My Sunday Feeling

 I’ve made enough trips around the sun by now to learn which things they say about growing older are true and which are malarkey.  One of the things that is true is that at a certain point time has a tendency to get away from you.  

Sometimes I feel like I’m looking through the wrong end of the telescope.  Sarah and Joe should still be in high school.  But they are not.  She’s working at the UN and Joe’s a senior at Hendrix.  Henry is beginning his career in the arts at Bravo Vail.  You get the idea. As for me, I woke up 2-3 weeks ago to the realization that Uncle Sam and I got divorced 10 years ago.  Seems like yesterday. 

And according to the Coroner’s best guess, my brother Dave passed away a year ago yesterday.  A year has passed since that bomb got dropped. That’s hard to believe.  

I guess it’s good that time seems to be accelerating for a geezer like me.  If the last year and a half, with the pandemic, the blizzard and Dave’s death wasn’t the worst time of my life I’m not sure that I want to see the one that tops 2020-2021. But it’s over thank God.

I still can’t quite wrap my head around it all.  About where Dave’s passing fits in the great scheme of things.  Assuming there is a great scheme in the first place.  I know I shouldn’t think like this.  But I can’t help myself.  

I can name you, off the top of my head, 10 guys that had it coming if anyone did.  10 guys-make that 10 humans for diversity’s sake-that are at the minimum taking up space and wasting oxygen when they are not actively fucking with other people for the sheer sport of it.  

Dave was kind and generous to a fault.  He was an unassuming kind of guy who loved his craft, his spot in the Ozarks and the folks with whom he worked.  If, as the old saying goes, a gentleman is also a useful man, Dave was the finest gentleman in that region.  He could fix anything, cook anything and do theatre tech like nobody’s business.  He was as good a friend brother and uncle as they come.  

And he’s gone while those other 10 folks I mentioned above will live to be 150.  You show me the fairness in that.  

I am trained in the Bible and in theology and philosophy.  I know that I am comparing apples and oranges.  I know that such thoughts are illogical.  I actually wondered-for some reason- around September of last year which one of us brothers would be first to go.  I don’t usually engage in magical thinking-and I’m not sure I’m doing that now-but I wish I had not entertained those thoughts. I know. It’s crazy.

If you think I’m angry you are right.  I’m mad at myself.  I’m mad at the universe.  I’m mad at God.

I am angry in spite of the fact that anger is useless and counterproductive.  I’m still sufficiently on the rails to recognize that.  And to recognize that Dave would not want that.

Dave was not the kind of guy to stand on ceremony.  He didn’t want a funeral.  He just wanted his ashes scattered at the cemetery in the Quitman community over by Heber Springs.  Mother is buried there along with most of her people.  Nephew Max scattered some of his ashes over the trees of the Ozarks that Dave loved so much.  This is because Max was the only one brave enough to get on a zip line.  

Bravery will not be required when we spread David across the burial ground in Quitman next month.  It will require a commitment to sad duty and final things.

There will be no place for anger on that solemn day.  I hope I’m man enough to put that aside.  

I’m not sure that I am.

     

  

My Birthday Feeling

 Today is my birthday.  And the birthday of my brother Bob and our buddy Ray.  Not to mention the late, great Uncle Ralph. 

So no blogging for me today.

My excellent wife is making brunch.  Depending on the weather I hope to play golf.  

A much better birthday this year than last year.  That’s for damn sure.  

Talk amongst yourselves….

  

My Sunday Feeling

 I don’t know about you.  But I’m glad that I don’t have a kid enrolled in the public school system in Texas.  Particularly in the Carroll Independent School District which is about 30 miles northwest of Dallas.  

First some background.  Texas recently passed a law that requires educators to present multiple perspectives when discussing “widely debated and currently controversial issues.” Now, let me state that as a general proposition I have no problem with this concept.  Indeed, having actually taught before, I like to think that I did just that.  If there were legitimate opposing viewpoints on whatever issue was before the class.  In fact, being a lawyer I was in my glory at times like those because I could basically take any side of an issue and argue for it.  And if I couldn’t do that, then I would challenge the positions taken on either side.  There aren’t many 17 year olds that can stand up to cross-examination.

Indeed one of my proudest moments was when a kid that I had eviscerated earlier in the day came up to me in the hall and said, “You know, just when I think you’re a liberal then you sound like a conservative.  And then after sounding like a conservative, you say stuff that sounds like you’re a liberal. I can’t figure you out.”  I put my arm around him.  “That must mean I’m doing my job,” I said.

Education rarely consists of indoctrination.  At least not to my way of thinking. You need to let kids kick stuff around.  Come to their own conclusions.  But just because you encourage robust debate in a classroom does not mean that all positions/theories/what- have- you rise to a sufficient level of seriousness or credibility to be given equal dignity in the classroom.

Which brings me back to the Carroll ISD whose director of curriculum, during a trading on the new law got caught on tape saying “Make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”

There have been Holocaust deniers since before I was a little kid.  And they have, at least up until now, been rightly regarded as a bunch of bigots and kooks.  And now in Texas their lunacy has to be taught if a teacher introduces a class to Elie Wiesel or Anne Franke?  

I assume we are talking denial of the most documented (Germans being Germans after all) act of genocide in the history of the world.  I confess that I am not widely read in “other perspectives” on the Holocaust.  Perhaps there is literature out there that suggests that while it may have happened “it wasn’t as bad as all that.” Or maybe that given what Hitler knew at the time he thought it was an expedient strategy.  I have actually heard of this one. As for me, I reject any theory that requires me to walk around in the head of Adolf Hitler to make it work.

