The Darwin Awards posthumously “honors” those adults that have removed themselves from the gene pool in the most spectacular or humiliating way. It is tragic in the extreme the adult responsible for the explosive device that killed and injured those children on Maple Avenue in Bakersfield on Tuesday was not himself the victim of his stupidity.

We still await the facts of what the device was, but if military ordinance it can’t have been as described by Sendejo with a “firing pin” removed. Such ordinance has a primer, not a firing pin, but the rounds may well have triggering mechanisms and exploding components in the actual projectile of whatever kind. In which case, simply removing the casing and propellant still leaves the most dangerously explosive component in the projectile intact much in the way of a landmine or unexploded cluster bomb.

Like most of you I hope whoever was actually responsible for this tragedy including those responsible for Sendejo even having a military explosive device will be held to account for it and all the facts of the case discovered and made known to the public. I would fault the lack of adult supervision except it would seem none were expert in military munitions, nor apparently was Sendejo. 

Such munitions are easily recognized by those trained in handling such ordinance, and in my forays into the western deserts I have come across much of this lying unexploded on the ground, some of the more dangerous being unexploded practice bombs and magnesium parachute flares. Now if that latter should go off in a house the structure would evaporate in an instant conflagration of the most intensely white heat imaginable. But I have no doubt some of these are in homes along with those unexploded practice bombs and other ordinance as “souvenirs” or merely curiosity pieces.

Children in many nations of the world are daily being killed and maimed by mines and other military ordinance. They find these objects just lying about inviting the curiosity of children. During WWII we children at Mt. Vernon Elementary were cautioned by teachers to beware of items intended by our enemies to entice children. Two older pupils once came into my classroom, one on crutches wearing bandages with red coloring to simulate blood, warning younger children of explosive devices disguised in a way to entice us into picking them up.

We haven’t reached that point yet in the “war on terrorism,” but I don’t doubt it will come to parents and teachers once more warning of “clever devices” meant to attract children just as in WWII, and this most recent tragedy is a grim reminder adults are responsible for children.

I know those at the Californian, people like Mike Jenner and others are going to press for answers to this tragedy, that the paper is going to hold those responsible to account. In the meantime, as we were cautioned to do during WWII it would be a good idea to begin asking everyone to report any suspicious devices you may see in a house anywhere. I purposely do not use the term “home.”

Brenda Starr is a name that evokes much nostalgia for me. Dale Messick, the creator of the comic strip died not long ago at age 98. She told The Associated Press in a 2002 interview “Most comics, the main characters are heroes, guys, and they don’t write for women. I was a woman so I was writing for women and I think that’s what put her over.”

But despite my being a boy devoted to heroes like Superman and playing cowboy with cap pistols and BB gun pretending to be the Lone Ranger or Red Ryder like any normal boy and I considered girls alien creatures, fascinating but suspect at best, when the strip began to appear in 1940 I was an avid fan from the very first. During WW II Brenda as with many cartoon and comic strip characters of the time was fully involved in the effort against the Axis Powers, and she proved to be as adventurous, brave and courageous as any man.

While Wonder Woman was also doing her part in like manner with her marvelous invisible airplane and magic powers making me a fan from her first appearance as well, I was entranced by Brenda’s ongoing relationship with the mysterious Basil St. John with his eye patch like that of a pirate, and his mysterious illness treated with a serum made from black orchids growing in the Amazon jungle. And Brenda Starr with her Rita Hayworth gloriously abundant, radiantly red hair and sparkling emerald green eyes was breathtakingly beautiful, something not lost on me even as a young boy.

Perhaps my earliest readings as a child of Scott, Cooper, Stratton-Porter and others together with WWII and the films of the time made for the romantic in me. Whatever the reason, I was drawn to this ongoing relationship between Brenda and her mysterious lover with the black eye patch and his black orchids. It would thrill me every time Brenda would discover a black orchid left her by the mysterious St. John, and I would keep hoping for a happy outcome between Brenda and him.

It is the nostalgic longing for the mystery of love and romance Brenda Starr and Basil St. John represented I miss most of all, the nostalgia for what those black orchids represented to me as a boy that has been lost to this generation I find so tragic. Of the sources of wonder to the writer of Proverbs in the Old Testament was “… the way of a man with a maid.”

I believe the wonder of the mystery of love and romance between Brenda Starr and Basil St. John has been betrayed by an age that leaves nothing to the imagination of such things, and in this betrayal so has this generation of young people been betrayed, and lost to the young people of today the wonder of “… the way of a man with a maid.”

But as I continue to point out romance requires a national Ethos given to the best impulses, speech and behavior of which we are capable, one exemplified by the great musicals when poets worked in America.

However, if one were to look for the best remaining virtue and character of America today in my opinion it would be found in the rural churches across our nation. A glance at the church listings here in the Kern River Valley tells anyone we are a community of believers, and one of a diversity of Christian beliefs. However, our churches are for the most part comprised of small congregations typical of most rural communities. Even before the lake went in here in the valley, we had a number of churches sometimes serving only about a dozen people in attendance on any given Sunday. And though larger churches have sprung up, for the better part these still reflect a community, something often lost in metropolitan churches.

But here in the past there would be the occasional “traveling evangelist” or other itinerant preacher that would show up. These were a real treat for us in those days because the meetings often had the aura of the old “Brush Arbor” meetings with which so many Southerners like my grandfather were acquainted.

For those of us who have had the pleasure of traveling throughout the rural communities of the Real South in places like Georgia and Alabama, we understand the character of community churches throughout America so well represented by my own maternal grandparent’s small church in Little Oklahoma in Southeast Bakersfield on the corner of Cottonwood and Padre. Grandad built the small church himself and served as its pastor, while my grandmother played the piano for the singing that was such a prominent part of both worship and fellowship.

They won’t find it in great cathedrals, but if those in Congress, the universities and schools, the media, and Hollywood sincerely wanted to know the Real America, they would spend time in the small rural churches throughout our nation. Despite the crude and failed stereotyping of those like Sinclair Lewis and Hollywood, in no other institutions of America is the genuine and best character of our nation so well expressed as it is in the small community churches scattered throughout our nation. Nowhere else will you find the real morality, the hopes and dreams of real Americans, such genuine faith, such genuine belief in actual virtue and in our nation than among the small churches like those right here in the Kern River Valley.

To have been born into and raised among the true believers of the Bible in the small rural churches of America, to sing the hymns “If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again” and “In the Garden” with such real devotion and faith among other believers, though small in number characteristic of these rural churches, is to experience something that cannot be made known or understood by the greatest genius of literary or film artistry.

Notwithstanding the human weaknesses and failures we all share in common, the hypocrisy and ignorance, the prejudices, all of which are to be found throughout the institutions of America low and high, it is in the rural churches of America you find the people so transparently honest in these weaknesses and failures together with the best of what we are as human beings in genuine sacrificial love and caring for others, of caring about America.

No matter the manifold and legitimate criticism, such believers also believe in an America “One nation under God,” have not forgotten our Founding Fathers and all that America used to represent and used to be taught in both schools and churches, all that America should still represent in virtue, in hopes and dreams of a future for our nation. And while in the wisdom of the Founding Fathers no state church was to be established, one cannot legitimately separate the Bible and Christianity from the intent of our Founding Fathers nor the reflection of this when it comes to the genuine character of the Real America so well represented in the rural churches of America.

Religious kooks continue to abound, many of them “wearing soft clothing and living in king’s palaces,” those like this latest one arrested in Las Vegas whose only obvious interest in religion is sex and money. But in this he differs nothing from many “respectable” people like politicians and a host of others. No truly good person wants power and authority over others, no truly good person is greedy and avaricious whether cloaked in religion or politics.

