound weird. That’s ok. I get it. Anyway, as soon as I saw this dad and his kids, the Holy Spirit whispered very clearly to me that I should reach out to this man, offer words of encouragement, let him know that in fact, his life and the lives of his children very much mattered. But the logistics were all wrong. He was on the putt putt course and I was headed for the driving range. Lost opportunity.

As I pounded 8 irons at the 150 yard target with wildly different outcomes I kept thinking about what I would have said if I had the chance. It might have gone very badly. He would have been excused if he just wasn’t in the mood for chit chat with a 62 year old white guy right about now. He very well might have let me have it. But even if he was gracious, what would I have said? What words would have been the right words?

I could have started by saying that his life mattered, that what happened to George Floyd was an outrage, and the fact that it continues to happen is a stain on our country. But then I thought how empty and insincere it sounded, more like a sound bite than an encouraging word. Too much like staged pandering. The last thing I wanted to do is come off as a patronizing liberal.

I took the driver out of my bag and hooked the first one badly, then slowed my swing down a bit and eventually striped one on a beautiful arc, slightly right to left against the brilliant blue sky. Slow down. Think. What that 40-something black dad really needed to hear was an apology. I could have apologized for my silence. I have watched his people getting mowed down like this for half my life. I could have apologized for my indifference. I could have admitted to him that even though I consider myself a Christian and know that racism is one of the vilest of sins, from time to time I recognize its existence in my own heart. I could have confessed that to him. They say that it’s good for the soul. 

By this time my hands were getting raw. Swinging a golf club hasn’t been a thing since this pandemic started, I could tell. I picked up my bag and headed to the parking lot. As I turned the corner around the edge of the building I saw him and his kids heading from the parking lot to the driving range loaded down with golf bags. They were headed right for me. The Holy Spirit again. This was my chance. As they got closer we made eye contact. He said “hey” about the same time I did. Then everything seemed to be in slow motion. I opened my mouth, he passed by and it was over. I whiffed. What a coward.

I’m convinced that for race relations to improve it will require a million such conversations started between strangers. Yes, criminal justice reform is an absolute necessity, but it will require so much more than that. Guys like me are going to have to start reaching out of our comfort zones to start uncomfortable conversations with total strangers and the couple who live down the street. And those conversations are going to require some contrition and humility...and the one ingredient that I sadly lacked yesterday afternoon at 4:30 on a bright, sunny day....guts.

But today is another day. Maybe I’ll get another chance. Maybe this time I’ll man up.

The Prayer of St. Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is dispair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy;  

 

O Divine Master,

Grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled as to console;

To be understood as to understand;

To be loved as to love.  

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.  

Difficult Truth or Comfortable Lie ?

Yesterday, my day started with virtual church on the deck, proceeded to a sun-splashed 4 mile run around my peaceful Short Pump neighborhood, and ended with Leonardo’s pizza for dinner and the last fire of the season.

The juxtaposition of the peace of my day, the soft glow of the fire, with the destruction, chaos and raging fires burning in cities all across this country was not lost on me. In fact, these days it’s hard to avoid the contradictions of American life. On a weekend that found American cities engulfed in hatred and flames, an eccentric billionaire scientist/entrepreneur managed to put two astronauts into orbit and eventually place them in the International Space Station flawlessly, a feat never before accomplished by a private company. But this has always been the story of America, one of outrageous contradiction. On the one hand, limitless opportunity for the bold and daring, on the other bitter divisions and deep racial hatreds. My countrymen are capable of heroic selflessness, unparalleled innovation, breathtaking art. But we’re also capable of pettiness, silly unserious leadership, epic waste, and virulent racism. Within us lie the seeds of greatness and the stain of our original sin. What an impossible, miserable, maddening mess we are.