But you get the point I was belaboring.  What other intellectually defensibile perspective on Shoah can there be?  There is none.

But arguing for “perspective” or “fairness” has long been the special provence of those on the wrong side of history.  When I was a kid I was told that the slaves were “better off” over here than in their native lands.  When it comes to the Civil War, one man’s act of treason is another man’s “Lost Cause.”  And most recently, there is about a hard core third of the country that believes that the 2020 election was stolen despite absolutely no evidence in that regard, that horse de-wormer works just as well as the COVID vaccine and that the insurrection of January 6 was an act of peaceful protest.  

And that Donald Trump will be “restored” to the Presidency despite there being absolutely no machinery for that action in the United States Constitution.

The inestimable Charles P. Pierce referred to the prevalence of this kind of thinking as “Idiot America” in a book by the same name he wrote some 10 years ago.  Boy, did Uncle Charlie see this coming.   

I hope the lady from the school district got crossed up or maybe just made an exceedingly invidious comparison. But rightly or wrongly she was the mouthpiece for the school district. Where they are required to teach idiocy as just another “perspective”in Idiot America.  

Can the Arkansas state legislature be far behind?  

Sick leave

 I have been under the weather the last 2-3 days.  Haven’t stirred much from my chair in the living room or the front porch.  Actually went to bed @ 9 Friday night which is unheard of for me.  

I’m much better now.  But didn’t much feel like fooling with blogging.  Even with low hanging fruit such as Urban Meyer available for easy pickings.

Anyway, y’all take care.  I will catch you later.

My Sunday Feeling

 I got the COVID booster shot at my pharmacy last week.  Business was good.  I was originally told that I could just get one on a “walk up” basis.  When I acted on that advice I was told that this instruction was, basically, “inoperative” to use the immortal phrase of Ron Ziegler Jr.   I viewed the fact that the pharmacy had underestimated the demand for the product to be a good sign that folks were taking this seriously.  At least in my part of town.  For all I know, syringes are gathering dust in pharmacies across Saline County.

As I sat outside the shot room, a lady and a little kid, 7 or so, dressed in her school uniform, checked in at the cash register.  I was called in by Phil, the pharmacist who would be puncturing me that day.  He was wearing gloves and a plastic visor which I thought to be a bit much.  But it doesn’t hurt to be too careful I suppose.  Especially when you are administering assembly line inoculations.  

It was pretty uneventful.  Especially for a medical procedure that a third of the country thinks represents an unwarranted intrusion on its personal liberty.  He asked me if I had experienced any side effects from my last dose.  I told him that I had experienced chills and fatigue.  But nothing major.  He allowed as how I would probably experience more of the same.  As that was not a problem for me, he proceeded to fire away.  Afterwards he handed me a sheet with a bunch of legalese on it and told me he needed me to wait outside for @ 30 minutes.  I guess this was to make sure that I did not produce a magnetic field or something.  Or one of the other rumored side effects of the vaccine.

When I returned to my seat, I happened upon one highly agitated little girl.  

“I don’t want the shot, Mommy.  It’ll hurt. Pleeeeeeeze Mommy!”

The mom in turn had her lips to the kid’s ear murmuring stuff at her in a futile attempt to calm her down. Of course, the mere plaintive sobs turned into screams of sheer terror when Phil, clad in white and wearing that stupid shield, opened the door to call them in.

“Nooooooo!” She screamed as Mom dragged her into the shot chamber.

He needs to rethink his mode of attire for future pediatric cases.  

Anyway, after awhile they reappeared the kid merely sobbing now.  She stood next to me as her frazzled mother gathered up her things.

“The shot hurt Mommy, she said. “My arm hurts.”

This was more than I could stand.

I gave her a slow clap followed by a thumbs up.

She giggled and wiped her eyes.

“Big girl!” I said. “You and me got our shots today.  Way to go.” And I gave her another “thumbs up.”

“High five!”  Boom.

She laughed again.  She was still rubbing her damn arm.  But the crisis was over.

“Thaaaaaaank  yoooooooooou,” the mom sang to me under her breath as she walked by.  

No problem.  Just call me Benjamin Frigging Spock.  

Now, I understand why a little kid is reluctant to take a vaccine.  Any vaccine.  Shots hurt.  And they hurt a lot when your experience with the world of pain is as constricted as her’s probably is. When my little partner in inoculation gets older she will learn that an ankle sprain hurts a whole hell of a lot worse than an injection.

But for the life of me, I do not understand why an adult, with no underlying conditions contraindicating same, doesn’t accept the shot.  It is beyond my comprehension.  I can maybe understand if it were really just a matter of “personal choice.”  But it’s not.  It’s about public health.  

But I ramble.  

I read where Squibb has developed an pill that seems effective in treating COVID.  This is indeed great news.  Let’s see if the science deniers turn that down too in favor of horse de-wormer or faith healing or something.  Then we will know that a large portion of the public belongs to little more than a death cult at that point.

At least the little girl with me that day had the child’s reason to be scared.  She’s a kid.  She’s not a fool.

Shots hurt.

And to be honest, Phil does look kinda scary in that get-up. There’s a reason why a pediatrician friend of mine doesn’t wear a white coat.  Or a face shield come to think of it.