It is patently obvious the President of Iran is an example of Hitler, and there is no appeasing a bully or despotic tyrant whether of religion or politics. But what is it that motivates those in America lusting for power and authority over others if not evil. The lesser of evils remains evil. But the civilized nations of the world must win this war against the barbaric threat of Islam. The question is whether we have a “lesser evil” in the leadership of America willing and capable of prosecuting such a war to win? Not if our porous borders for the sake of slave labor to benefit the wealthy is the standard of “concern” for America on the part of Bush and others.

Both Clinton and Bush took the oath of office with hand on Bible. Both have ostentatiously displayed their Bibles while entering churches. But if the book is no more than a talisman or lucky rabbit’s foot to them, if they refuse to live according to the precepts of Jesus they clearly proclaim their hypocrisy. And it is this hypocrisy on the part of our leaders that has not only cost America its standing before all the nations of the world, but is inviting the very disasters to which these leaders pay only lip service all the while refusing to do what is best and right for America like securing our borders and doing away with ruinous trade agreements designed to bankrupt our nation to benefit only the few in power, the lesser of evils compared to those like the President of Iran and all other Islamofascists but evil nevertheless.

While it began well enough with the Founding Fathers no one now can see Congress being the result of Intelligent Design.

Of the many things that changed right after WWII was the appearance of plastic “toys.” Among these were kits for model airplanes with ready formed parts that merely required a kid to glue them together, and presto! Near instant model airplane. And these molded plastic parts were so precise as to even have the individual rivets embossed. But we felt cheated by these plastic “toys!” They were not the real thing! And children in their wisdom know when grownups are cheating them, and these plastic model kits were a cheat!

And just so with politicians. What We the People are offered is a plastic representation complete with embossed rivets molded right into them, exact in detail but wholly lacking anything of real Intelligent Design, wholly lacking in a “soul.” They may as well be the product of a plastic injection mold churning out identical parts.

In the film “Flight of the Phoenix” the hero was a designer and builder of model airplanes. His expertise made it possible for the survivors to put together a flyable aircraft from the crashed plane, the Phoenix arising from the ashes as it were. But my generation of building models with a “soul” is fast passing away, and to use an allegory those in power do not possess the soul whereby they can provide us a Phoenix to save America from what is fast becoming a wreck in the desert.

But forget the politicians; when I first learned of it my concern was for the White House Duck, and I thought to myself at the time if the Secret Service allows anything to happen to that momma Mallard and her baby ducklings I’m sending strong words to those responsible!

Here in the Kern River Valley, we are truly blessed with an abundance of wildlife. As a Butterfly Mecca, as habitat to such a marvelous variety of birds and other wildlife this confluence of bioregions is quite unique and offers many opportunities for us to not only observe, but to be the custodians of this marvelous abundance of wildlife as well as the habitat we share in common.

Along with Henry Thoreau, I “keep appointments” with certain trees and rocks, but it is the critters like the squirrels, the variety of birds and other wildlife here in the valley that charm me even as they did Henry.

Watching a TV segment where a momma duck’s babies are rescued from a storm drain, and gently placed on the sidewalk where she is anxiously waiting, then to see momma duck with her rescued duckling’s right behind her waddling off is precious. Rescuing animals seems to bring out the best in people, and the best in us responds even as spectators. This concern for critters among the majority of us reflects this better quality of humankind, a quality that makes it “a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

What I would like to see on TV are more bunnies, baby ducks, chicks, and kittens, puppies, birdies, squirrels and chipmunks. One local news channel was featuring animals for adoption, and a kitten perched on her shoulder became tangled in the lovely young newscaster’s long blonde hair. Fortunately, the young lady was smiling and laughing as she struggled with the kitten with one hand while holding her microphone in the other and it was a thoroughly entrancing scene.

It was apparent the young woman genuinely liked the kitten, and her attention was given to the kitten rather than the camera. She was having fun with the kitten, and as a result the effect was one of those warm and fuzzy moments where the newscaster’s real humanity came through rather than the plastic representations of human beings that seems too characteristic as with politicians of the genre as a whole. Sometimes it takes a critter like a kitten to bring out the best in us as human beings.

However, I just don’t see us responding in like manner to “synthetic” animals. The resident cat, and Garfield I assume, is unimpressed with Robo-cat or other synthetic “pets.” But there is no denying synthetic pets are on a roll approaching android status, and with the technology becoming increasingly sophisticated Robo-cat will be clawing furniture, shredding curtains and catching birds in no time at all.

Having never been cursed with allergies the “real thing” has never bothered me, and the resident cat and I discussing Robo-cat agreed nothing is likely to take the place of the real thing. The obvious advantages of synthetics aside, what fun is there having a cat that doesn’t respond to “Scat!” An imposter that isn’t wary of rocking chairs and small children, and doesn’t have the innate whims characteristic of a real pussycat? Can you imagine Sylvester or Garfield as robots? Where’s the fun in that? It really comes down to “life-like” is not the same as alive cartoons notwithstanding.

But as we learn of what scientists are doing in their laboratories with genes and cloning, even mixing the genetic material of humans and animals, the specter of Dr. Frankenstein strongly suggests itself. Now an android woman… but like cats, I wouldn’t trade for the real thing. However, that’s a subject better left alone or to science fiction

Many of us privileged to live here in the glorious Kern River Valley take delight in sharing our space with the various critters and providing bird feeders for our feathered friends, and after all these years I still enjoy Mark Trail. One cannot but feel sorry for city-dwellers who often have to make do with films, television or screensavers of flora and fauna on their computers. For my part, I don’t even mind sharing my space with the occasional “Pepe le Pew.”

No matter the technological advances, in my opinion “Virtual reality” will never take the place of the real thing. For example, I used to do a lot of ballroom dancing and the recent example of Japanese robots attempting this seemed a travesty. One cannot help applauding the inventiveness of us humans, but once you have held a lovely woman in your arms, warm, soft and sweet-scented moving together in graceful unison to the beautiful music of a waltz or tango you aren’t going to settle for a robot.

The beauty of our valley is reflective of something Emerson wrote: “That only which we have within, can we see without. If we meet no gods, it is because we harbor none. If there is grandeur in you, you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps.”

For renewal of purpose I will still watch Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald films, I still play the LPs of their music and continue to thrill to the operatic grandeur of love and romance of a simpler time that held so much hope of the future. Of such are the “gods” I harbor that sustain me, and while politicians ignore the grandeur to be found in ordinary people faithfully going about doing the menial tasks required to raise families where would America be without such ordinary people?

Having spent many years in various occupations such as machinist and construction earning a living with my hands and back, punching a clock and getting dirt and grease under my fingernails for a paycheck I am duly appreciative of the lives of the ordinary people politicians publicly applaud and privately disdain. For this reason alone we have justification to wonder what gods, if any, politicians meet or harbor? Perhaps this explains why Congress and state legislatures are not noted for the arts that sustain and advance truly civilized people.

Of this I am certain: if I had not spent those years working with hands and back my university education, the years I spent in academia would be utterly lacking in knowledge of the “grandeur in porters and sweeps,” of the real world in which the gods dwell and are met resulting in the best of the arts that sustain and advance the truly civilized, the appreciation on the part of the civilized for the art to be found in Nature that wastes nothing on superfluities, but even the various hues and scents of flowers have a distinct purpose.

“Ok, let’s see if we can get this overloaded mother off the ground!” It was an open mic gaffe by a pilot at LAX unwittingly transmitted to the passengers in the plane. It doesn’t take any imagination to understand how the passengers felt about the pilot’s assessment of the situation in which they were helplessly at his mercy.

