My Sunday Feeling

 I had never been in a monument store until yesterday.  I guess that is what you would call it.  In any event, I met my brother Bob at McGee Monuments in Conway not too far from the Interstate.  Of course, we were there to pick out a marker for our brother Dave.  

I can think of other ways that I would prefer to spend a Sunday morning.  But one must tend to one’s duty.    

The business is operated out of a former home in a residential area.  There were several styles of gravestones for inspection in what used to be somebody’s front yard.  I couldn’t help but note to myself that there was probably not much shoplifting at McGee Monuments despite the apparent lack of security.  

Bob explained to the nice lady there that there wasn’t a whole lot of room to work with if they were going to get Dave’s marker close to Mother’s up there at the Pearson Cemetery. He called out the dimensions that he and the head of the cemetery board worked out off the top of his head.  The nice lady pointed out two that she said would do nicely.  We picked a simple stone that did not require a big base.  Then we went back inside to paper everything up.

At her desk, she turned her computer screen to us to show all the stuff we could get engraved on the stone.  A deer’s head.  A motorcycle.  Bible verses.  Guys fishing.  She didn’t show us a Razorback.  But it wouldn’t surprise me if you could get one despite the trademark issues.  After all, who would they send the “cease and desist” letter to?  However, what passed for my  personal favorite was a gravestone with somebody’s headshot somehow engraved in the stone.  She allowed as how that was a surprisingly popular feature.  

“I’ve seen those,” Bob said. “They are amazingly lifelike.”

And guaranteed for life the nice lady said.

“Whose life?” I wondered to myself.

We told the nice lady that Dave would not have had any use for such folderol, even though we had no way of knowing for certain seeing as how Dave had never expressed an opinion one way or another about such matters.  But his was a simple life kept largely to work and himself, especially in what turned out to be his latter years.  I’m certain that the prospect of an ersatz portrait engrafted in stone would have completely horrified him.  The simple stone we picked out looks like Dave.

We brothers settled on the simple inscription “A Good Man.” And that is what will adorn his marker for posterity in a country cemetery in Cleburne County.  A good man gone way too soon, resting next to his mother.

This is apropos of nothing. But not too far from Mother there is a headstone that bears the inscription “Friend to Sinners.” I’m not too choosy insofar as potential epitaphs go.  And I don’t want to be buried in Pearson “when I die if I die” to quote Uncle Earl Long.  But “Friend to Sinners” nicely sums up my body of work on this vale of tears if my survivors get jammed up and can’t think of anything printable to slap on my marker. That’s not much insofar as pre-arrangement goes but it’s a start. And it’s not like I will be here to bitch about it in any event.

Bob and I placed the order. I signed some papers and wrote the nice lady a check.  In a couple of weeks she will send us a computer generated image of what Dave’s marker will look like for our approval.  It should be ready to take up to the country in about 6 weeks after the final approval.  Which means I guess we will do some sort of a graveside service after those 6 weeks have run.  

I can sure think of other ways I would prefer to spend a summer’s day.  But one must tend to one’s duty.

                                                         

 

My Sunday Feeling

As an American, and a thoroughly middle class one at that, I pretty much have very little use for Britain’s Royal Family.  And so I somewhat surprised myself by watching the funeral of Prince Philip yesterday.  After all, is there any more outmoded notion to our modern sensibilities than a royal family ordained by God to lead a nation, if only as a mere, yet expensive to maintain, figurehead?  Talk about your white privilege.  

You can get an argument about this.  Indeed, I got one from an otherwise sensible friend of mine.  Upon my hearing of my distaste for the House of Windsor, he proceeded to lecture me on how the Royals are inextricably woven into the social fabric of the English people such that it would be unthinkable if they were no more.

Maybe so, maybe no.  It just seems to me that notions of royal blood, estates, the divine right of kings and primogeniture have very little place in our time of technological advancement and emphasis on equal rights.  For the moment at least.  The Arkansas Legislature, lamentably, is still in session.  There’s still time for them to attempt to outlaw Federal enforcement of universal suffrage pursuant to their, shall we say, imperfect understanding of the 10th Amendment, and/or make Sunday School attendance mandatory.  I put nothing past this assemblage of cretins.  

But I digress. So why did I watch the funeral?  No real reason I suppose other than I am a history buff and this certainly was a historical event.  I am also trained in the music of the English High Church and so I wanted to hear the musical offerings two of which were commissioned by the late prince.  Which were quite lovely indeed.  Maybe I wanted to see if Harry would take a swing at William. Or if Andrew would get picked up by Interpol during the Recession.  

And I was keen on hearing the homily concerning the life of the Duke of Edinburgh.  Except there wasn’t one.  According to one report, the old boy sensibly detested sermons and requested that none be offered on his behalf.  