In the middle of this year, 2020, with all of its disappointments, I’m writing another story. The gist of it centers around the following question. What would happen to someone if all of a sudden they no longer had the ability to A. Knowingly tell a lie, and B. Resist the temptation to speak the truth at all times? In other words, what would life be like if no insincere word ever crossed your lips? So far, my protagonist is having a heck of a hard time. I guess the idea for the story came to me because of how much truth has been devalued over the past few years. Everyone says they want the truth, everyone decries the fact that it is so damn hard to know what the truth is anymore. But, do we really? Suppose we aren’t nearly as interested in the truth as we think we are? Suppose what we really want is the attractive and far more comforting...lie? Indeed, how much of our daily lives are dependent upon the lies we freely tell each other? The more I write this story the more difficult and uncomfortable it feels. Sort of like...2020.

America Burning

100,000 dead from the Coronavirus. 40,000,000 have lost their jobs because of an unprecedented 2 and a half month long economic shutdown. Now, cities across America are in flames over racial injustice and police brutality. Meanwhile, the President of the United States continues Tweeting like a Middle School bully. Oh, and this afternoon, a private Company will launch men into orbit for the first time in history. Welcome to America in 2020.

Recency bias is the temptation to think that the most familiar thing is either the worst or best thing to ever happen. It is seldom true. America has lost over 100,000 people in pandemics before. There has been unemployment rates higher than we are seeing today, and in my lifetime there have been at least four times where race riots have swept through American cities. So, none of what we are witnessing is terribly new. Well, that’s not accurate either. We’ve never tried to shut down an entire economy before, no American President before Trump tweeted fifty times a day, and what the heck is TESLA?? What is new and terrible is that all of this is happening at the same time. Scary.

I posted a blog yesterday about the George Floyd murder and subsequent violence that had broken out in Minneapolis. In it I offered two observations, one that although I could never condone violence I could certainly sympathize with the rage and hopelessness that the protesters feel after seeing yet another member of their community murdered by a clearly bad cop, and second that although the majority of police officers are good people doing a difficult job under horrible conditions with courage and nobility, there are far too many bad cops doing unspeakable things and when they do, they need to be brought to justice, not shielded by some mysterious thin blue line claptrap. For reasons that are beyond my ability to comprehend, many people disagree. So, I’ve been thinking it over and trying to come up with a more effective way to communicate the principle at play with regards to police misconduct. After much thought, here goes.

I love teachers. I’m married to one. My daughter is one, as is my sister. Teachers have been huge influencers in my life. They do fundamentally vital work, they fight ridiculous bureaucratic headwinds, and are paid an embarrassing wage compared to the importance of the job they do. However, when one of them gets caught having sex with a student, I’m sorry...I want them in jail. I don’t want to hear some Teacher’s Union hack at a press conference using wishy washy language about stress or mitigating circumstances. I’m not interested in listening to some education bureaucrat talking about complicated relationships and how we have to stand by our teachers. No, no...he had sex with a child. His career as a teacher and his days of being a free man on earth are over!!  Taking this position about this teacher/rapist does not change a single thing about the fact that I love, respect and honor teachers. It simply means that I will not under any circumstance tolerate sex between teachers and their students. 

There. Is that better? Have I made it clearer?

Then there’s this...We need to not rush to judgment. We don’t know what might have provoked this officer to place his knee to the neck of this unarmed man for 8 and a half minutes until he was dead. 

Have we seen video from every angle showing the entire encounter between these four cops and Mr. George Floyd? No. No we have not. But, let me ask you...what could a single unarmed man possibly have done to four heavily armed police officers that would justify the reaction we all DID see on video? Did he take a swing at one of them, resist arrest? Maybe he did. So then, its ok to jab a knee into his neck and sit on him for 8 minutes while he is NOT resisting arrest in response? Why on earth is this such a difficult concept to understand? Was reasonable force exercised by the cops here? If you think so...I just don’t know what to say.

Here’s what I know this morning as my country burns. We, people like me and most of my readers, are going to have to start listening to black and brown people. We are going to have to do a better job of trying to put ourselves in their place, and try to imagine what it’s like to have to live with injustice. We are going to have to develop our underused empathy muscles, the ones atrophied by partisan politics. We need to stop listening to the voices of bitterness and resentment and start listening to the voice of our Savior who died not just for us but for everyone of those angry people in the streets of Minneapolis, Atlanta, Louisville, Oakland, Portland....and Richmond.