The maintenance of my venerable 1948 Stinson Voyager sometimes required an occasional visit to airplane “junkyards.” There is a glaring difference between these and auto junkyards which as an auto mechanic I frequented for years; the amount of blood to be found in wrecked airplanes. While seldom in evidence in wrecked autos the seats, control panels and windscreens of wrecked airplanes would often display a gory and copious amount of blood, stark evidence and mute testimony of how catastrophic airplane crashes are.

Safety features in autos like padded dashes and airbags are absent in most small general aviation aircraft, the crashes involving these often at too great a speed for such features to be of any use. The “plus” side of aircraft crashes is dieing quickly, rather than lingering busted up in a hospital.

As an AOPA member the first thing I would turn to in the monthly publication was stories of plane crashes. Pilots often gleaned valuable information from the detailed reporting of such accidents, and in many cases would find helpful hints in how to avoid some of the mistakes made by the pilots involved in these accidents. And human nature being what it is, in virtually 90% of the cases reported the crash was due to “pilot error.” In the cases where pilots have confessed to doing really stupid things nearly resulting in a crash, such things are made known to others as a caution to them. Unlike some other classes, pilots are a helping fraternity even to the point of often unabashedly admitting stupid mistakes.

You drive a car in a flat earthbound environment, but airplanes operate in three dimensions where if something goes wrong you can’t just pull over to the side of the road to check out the problem. So pilots spend a lot of time practicing emergency procedures, things like emergency landings. But what a pilot cannot be trained to circumvent is the human failing to do really stupid things at times.

The Comair crash in Kentucky serves as a reminder some mistakes take a tragic toll on the lives of the innocent. While 9/11 and the Katrina disaster clearly evidence politicians are never held accountable for their incompetence resulting in the loss of innocent lives and none of us are safe from such thoroughgoing incompetence from the White House on down, when you board an aircraft there really is a Pilot in Command, a person to whom you are committing your life trusting they are fully competent, personally accountable and responsible. But I have never boarded a commercial flight without knowing that pilot is just another human being, and as such despite all the qualifying factors capable of really stupid mistakes. The result is that as a passenger I have found myself kicking those rudder pedals along with the pilot up front, sensing everything going on with how the aircraft is being flown. Sometimes ignorance truly is bliss.

Unlike most federal bureaucracies the NTSB has competent people, some of whom I have known personally and most of them pilots, who investigate airplane accidents whether it is some Cessna 150 that had to land on a freeway or the most catastrophic crash of a “heavy.” While the FAA is to be faulted in many ways because of the cozy relationship that federal bureaucracy has with aircraft manufacturers, once a crash has occurred it is the real professionals in the NTSB on the scene. I have always wished other government agencies had the same competent personnel.

We don’t yet know what the events were leading to the Comair crash. We know the wrong runway was used, and on the face of it this seems a tragically stupid mistake. But was it controller error or pilot error? Who was “minding the store?” And these days we can’t entirely discount drugs or alcohol involved on the part of controllers and pilots.

Those who are not pilots quite understandably shake their heads in disbelief over how professionals like the two pilots involved could fail to notice which runway they were on. There were the required charts at their disposal clearly depicting the runways at this airport, charts clearly showing the runway they were on was not to be used by aircraft of the type they were in. But there is a lot going on in the cockpits of modern airliners, a long check list that must be adhered to religiously, the checking and double-checking of a multitude of instruments before taking off.

How was it possible for such professionals to have made such a tragic error if this proves to be the case? Still, some of you may recall reading of a recent fatal crash caused by a professional pilot failing to do the required check of his controls, something that only required his looking out the window of the plane to make sure the ailerons, stabilizer and rudder were responding properly. Undoubtedly the pilot’s complacency was the critical error resulting in his death. But not even carrier pilots, the best of the best are immune from such complacency.

It may prove the controller was at fault in the Comair crash, directing the pilots to the wrong runway or asleep at the switch not noticing the plane was on the wrong runway and advising the pilots accordingly. But if it should prove pilot error, in this case the error of two pilots, this is how it could have happened.

Many pilot errors are attributable to the kind of thing that plagues all of us. When you have performed the same task a thousand times you become complacent, and when you become complacent you are vulnerable to making mistakes, even the stupid mistakes that in retrospect declare: That was really stupid!

While such mistakes don’t often result in really catastrophic consequences and the most we suffer due to them is acute embarrassment, in the case of an ultra-sophisticated piece of machinery like an airliner such mistakes cost lives. But how does one become so comfortably complacent when operating such a complicated piece of machinery like an airliner? It happens.

But this kind of catastrophic complacency seems endemic in the field of education as well. During the years I spent as a high school teacher many of these found me teaching shop classes because of my vocational qualifications from the “world of work” as opposed to the Halls of Ivy. For the better part I enjoyed teaching such classes because the young people were self motivated to learn the practical skills like electronics, metal and woodworking, and auto repair. While it was often a chore to motivate kids in the academic classes I taught, trying to make things like algebra and trigonometry relevant to them the shop classes were a stark contrast where the relevance was learning hands on skills.

There is another distinct difference between shop and academic classes. It is highly unlikely a math, English, or history teacher is at risk of anyone suffering a catastrophic accident or blowing up the classroom. Not so in shop classes where the “opportunity” for such things abound.

So, safety instruction is of paramount importance in the shops. But even so, it is the instructor’s responsibility to make sure the kids are adequately trained in safety before ever laying hands on a lathe or welding torch. However, even the most conscientious instructor cannot always prevent the kid from filling a milk carton with acetylene and popping it into the heat-treat furnace.

Bill Cosby, America’s preeminent funny man at the time, had a skit where the shop teacher is telling the kids “Don’t put a bullet in the furnace because it will explode.” Bill Cosby knew something all shop teachers know. Kids will do really stupid things. However, it was my rather complete repertoire of doing really stupid things myself as a kid that enabled me to exercise a great deal of patience with kids as a shop teacher. Seldom did a kid do something really stupid I didn’t have a like experience when I was a kid with which to compare.

But adults prove time after time they are capable of doing really stupid things, things like putting a bullet in the furnace. I’m reminded of the fellow I read about many years ago that replaced a fuse in his car with a live .22 round. The very heat that caused the fuse to blow set off the round and the bullet hit this dimwit in the knee causing him to wreck his car. No doubt he was left wondering how he could have done such a really stupid thing?

Well, I’m no longer teaching high school or college classes, but the memories linger on, even the memories of adults doing really stupid things. Take the science teacher I knew that took his kids on a field trip into the desert. Part of his instruction was cautioning his young charges not to put their hands in brush where a rattlesnake might be lurking. He then demonstrated by putting his hand in a bush only to be bitten by a rattlesnake. While in the hospital some of us visited him asking whether he would like to repeat the demonstration for our benefit. He of course declined, and in colorful language laden with four letter words one would not expect of such a professional colleague.

I have often told people the only thing I miss about teaching is the kids. I came to despise a system of “education” that could not have been better designed for failure if it had been done on purpose, a system that seems to have little regard for children and young people, but rather a system that does not support teachers but gives authority to administrators completely out of touch with reality, and I have known some administrators that became downright ugly when confronted by this.

As an aside but not unrelated, my post to the Californian yesterday prompted a few responses by some really ugly people reminding me of the cautionary words of Jesus: “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”

Still, there are things that need to be said on behalf of our young people, on behalf of families as they struggle against a system in our society that like that of education despite the many good and conscientious teachers trying to do their job against insurmountable odds seems not to care about children, about standards of dress, of morality and civilized speech and behavior. I know taking a stand for these things invites attack by those that care nothing for such standards and inveigh against them, but the “village” required to raise a child must be a village of those who do have such standards for the benefit of children.

Will the Comair tragedy be attributed to complacency? Whether or not, the dangers of complacency affecting children on the part of adults who understand the realities of life are ever before us. And those who know better have a duty and responsibility to speak up and not become complacent.