You have to respect that in a person.  After all, as one of the commentators said, HRH had probably given over 5,000 speeches in his career as the Queen’s Consort.  Perhaps he found that to be sufficient speechifying for one lifetime, state funeral or no state funeral.

Still it was a remarkable sight.  The mourners, all garbed in Bible black, the women in veils, covering their faces and masks, were limited to 30 by the health authorities.  Attendees that weren’t living in the same household, sat by themselves.  Including the widow herself. 

Say what you will about the Royals, it was a sad sight to observe Elizabeth Rex, Her Royal Majesty, and yet an elderly widow nonetheless, sitting by her lonesome at the funeral of her husband of over 70 years in graceful deference to an order issued by the civil authorities.  Here in some counties in Arkansas that would be considered yielding to tyranny.  According to the Windsors it is evidently the discharge of one’s duty.  “Getting on with it,” in one of the late Prince’s favorite expressions.

And there is no doubt that Elizabeth will “get on with it.”  This despite the fact that she herself is bent with age.  How much longer? Who knows?  And when she passes will the Royals be able to maintain their relevancy, however tenuous it may seem to the likes of some of us over here?  The Prince of Wales has always struck me as something of a twit.  Something that his irascible father manifestly was not.  I wouldn’t pick Charles to be the titular head of a 7-11.  Perhaps there is a reason that Elizabeth never stepped down from the throne. 

The funeral, studded throughout with symbols of power and even grace, was a moving spectacle.  The Prince was piped into the church by the Royal Navy.  At the conclusion the trumpeters sounded “Final Post” followed by “Reveille” and “Action Stations.”   A funeral for a man who loved the military and his attenuated career in it. A war hero who gave up his military career to be the Queen’s Consort.  Which is not a bad gig.

  I’m  glad I watched. Maybe my friend is right.  Maybe there will be a Royal Family as long as there is an England. Even if it is an England that no longer rules the seas or produces men like Winston Churchill.   

There is no small comfort in ritual in the midst of a pandemic.  Elizabeth Rex wore a mask beneath her veil even unto the funeral of the man who was described by many as her only love.  Donald Trump pulled his mask off-Mussolini like-upon his release from the hospital after he was struck down from COVID. 

 God save the Queen.   

  

  

  

My Sunday Feeling

 It is my great sorrow to report again that the Arkansas State Legislature is still in session.  And, as I reported last week in my deathless prose style, it is the usual cauldron of stupid.  Actually, I take that back.  It is a transcendent cauldron of stupid.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.  I believe I may be repeating myself.  But then again, I’m too lazy to fact-check myself.  

I have an acquaintance who served in that august body years ago on the Senate side.  He described the legislature to me once as a cross-section of Arkansas.  “You have the professional types like lawyers.  You have small town business folks.  You have educators and farmers.  And then you have your dumbasses.”

Likewise, I have a friend who once was a lobbyist.  He told me that the key to understanding the Ledge is to think of it as a collection of mischievous children.  He said you’ve got to give them enough to keep them busy.  Otherwise, they will start thinking up stuff on their own and that’s when the trouble starts.

The last two grafs look awfully familiar to me the more I think about it.  Oh well, I can live with plagiarizing myself.  

Well, the dumbasses, now in ascendant glory the Ledge, have had time on their hands the last week or so. So, with no issues of substance to divert their attention they got distracted by the shiny objects of bigotry and spurious science. 

Let me count the ways. They have banned trans kids from competing in women’s sports, a problem even the dumbasses concede is non-existent in this state.  They took it upon themselves to override the Governor’s veto of a bill handed up to him banning the medical treatment of gender dysphoria in kids younger than 18, even with parental consent, and they passed what the overwhelmingly white and male membership considered to be an acceptable version of a “hate crimes” bill which is remarkable in that it pretty much applies to everybody instead of defined protected classes. 

Unlike the solons on Woodlane who have winding off at the podium about “protection of children” and such I typically try not to talk about stuff that I don’t understand.  And I don’t understand much about the trans world.  So I won’t address those issues.  And, I confess that I am somewhat conflicted about “hate crimes” legislation in general as it can have worrisome 1st Amendment implications.  But I can say that whatever the dumbasses passed last week wasn’t a true “hate crimes” bill by any stretch of the imagination.

So let’s get to what I do understand.  

I confess that I was surprised, and I’m surprised that I was surprised, when a bill was introduced that would require the teaching of-hello darkness my old friend-creation science in the public schools.

Some lessons are never learned.  If memory serves, I had just gotten back to Little Rock around 1983 when the late Governor Frank White signed the first creation science bill into law.  A bill that he famously admitted to having not read before signing.  As night followeth the day, a lawsuit was filed and the law was predictably struck down as a violation of the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment.   And the great state of Arkansas was on the hook for attorney’s fees and costs.  