Enough.

In the ten year history of The Tempest I cannot count the number of times I have written about a black man getting killed by a police officer. Ferguson, Baltimore, now Minneapolis. Then I wake up this morning and see this:

There was a time when I would have decried this sort of anarchy, criticized the destruction of private property and pointed out the pointlessness, even the counterproductive nature of such behavior. Indeed, if I were the owner of the Arby’s in the above photograph I would be rightly furious of the wanton destruction of my livelihood. But honestly, after the last ten years, I have to ask myself a difficult question...What would I have African Americans do? Call their Congressman?

Here’s the thing...I am a law and order guy. I generally support the police. They perform one of the most difficult and dangerous jobs in America for low pay. However, the overwhelming majority of them are finding it next to impossible to do their job precisely because of the presence in their number of too damn many bad apples. And when some of them get caught committing some heinous, racially charged murderous act, the odds are that their actions will be protected by a system that circles the wagons around bad actors and rules cold blooded murder as justifiable homicide.

It’s impossible to put myself into the mind of a 25 year old black man in an inner city of America. But when I make the attempt, I feel myself filling with rage at the injustice. If I were that 25 year old black man, you would have a hard time convincing me that the lives of  African Americans are thought to be as valuable as the lives of whites in the suburbs. Anybody who thinks the justice system available for George Floyd is the same justice system available to Doug Dunnevant is living in a fantasy world. This fact is what is driving the violence right now, the feeling that nothing will ever change so, screw it...burn it all down.

I am not condoning violence. The scenes above are horrific and represent failure on everyone’s part. But neither am I going to clutch my pearls and wag my fingers at those hopeless protesters. Are there simple opportunist among them who don’t give a s**t about the death of George Floyd, but see a chance to raise hell and loot? Sure. But most of the people on those streets are just fed up. So this time, I’ll take a hard pass on making a law and order argument until these folks get some justice.

Enough.

Anxiety Eating

I have learned recently that I am an anxiety eater. 

Over the past couple of weeks a new development has introduced itself into my life which has supplanted the COVID pandemic from its post atop my worry list. As a result, and unbeknownst to me, I have started to anxiety eat. Apparently when high stress/worry scenarios appear in life some people lose their appetite. Other people...eat. Count me among the second group. And we are not talking broccoli and cauliflower here people. For me it’s been chili cheese fritos, cappuccino fudge ice cream, caramel popcorn and anything else that can easily be shoveled into my pie hole. Despite putting in over 15 miles of road work over the past ten days, two days ago I tipped the scales at a robust 202 pounds, 10 pounds heavier than I was before the lockdown.

As a result of this extra poundage, I immediately swore off...snacks. It has now been 48 hours since I have indulged my craving for these guys:

This has not been easy. The popcorn isn’t that great actually, but it’s crunchy and sweet and satisfies some previously unknown weakness in my character. The ice cream...cappuccino fudge blast...is a sinful late night temptation. But, friends, that little number in the middle is perhaps my greatest weakness. I would read you the list of ingredients but, I would be ashamed. Chili cheese Fritos have absolutely no nutritional value. Their only purpose is to tempt you with their worthless yet diabolical deliciousness. With each handful you can literally feel your arteries hardening. Nevertheless, whenever I happen to walk past the pantry no matter what time of the day or night, I feel like Odysseus sailing past the Sirens. But I have no one to tie me to the mast, so my arm involuntarily finds itself being thrust down...down into the crusty, burnt orange abyss of fat larding nirvana. 

So, why is this half empty bag still in the pantry, you ask? This is a fair question to which I have no satisfactory answer. Despite its presence, I have resisted now for 48 hours. At some point they will be stale.

Who am I kidding? Stale or not, in a moment of weakness I would be on that bag like a fat kid on a box of jelly doughnuts. I should throw them out now. And I will. I swear.

At some point...