“There ain’t nothin’ like a dame!” You know, one of those alien creatures from Venus that motivates a man to put on a clean white shirt for.

In a politically correct America that line from South Pacific would call down the wrath of any number of organizations dedicated to obliterating the distinction between men and women. But trading the great musicals of which Wodehouse so well said was when poets worked in America for promiscuous sex and violence against women has done its part in corrupting what was once known as “romance.”

Girls are sugar and spice and everything nice, while boys are sniffles and snails and puppy dog tails. You know, when I was a boy I heartily resented that little jingle, but I was also taught girls were intended by God to be a civilizing influence on boys. I resented this as well since I considered myself to be civilized without any help from girls. That is until I met the right girl, the kind of girl that inspired that line from South Pacific.

I will never undervalue the effects of my wilderness experiences here in the Sequoia National Forest that had so much to do with the forming of my own character, the way I perceive life, the values I maintain, and I have written much on this theme. But it is in living life with others that gives the “voice” to our character. For example, as Thoreau pointed out, if you are not sharing with others the things that delight your own soul there is a missing dimension in your life; the real joy is not there. I very early learned what Henry meant when he said “What is nature to me if I have no one with whom to share it?”

Too many people today fail to find that sharing of mutual delights in their own lives. There has to be someone who gives the color and scent to the flowers, who will make the music meaningful, the moon and stars shine brightly, who makes life a living experience and redeems it from mere existence. The single most important thing to come from such a relationship is the learning to live for the benefit of others rather than selfishly.

The family is supposed to be the ultimate expression of sharing and living unselfishly. Obviously the color and scent of the flowers is there whether you notice them or not. But it is love that causes you to notice them in all their glory that gives real meaning and value to them, and “boy meets girl” resulting in a family should pass this lesson on to children.

Since I communicate with National Review, I found it refreshing a few years ago to read Anthony Lejeune following up my essays on the subject of romance in his article entitled “More Enchanted Evenings.” The excellent article added to my own thoughts on the subject of what I consider, with Lejeune, the greatest American art form of the twentieth century; the musical play.    

Lejeune paid homage to the genius of such great artists as Jerome Kern, Sigmund Romberg, Rudolf Friml, Victor Herbert, Rodgers and Hammerstein and mourned their passing echoing the words of Wodehouse “The musical-comedy lyric, an interesting survival of the days, long since departed, when poets worked.”

However, for the great Broadway musicals like Showboat and Oklahoma with their emphasis on True Love conquering all to survive required a national Ethos, which, with the betrayal of our nation by the evil leadership of an increasingly evil system of government, fell into dark decline. There remains no more “bright, golden haze on the meadow.” To have traded Younger Than Springtime for what we have today borders, to me, on sacrilege and speaks volumes for the conditions our young people face and the tragedy of their betrayal and loss.

But poets and philosophers do not flourish in ideological hatreds, in systems of evil where the value of the individual is sacrificed to the vulgar, common cry for unearned bread, in systems where slavery to such evils punishes all efforts to live responsibly and cheats a man of his manhood, victimizes a woman of her womanhood, and children of their childhood.

It takes a common culture to produce the great works of art, of love and romance, which the great Musicals exemplified. It requires the genius of that culture to produce hope of the ideals of commitment and fidelity being fulfilled, of a family being able to work with the hope that they are building a future for their children.

No one is more opposed to men taking advantage of women than I am. I have made my position abundantly clear in regard to the abuse of girls in our schools and society. But I have not lost sight of the fact society must accept the obvious that as long as our girls and women are encouraged to invite lust by the way they act, talk and dress, unless reasonable approaches to these things are faced and dealt with, such things will continue to provoke violence against them. One of the most devastating things we have to confront as a society is the continued attacks on marriage and family, the diabolical proliferation of pornography in the guise of “art” and “free speech.”

If a society and its leadership is going to force a mode of inviting and inciting the violence and lust of men by promoting pornography and as long as girls and women buy into such a thing and lend themselves to the encouragement of inviting and inciting such attacks upon them by selling themselves cheaply there will only be an escalation of such things no matter how many laws are passed.

Face it; if girls and women talk, dress and act like prostitutes, they are going to be treated as such no matter how they and “liberals” howl against the very abuse they are, in fact, subjecting themselves to. Our young girls are deceived and encouraged into dressing immodestly and “displaying their wares” long before they have the maturity to handle the power of their sex.

Then, when the situation gets out of hand, when the boys take advantage and respond according to their own nature both may become victims and, in too many cases, a baby and society in the form of ruined lives, welfare and disease has to pay the price for the wicked lack of morality and a hypocritical double standard and girls no longer have a civilizing influence on boys.

Rhett accused Scarlett of “throwing away happiness with both hands.” American society and its leadership seem to be intent on destroying any semblance of romance, of aiding Scarlett “throwing away happiness with both hands.”

Beauty as with art is said to be in the eye of the beholder; nevertheless certain standards of beauty have withstood the test of time, and few would dispute these standards apart from the enemies of beauty, those who are envious and jealous of beauty and dedicate themselves to marring or destroying it wherever they can. These are the truly ugly among us, easily distinguished by their lack of civilized good manners and civilized speech, attacking all those who would take a stand for beauty and try to emphasize its standards whether of Mozart, the sonnets of Shakespeare, or those things that once distinguished real ladies and gentlemen.

While being ever so grateful for the Turner Classic Movie Channel, I did take it upon myself a couple of years ago to send a letter to Robert Osborne chiding him for neglecting A Girl of the Limberlost, the film version of Geneva Grace Stratton-Porter’s novel of the same title. As a child my mother took me to see the film at the Nile Theater and it made an indelible impression on me. Of the several memorable scenes in the film even after all these years one stands out.

Elnora, the young girl of the Limberlost finds companionship among the various creatures of the swamp. But a girl where she goes to school becomes envious of the attention being paid Elnora. At one point in the film a beautiful butterfly alights on a curtain, and before Elnora can capture it and set it free outside this other girl runs over and smashes the butterfly.

There are many enemies of beauty, those so ugly in their own minds and lives out of jealousy and envy they are dedicated to the marring or destruction of beauty, a subject I deal with at length in my book Birds With Broken Wings and my novel Donnie and Jean, an angel’s story about two children growing up in WWII Bakersfield. In both books I explore this envy and jealousy of beauty. The Huntington and Getty are not the only places you find a genuine tribute to beauty; it can be found in Kern County as well if you know where to look.

My generation of WWII antecedent to TV was not forced to read books; we were born to read, we were readers, and books were a natural and quite normal way of life to us. I was fortunate to be born into a family of avid readers, therefore from earliest memory I was surrounded by and immersed in good books and magazines, an encyclopedia and dictionary, newspapers, and like little Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird who in Jem’s words to Dill was “readin’ ever since she was born,” and notwithstanding Jem’s hyperbole so it seemed with me. And there was radio with a multiplicity of programming; that like good books and before the advent of TV required the constant exercising of ones imagination as well as the intellect.

Among the books of my childhood were the novels not only of those like Scott, Cooper, Clemens and so many others, but those by women as well. One of my favorite woman authors was Geneva Grace Stratton-Porter. She wrote her first novel The Song of the Cardinal in 1903. The next story, Freckles, written 1904 is about an orphan who gets a job as a timber guard in the Limberlost, a forested swamp in Indiana. Due to an accident Freckles has only one hand; however, he falls in love with a young girl, the beautiful “Swamp Angel.” Believing he is impoverished, his mysterious, noble past is finally made known; he is the nephew of “Lord O’More.” The book was made into a film in 1935 followed by a remake in 1960.