As will likely be the case again if this thing makes it up to the Governor and he signs it or his veto is overridden again.  

Here’s why.  I invite you to consider a Facebook post written by a childhood friend who is a physician.  “Creation science is not science,” he wrote. “Teach it in church.  Teach it in Sunday School.  But don’t teach it in the classroom.”  Not to put too fine a point on it, creation science is religion disguised as science.  And forcing it on classrooms is, as alluded to above, is tantamount to the establishment of religion which the state cannot do.

So why does the Ledge persist in such madness such as the creation science bill and the anti-trans bills knowing full well the State is going to get sued sideways over them?

Easy.  The individual legislators have no financial stake in the outcome.  No real skin in the game.  Any fees and costs will come from the taxpayers whose interests they are allegedly looking out for.  It’s a lot easier to be principled when there’s no real financial downside to it.  

So, meanwhile here we go again repeating history over here in East Alabama.  Back to being a laughing stock again.  

Oh well.  We’re good at it.

      

My Easter Feeling

 It occurs to me that I don’t recall last Easter.  That is a remarkable thing for me as I typically like Easter.  But I don’t remember the first detail of last year.

But then again, there’s a lot about the last year I don’t remember.  And some of what I remember I would prefer to forget.  But memory is a tricky thing.  Try as you like you sometimes can’t pick and choose what gets burned into your consciousness.

What a terrible year 2020 was.  500,000 of our fellow citizens perished from a pandemic that I was only vaguely aware of when I was summoned out of the blue to appear at the office of my PCP in February of that year.  I want to say it was last February.  But time really didn’t have much meaning last year.  Days succeeded to other... days.  Days during which there was little to do but to exist.

“Paul, you need to listen to me,” the doc said. “We are about to confront the health care crisis of a lifetime.  We can’t treat it right now.  I can’t even test you for it.  We are completely unprepared.  People like you with chronic upper respiratory issues are at tremendous risk.  To the greatest extent you can just stay home I want you to just stay home. I’m a firm believer in fresh air and sunshine.  So you can go for walks by yourself or with your wife.  But that’s about it.  And I want you to do this.  Here.  Stand beside me.”

“This” was deep inhalation followed by forced exhalation.  Like when they test me for asthma.

“5 times,” he said. “In and out. 3 times a day.  We need to build your lungs up in case you get it. Here are all your prescriptions for the next 6 months.  Hopefully we will have a better handle on things by then.”

He put his hand on my shoulder.

“And if you think you have COVID don’t come here.  Go to the ER at the med school.  That’s all I can tell you.”

We tapped elbows and I walked out the door.

And, to quote the famous poet, in short, I was afraid.

That doctor’s visit I do remember.

And my brother David died last November.  I will always remember that.  

But I don’t remember the first thing about last Easter.

Maybe today marks a new beginning.  My church is holding services outdoors at War Memorial Stadium.  That seems to me to be a hopeful thing.  It will be good to wear seersucker and see familiar faces again.  Well, to the extent that you can see them obscured as they will be by masks that is.  And like my doctor, I’m a firm believer in fresh air and sunshine.  

As many of you know, I don’t have much use for Christmas.  It is, for the most part, frivolous and expensive.  But I like Easter, with it’s Gospel lesson of victory over despair.  If the world ever needed some Easter it is now.  

My brothers and I are going to play golf this afternoon.  I can’t think of a better day to begin a new tradition.  Life is too damn short.  We are not promised tomorrow.  God almighty were we ever taught that bit of truth last year.  

I hope that today is an Easter to remember.  For me and for you.

                                                      ***

I haven’t written much since Dave died.  I can’t describe it other than to say that I just basically went blank there for 2-3 months.  I am sustained and hovered over by a good wife and the best friends a man can possibly have. And yet I still have those moments.  

But things, both personally and out in the world in general, are returning to a semblance of what passes for normal.  The COVID infection rate is going down.  More people are getting vaccinated.  The economy is picking up.  I’m back at Catholic High and I still have my law students to tend to if only online. The state legislature is a cauldron of stupid.  But that’s to be expected in Trumpified Arkansas.  Some things don’t change.  Indeed, they can get worse.

But the NCAA Men’s Finals are tomorrow night. And Major League Baseball started last week.  Trump, ensconced as he is at Mira Elba, as decreed that MLB should be boycotted for pulling the All-Star Game out of Atlanta.  Therefore, I shall consider tuning in to be my patriotic duty.

I still have my moments.  But things are returning to a semblance of what passes for normal.  

I’ll take it.  And I’ll see you around.