A Girl of the Limberlost written in 1911, and also made into the film I mentioned, is about a poor girl, Elnora Comstock, who grows up on the edge of the Limberlost swamp. Her father had died tragically, and when her mother is withdrawn and cold toward her she finds companionship with the Limberlost. There she discovers how Limberlost can teach her in ways no formal education could.

Sharing a like love of nature, Geneva’s life at the Limberlost from which she drew so much of her writing had much in common with that of Henry’s at Walden. In many ways Geneva’s writing prepared me for my life as a boy in the Sequoia National Forest, and for the later friendship and kinship I would find with Henry.

Of all her several novels and writing, Freckles and A Girl of the Limberlost continue to be most vivid in my memory. There are two incidents remarked of the young forester that made a great impression on me when I first read the book; the first being his coming across a footprint in the forest made by his Swamp Angel. After pressing his lips to her imprint, the young man uses a piece of bark from a tree to carefully cover and protect this precious evidence of “his angel.” The second incident occurs when the young man is abed recovering from wounds received from rescuing the angel. She declares her love for him at this time, and says “he shall have his angel” notwithstanding his seeming poverty, his ancestry not then known, and his being crippled.

Elnora was the girl counterpart of me as a boy. Her evident love of nature, her courage, and sense of exploration and adventure made us soul mates from the moment I started reading the book. It was not so much Sheena of the Jungle with whom I related, but Elnora of the Limberlost. Tom Sawyer had Becky Thatcher; I had Elnora Comstock to whom I wanted to be a hero just like the young forester to his angel.

Life has a cruel way at times making cynics of people, and the universities and Hollywood substituting their versions of “reality” for good books and the exercising of ones imagination, trading the coarse and profane “literature” of those who obviously could never relate to Scott, Cooper, and Geneva, had they even known of them, those who never realized or cared what was being betrayed our young people were deprived of the very best humankind had to offer by way of civilized thought and manners, cheated and betrayed of the real progress of civilization. As a result, the Angel, Elnora, and the young forester have been cheated and betrayed as well, as have I.

Somehow, the sop to women on the part of the committee adding Austen, Cather, Elliot, and Woolf to the Great Books does not go nearly far enough. Honoring the “compatibility of differences” is not seen at the United Nations, nor is it seen in America. Perhaps it can only be seen and understood by those like Elnora, the young forester and his angel, by those who can understand them and enter into the kind of relationship that honors and dignifies the compatibility of differences.

Few today could read either Emerson or Thoreau without yawning or becoming glassy-eyed, few today could read Geneva without thinking her writing altruistic, simplistic, or at the best “quaint.” But we seek in vain for any marked advance of civilized good manners and morality that has supplanted these works of the past and the standards of beauty they championed.

In the midst of so much prevailing lunacy in a world seeming gone mad, tomorrow the 19^th Annual Rubber Ducky Races will take place here in the Kern River Valley. Just think, despite all the nuclear saber rattling going on and threats to America from so many quarters and talk of WWIII and the impending nuclear Armageddon here we are in this beautiful valley having Rubber Ducky Races. Now that’s what I call having your priorities straight.

We all need some point of comforting stability in our lives, something that helps us maintain our equilibrium without the emotionally depleting effort of Kipling’s “If.” Linus had his blanket, many folks depend on their family or their church, and doctors are telling patients to lower their BP by not watching the news, especially if they have been diagnosed “bipolar.” Though like ADD, etc. the great majority of Americans seem to be suffering these conditions and in my opinion such diagnoses properly belong in the realm of phrenology, palm reading, and witch doctors plying their trade. And no, I’m not a Scientologist, just someone who likes to give more credit to common sense than to psychologists and psychiatrists where you are as likely to get a better answer through flipping a coin as by “analysis.”

One might be excused for thinking the frantic noise accompanying TV newscasts, the barbaric (in my opinion demonic) noise so many call “music” today cannot but make a contribution to the virtual senselessness of an America in the grip of lunacy throughout. So I often turn to the films and music, the great literature of a time when America was a nation that had its priorities straight and children were raised with hope of a future.

Many years ago I read an article calling into question just how much time was actually being saved by the introduction of so many “labor-saving devices” into modern living, things like automatic dishwashers, etc. And true enough, in many cases the devices removed some of the drudgery from our lives but the time saved did not seem to be put to any better use. Save time for what has been too often corrupted to time spent in unproductive ways uncongenial to either mental or physical health, and children today are not collecting stamps or building model airplanes from balsa and tissue as they used to, but growing obese from watching TV and stuffing themselves with “convenient” food. Mom is no longer in the kitchen preparing a wholesome meal and the family no longer gathers at the table for the meal preceded by dad saying grace.

“Remove not the ancient landmarks which thy fathers have placed” has real merit in many cases. I wouldn’t say downgrading Pluto to “dwarf” status falls into this category, nor am I particularly upset over Britain finding fault with Tom rolling a cigarette during one episode of Tom and Jerry. As long as some of us make time for Rubber Ducky Races there remains some hope for the sanity of proper priorities, and I cling to such hope.

But notwithstanding such hope the realities of what we are facing today does not make me misty seeing life through a rainbow or the gossamer wings of butterflies while listening to Serenade in Blue. As I once shared with Senator Don Rogers I often feel the weariness of having lived too long and seen too much to be naïve or altruistic about the daunting challenges America is facing. And having lived the extremities of WWII I can foresee troops on our borders and those concentration camps once more in America.

I’m not a lunatic, and only a lunatic would wish for such things. But despite my broad streak of romanticism and the longing for those ancient landmarks such as the Bible and moral instruction in both homes and schools, the longing for a time when one paycheck provided for the needs of a family, those things that once made America a proud nation and one trusted by the other nations of the world I have an equally broad streak of pragmatism as well and am quite capable of seeing things as they are rather than as I wish they were.

“Circumstances alter cases” remains a truism, and there is what I call the “Circumstances of the Immutable” that invariably plays the trump card from the Devil’s deck. In the meantime, here in the Kern River Valley the Rubber Ducky Races will go on flying in the face of the seeming lunacy all about and here in this beautiful part of God’s Creation we will be spitting in the eye of the Devil. He probably hates rubber duckies, rainbows, butterflies, and Serenade in Blue.

My dream home is Dracula’s castle or Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. But the best I have been able to do with this small cottage in the country is allowing spiders to spin webs unmolested and the resident lizards to have free access. I don’t like housekeeping and I especially do not like to do windows, consequently they have to get pretty dusty before I get out the Windex and paper towels. Most of the time only the windows here where I write are kept clean to let in the light and allow me to watch the various quail, doves and smaller birds taking advantage of the seed and water I provide them. This is one of the really grand features of life in the country.

However, on one rare occasion in an even rarer spurt of energy I went about actually cleaning all the windows of my place. But while sitting here writing shortly after this magnificent effort at first I thought someone had thrown a rock through the window of my living room, and when I jumped up to go see what had happened I didn’t find a rock on the floor surrounded by broken glass it turned out to be a Kamikaze quail, easily identified as such by the red roundels on its wings. Before you scoff at the description there was the evidence of the Kamikaze quail that had flown through the window lying on the living room floor surrounded by broken glass.

You have doubtless seen the commercials for window cleaner where the birds are the stars, and I have had several experiences with birds flying against clean windows. But this was the only occasion I have experienced where a bird actually committed suicide flying through one of my windows. The moral was not lost on me, and after cleaning up the mess and replacing the window in deference to any future Kamikaze’s the living room windows have gone without any further ministrations on my part. Any excuse will do for me when it comes to refraining from housekeeping chores, and without a little woman in attendance my small house here in the country tends to remain the domain of dust bunnies the size of jackrabbits, spiders, and lizards. That should elicit the appropriate shudder on the part of you ladies.

But you will never find dirty dishes in my sink, one reason being eating out of cans and the haute cuisine of frozen dinners; another reason being not wanting to attract loathsome roaches. However, when it comes to housekeeping I am not in as bad a case as nations like Mexico that treat their countries and the environment like filthy outhouses, and the invading hoards from that barbarian nation aided by the ACLU and corrupt politicians thirsting for slave labor and the “Latino vote” encouraging Mexico to use America like its personal toilet to dump its refuse population rather than demanding that barbarian nation do its own housekeeping.

Despite my own failing in what some would construe as a lack of attention to household chores, from earliest childhood I was taught you pick up and clean up after yourself, you never expect others to pick up and clean up after you. This was a condition of civilized good manners and showing due consideration for others, that is, the due consideration for others one expects of those from families where such things are taught.

Were it not for the inherent danger of nuclear terrorism one could laugh at our “leadership” that appears to believe you can have national security without secure borders. The very lunacy of such a thing would seem to be so obvious a rational person is left wondering how intelligent and educated people could possibly believe there can be anything approaching national security without the prerequisite of secure borders?

But lunatics are often intelligent and well educated persons. And what but lunatics could possibly believe nuclear terrorism is not being invited into America by refusing to secure our borders? It may come down to this. If not lunatics we have a leadership so blinded by greed and avarice, blinded by the unholy lust for power it can neither see nor comprehend the obvious danger.

The ACLU and its allies demonize Pat Buchanan and others likeminded who understand the dangers of refusing to secure our borders, the dangers posed by the invading hoards from Mexico. It is not a question of human rights, but one of America’s very identity and survival as a nation that is at stake. The human rights issue is one for which Mexico is responsible, not America, and that barbarian nation should be the one held to account for the multitude of human rights violations committed by that barbarous nation with impunity.

We the People should be demanding the ACLU and its allies bend its efforts to reforming Mexico and stop trying to destroy America, to stop its bullying tactics attempting to make America vulnerable to nuclear terrorism by demonizing those like Pat Buchanan and emasculating the efforts of those who would try to protect our nation from the war-like invasion from Mexico and terrorists! America should not become the “outhouse” of barbarian nations and those like the ACLU!

“Physician heal thyself” is most appropriate to an America that would dictate to other nations. But the healing must start with a thorough housecleaning among our leaders, and expunging the anti-American efforts of those organizations like the ACLU and La Raza.

Whether the height of lunacy or hypocrisy, for our leadership to speak of any “rule of law” when our own leaders like Caesar Bush give a green light to Mexico to ignore our laws with impunity is patently ridiculous at best. And as an American I say to Caesar: You start obeying the laws of the land, you start doing your sworn Constitutional duty of securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws before playing the lunatic or hypocrite requiring others to obey the law!

It is futile to expect other nations to take us seriously or have any trust in America when our own leaders ignore our own laws with impunity for the obvious sake of slave labor, who are intent on selling out and betraying America for profits. But this is only obvious to those of a sane mind not blinded by greed and avarice, not blinded by the unholy lust for power.

Why isn’t the ACLU at the forefront of supporting Iran’s right to have nuclear weapons? Well, in its own way it is. By doing all in its power to destroy every vestige of America’s heritage and culture, attacking efforts at making English our national language by law and supporting ballots printed in a polyglot of foreign tongues, attacking every attempt to secure our borders, defending the rights of perverts and criminals rather than their victims thereby emasculating police from doing the job of protecting law abiding citizens, in short attempting to destroy any American identity as a nation by attempts to make us over into the image of the ACLU or destroy our nation the organization is blindly handing Iran and all other enemies of America the support of the organization.

There is absolutely nothing “American” about an organization that supports illegal aliens, the criminals that are pouring over our borders by the millions, and insists it is the responsibility of legitimate American citizens to support these illegal alien invaders using the high flown rhetoric of “human rights” as opposed to “American rights.” These illegal aliens do not have the rights of American citizens, and for the Marxist ACLU to make demands on Americans to care for these illegal alien invaders as though they were legitimate American citizens is to put the lie to the organization’s claims of being “American.” Let the organization go to Mexico, China, Iran, and preach their doctrine of “human rights” there and make those nations over into its image! But no, the organization seems quite content to destroy America.

My rights as an American do not derive from the ACLU, nor do they derive from a corrupted bastardization of our Constitution by this infamous anti-American organization and its allied activist universities, judiciary, corrupt politicians and politically correct media making “immigrants” of illegal aliens! It is my right as an American to refuse to support illegal aliens by the tax money extorted from legitimate American citizens! It is nothing but a thinly veiled doctrine of Marxism the ACLU is preaching, and this is one American that will not remain silent, will not be cowed and bullied into submission by this bullying anti-American, anti-God and anti-Christian organization that is anything but “American” and has proven time and again it cares for nothing distinctively American, but on the contrary has devoted all its money and power to destroying anything distinctive of the America of our Founding Fathers and the Great Generation!

Our heritage and culture as a nation, our very beginnings as a nation is firmly rooted in the Bible and the Christian religion. To try to say otherwise is to fly in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary. To deny this the ACLU obviously has another agenda than that of the Founding Fathers and the America they bequeathed us.

In today’s Californian I read Bakersfield Councilmember Irma Carson’s plea to “Create plan to fight gang violence.” She says “Gangs are roaming our streets like terrorists, killing and shooting innocent victims without provocation. They have insighted (?) fear in local citizens who may have witnessed one of these heinous acts of violence. Gangs will continue to kill if no one tells what they saw or provide information to law enforcement.”

My dear Ms. Carson you are whipping a dead horse. There is not a single common sense attempt to curb gang violence but what our police will be stymied by threats of lawsuits by the ACLU. As for begging those in your district to come together as a community to confront the problem of home grown terrorists, no one in their right mind would give this the chance of the proverbial snowball. When illegal aliens are encouraged by the ACLU to sue Americans and American cities, just what chance does anyone have in dealing with these homegrown terrorists when the howls of “Racial profiling!” and “Discrimination!” are bound to follow aided by the ACLU?

Here in Kern County we have witnessed too many cases where the barbarians are confronted only to have lawsuits brought against those attempting to curb criminal activity because thanks to the ACLU illegal aliens and other criminals are better protected in our courts than their victims.

Alas, I am forced to conclude Ms. Carson is only engaging in political rhetoric in the vein of Caesar Bush and his “Stay the course” nonsense reflecting an ACLU politically correct war unwinnable on the face of it. Aiding corrupt politicians refusing to secure our borders for the sake of slave labor benefiting only the wealthy at the expense of legitimate American citizens the infamous ACLU has made it impossible to do so even to the extent of emasculating border patrol agents from performing their duties, making it impossible to do the necessary racial profiling that would prevent crimes and acts of terrorism, but on the contrary has made the building of jails and prisons a growth industry in which to house the multiplied thousands of illegal aliens at taxpayer expense.

The many websites giving chapter and verse for “What is wrong with the ACLU?” are available to all who want to bother doing the research. But I am not holding my breath waiting for the supporters of this infamous organization to acknowledge the facts supporting my accusations against it that were it honest would not be using the term “American” to identify itself. But being a shameless entity dedicated to either making America into its image or destroying our nation that isn’t going to happen. It remains this organization will continue to aid illegal aliens at the expense of Americans, supporting the corrupt politicians and corporations profiting from this slave labor to the end of making wage slaves of all Americans.

It is far past time real Americans made their voices heard against the enemies of America like the ACLU. If we don’t we deserve an America made in the image of this godless, anti-American, anti-Christian organization, and the best way to confront this infamous organization and its allies is at the ballot box! In the meantime keep sending those letters to politicians and to the editors of newspapers and TV pundits. Make your voice as an American heard against the enemies of America before it is too late!

“I’m going to kill you, you sonofabitch!” If you want a reply to your letter sent a politician there is an opening statement guaranteed to prompt a response. But not only is such a statement bad form and in very poor taste, it is likely to invite a visit from the constabulary asking you “interesting questions.” Still, not a few of us experience such anger toward politicians seemingly dedicated to selling out and betraying America and would like to vent our anger toward them in some such manner.

Now if you are a literary person, you know, one of those rare breed that reads good literature, there is a wealth of material from which to glean the appropriate quotations for your letter. The danger here is that those in the employ of politicians assigned the task of screening mail may not be literate. Bad enough Caesar Bush thought Africa was a nation (that was enough to make me shudder at the time), but such ignorance seems to infect the class of politicians nowadays and such ignorance seems rampant among those like secretaries employed in support services.

I was confronted with this a few years ago when a very pleasant man called asking if I were threatening to kill then Governor Gray Davis? This very well-mannered fellow was in charge of protecting the governor from various nut cases, but when my letter was referred to him after reading it he concluded I didn’t exactly fit the profile of an ordinary nut. So, as he explained to me, instead of immediately assigning some of his officers to come knocking at my door in the dead of night decided to call and ask me the relevant question: “Was I threatening to kill the governor?”

Now, gentle reader, if you are acquainted with the protocol surrounding politicians getting death threats you will surely be surprised by my getting such a phone call rather than my door being kicked in at 2 a.m. During the course of our conversation this very well-mannered gentleman explained he thought my letter evidenced someone very well educated, and such people generally did not send the governor death threats. Since he had my letter in hand, I called his attention to the quotation marks of the offending statement.

Well, the conversation at that point took such an interesting turn this fellow actually gave me his name and personal phone number where he could be reached directly. Turns out he had a great interest in literature, and was apologetic about a secretary unable to distinguish quotation marks, though he mentioned he had noted them and together with the literary form of my letter prompted the call rather than a visit by the cops asking me those interesting questions.

However, I did come away from this experience with the hope there were those among our police services in whatever capacity who are literate and civilized, and capable of being able to distinguish between those threatening violence and those like me who are able to make our convictions known to politicians in a civilized and literate manner.

But over the years as I have fought the battle for open dialogue between politicians and We the People, asking that we the Great Unwashed not be treated as though we were stupid sheep unable to handle the truth such a battle has generally been met with personal attacks, not many of which fall into the category of civilized good manners let alone being literate, and those like the ACLU intent on destroying America in the high flown rhetoric of “defending” our civil liberties.

However, the line between civil liberties and our security as a nation, the need for unity rather than the divisive attacks by the ACLU on our very heritage and culture as a Christian Nation, the need for making English our national language by law and absolute security at our borders is one made very clear by a columnist for whom I have always had the greatest respect: Thomas Sowell.

In his column today “Point of no return,” Sowell clearly defines the threat to America. That we are quickly approaching that point where we must make the decision whether Western Civilization, whether the heritage and culture of America is even worth preserving is being forced upon us. And it would be futile to expect the ACLU or La Raza to cooperate in saving America. On the contrary, both of these are dedicated to either having an America made in their image, or the Hitlerian scorched earth destruction of our nation.

While there is no excuse to be found for the brutality with which Indians in America were treated because of the greed and avarice on the part of politicians, we must live with the results. And these include the observation by Henry Thoreau asking whether the Indian would be wise to trade the wigwam he owned for the mortgaged palace of the “civilized?” But even Henry called attention to the fact the cannibal left off eating people when introduced to the better manners of civilized people.

Not much is left of the history of my Choctaw Cherokee ancestors from the maternal side of my family, the Caldwell’s. There were no writers of books as such in order to preserve much of their history. But that can be a blessing when it comes to horse thieves and other scoundrels in the family tree.

Take the Heath’s for example, a generally noble family name and history complete with family crest. A Major General William Heath served George Washington in our War for Independence, and had I stopped at that point in searching my roots well and good. However, what really generated my interest in that side of the family was a trip to Tombstone, Arizona many years ago while I was still an undergraduate. While visiting Boot Hill much to my surprise one of the very few original markers was that of John Heath! Turns out he was the infamous leader of a gang of cutthroats, and when he was apprehended a mob from Bisbee stormed the jail, took him out and lynched him.

The history of America includes that of barbarians as well as those like George Washington, and family trees generally include both a Major General William Heath and a John Heath. But we must live with both, and there remains that point of decision to which Sowell has drawn our attention whether we have an America reflecting the best of our heritage and culture worthy of preserving, whether the battle against the barbarians of Islam is to be waged and fought in earnest to win or allow those like the ACLU and La Raza to sacrifice America to the barbarians.

There can be no doubt about the intentions on the part of the barbarians of Islam to destroy all civilized nations. But why should there be any doubt among civilized nations this is a war that must be won and we must fight this war without the restrictions of political correctness which virtually guarantee our defeat? But who among our elected leaders can be trusted to wage such a war? It is at this point I have to wonder whether the Biblical prophecies of the End Times just might have it right and we may be that generation of which Jesus spoke.

One of my favorite scenes from the MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR is the old man lying in bed, and slowly opening his eyes expresses mild surprise at still being alive to face another day. Not a few of us oldsters, especially those of us living alone, can certainly relate to this, and some of us envy the old fellow having that ghost as a friend and companion to help him through the day, and in the end to ease his passing. I much preferred this to the ending of MEET JOE BLACK that missed the warm and fuzzy mark.

But we know life is not always warm and fuzzy, that it is a bittersweet waltz and most of us dance though each day best we can. However, there are times when I wonder if slipping quietly into dementia isn’t to be preferred to what my doctor assures me isn’t very likely in my case. As I shared with her, I consider it a somewhat mixed blessing to be told I will probably maintain a sharp mind to the end while envying the old fellow his friendly ghost.

To that end of maintaining a sharp mind, I used to encourage my pupils to keep a personal journal, explaining to them the benefits of expressing their thoughts by writing them out each day. But there was the essential caveat that such a journal should be kept private.

Learning to organize thoughts in written expression is one of the higher learning processes of the mind, and one that serves the person well throughout their lives. It is most unfortunate our schools in too many cases no longer emphasize this most essential part of the educational process as the universities began so many years ago to degenerate into institutions that no longer emphasized the 3 Rs to prospective teachers, but became factories of social engineering.

When it comes to the writing of books, however, a few years ago Herb Benham had an excellent column having to do with his experience at a book signing. Unless you are a “made” writer by way of fame or having a relative in the book publishing business book signings are lonely affairs. I have had three of them at Russo’s Books and all were lonely affairs. Simply put, unless there are many thousands of dollars spent in promotion and advertising your book is not going to become known to the public. Many an author has had to learn this bitter lesson. But real writers and authors write by compulsion, not with the idea of gaining fame and fortune by their writing as Henry Thoreau learned expressing the thought writers usually only have the pain of their labors as their reward.

As to book signings, while I have never sold many through such events for those who love books the time is never wasted in places like Russo’s. Just like visits to a library, to be surrounded by books is to be in the company of “friends.” But when it comes to fame it is rightly said it exacts a harsh tribute. I can sympathize with Scott Adams of "Dilbert" who went online with his book because he "... didn't want to shake the sweaty hands of strangers in Bakersfield, saying nice things to them." I don't take exception to this remark of Adams as being disparaging of Bakersfield though my birth certificate reads "Born in Weedpatch, near Bakersfield." Of course, the folks actually born and living in Bakersfield might have gotten a little uppity about the remark.

I do admit to engaging in whimsy at times as a writer, and even have a literary award from The Writers of Kern for such whimsical writing. So to the surprise of none of my companion writers and seeking neither fame nor fortune some years ago I began a tongue in cheek “Weedpatch Gazette” intended to poke fun at both myself and politicians, the latter often taking themselves far too seriously. A column in the fabulous Gazette was titled “The Cracker Barrel.” I would like to share one of these early columns by way of just plain fun, though the incidents recounted are somewhat dated and readers will have to reach back a little in memory to recall the events of the time.

Zeke is a regular around the Cracker Barrel… a great fellow, but a little funny in the head since his mule kicked him in same. Being alone out in the field when this happened, he had to crawl to his shack. Being in great pain and having a horse capsule of tranquilizer in his pocket he had planned using on a recalcitrant mare he was trying to break, he took about half of this horse-sized dose and said he not only didn’t have any trouble reaching the shack, he didn’t feel any pain for two days. But his head never returned to normal.

In spite of the resulting bubbles in his think-tank, Zeke makes some valuable contributions to our discussions around the Cracker Barrel. Such knocks in the head sometime result in not only scattering your type and addling your pate, but also making some parts of your brain become active in ways approaching genius. Things like prescience and other Psi phenomena have been claimed to result from such injuries.

Anyhow, because of this aberration in his thought processes since getting kicked in the head by his mule and that heroic dose of tranquilizer, Zeke has been given to making “pronouncements” in much the same vein as those preachers that are always telling folks how this or that prophecy of the Bible has been, or is in the process of being, fulfilled. Of course, such people don’t have Zeke’s excuse even though they talk and act like they’ve been kicked in the head by some kind of critter.

But unlike preachers, in Zeke’s case his “pronouncements” are usually directed at politicians. Now mind Zeke hasn’t had much book learning and couldn’t spell his way through a book of cigarette papers, so we all knew he had probably never heard of Nostradamus or Edgar Cayce, like those university fellows at Weedpatch University. So we knew the kind of things he would prophesy or pronounce had to come from that part of his brain made active by the kick to it… and the horse pill.

For example, just the other day he made a pronouncement that took us all aback. He said he had seen something on TV where two fellows in Congress were comparing their experiences with outhouses, you know, privies. Now all us Weedpatch folks are used to outhouses; we’ve all dug the holes and built these necessary structures in time past. My grandad had built a really grand one on the mining claim with hinged lid and big enough to store mining implements like dynamite, picks, and shovels; a really great outhouse, although in winter you didn’t sit there dreaming of riches since grandad didn’t bother to put a stove in it.

But this exchange between these two fellows, Zeke claimed he saw it while watching some Congressional foo fa raw, which cast some suspicion on this to the rest of us. After all, how many of those folks in Congress go to talkin’ on TV about their experiences with outhouses?

In any event, Zeke had an inspiration. His plan was to build an outhouse on wheels, kind’ a like a trailer, and take it to DC and park the contraption in front of that place where all these Congressmen and Congresswomen “do their business.”

Well, we had a hard time convincing Zeke that those folks really didn’t need a privy and we kind ‘a doubted they really wanted one, that they had plenty of dark, comfortable places to “do their business,” though we all agreed Zeke’s plan had some merit. You see, a proper outhouse is equipped with a bag of lime. When you are done you toss a scoop of this on the pile to help deodorize and sanitize, kill maggots and such and keep the fly population down. We were all agreed Congress is badly in need of something similar to deodorize and sanitize things because the smell does get pretty powerful at times from that direction. While Zeke is a little crazy, he’s a real American patriot and he isn’t stupid.

Common sense and politics should not be an oxymoron; but can politicians really be as stupid as they appear or is it a matter of some kind of disease that infects the breed? For example, is Caesar Bush really an idiot or does he just talk and behave like one? But looking at the “leadership” of America throughout the question is a legitimate one of all of these. And no sane person can fail to see our prospects of better leadership is no better whether Republican or Democrat. Which, for example, is really going to secure our borders, without which all talk of “national security” is utter nonsense, and refuse amnesty to millions of illegal aliens?

When it comes to the best laid plans “oft gang agley” I’m an expert on the subject. One particular instance of gaining such expertise in plans gone awry at an early age comes readily to mind.

    Notwithstanding Henry Thoreau’s expressed satisfaction with hoeing the weeds in his bean field “filling trenches with weedy dead,” kids being kids weeding was not high on my list of recreational activities; especially when there were more important things to do like fishing or hunting. And, being a kid, work was a matter of interpretation; if I had to do it, it was work; if I wanted to do it, it wasn’t (funny how that never changes). And, being a kid, just like Tom Sawyer I looked for the easiest way to get the job done.

    However, unlike Tom who had unwitting victims of his con readily at hand to escape personal drudgery I was left alone to my own devices. So it was that I nearly burned down one of the cabins on our mining claim.

    It was summer and the weeds, almost all foxtails, were really dry; a real fire threat. But, I figured, I was smart enough to keep the fire from getting too close to the cabin. And think of all the time and energy I would save in the process. So, laying the hoe aside and striking a match, I lit the stuff off.

    It’s truly amazing how fast fire travels in dry weeds. In no time at all it had reached the side of the cabin. It’s equally amazing how fast a kid can move when inspired by the image of a grandfather with belt in hand, ready to administer the appropriate punishment for catastrophic lazy foolishness.

    Inspired by the threat of certain punishment at the hands of grandad I immediately, with my bare hands, began to throw copious amounts of sand and dirt upon the threatening flames. My effort would have shamed the most industrious badger going after a ground squirrel.

    Helped along by a legion of guardian angels, I managed to extinguish the impending holocaust. Only then did I wonder why, in my “planning,” I didn't have the presence of mind to have a bucket of water handy? Simple; the stupid cabin wasn’t supposed to catch fire! Also, lacking the niceties of electricity and indoor plumbing I would have had to pump the water from the well by hand, and you just didn’t pump a bucket of water unless you really needed it. I was the innocent victim of a plan gone awry. I chopped the rest of the weeds with sore and bloody hands.

Stupid! Certainly; and looking back I can only wonder at such stupidity on my part even as a kid. But nevertheless, there it is; a constant reminder from my past that I have done some really stupid things.

Common sense should have dictated at the very least a bucket of water and a shovel, not just a hoe should have been on hand. That I had not attended to these common sense matters was proof of definite malfunction in brain processes.

Folks, if we are hoping, many praying, for common sense to come to the rescue and prevail among our elected leaders the prospect for such a thing is dismal. In fact, many of the actions on the part of politicians easily equate with the lack of common sense on my part burning those weeds without the essential water and tools at the ready. Stupid!

But politicians are not stupid. They gain elected office through making deals for money; then they stay in office by keeping those supplying them the money happy by legislation increasing the wealth of their supporters. And while not being stupid here is where their acts of stupidity, their lack of common sense derive through greed and avarice, the lust for power and authority over others making them eunuchs of common sense.

That this is an evil system of government that can only aid increasing such evil and the suffering of the great majority of people who are struggling day by day to just make a living is inconsequential to those who rise to power and authority by those who amass wealth through the mechanism of wage slavery. And the mass invasion by millions of illegal aliens from Mexico, that barbarian nation using America to dump its refuse population plays directly into the hands of the powerful whose only interest is in slave labor in order to increase the wealth of the powerful few.

In Key Largo, Bogart tells Rocco he knows what the gangster wants: “More.” To which Rocco replies, “Yeah, that’s it! More!” The line may well have been taken from Jesus who pointed out the love of money is the root of every kind of evil. What does it take to satisfy people like Rocco? More! And those who would increase riches are seldom people of virtue, but on the contrary the distinction between gangster and those “within the law” becomes quite blurred, and as a class none so epitomize Rocco than politicians.

Those among our elected leadership dancing to the tune of the ACLU intent on either making America over into its image or destroying America will do nothing to prevent the mass invasion of millions from Mexico since all from Caesar Bush on down see only the money generated from slave labor benefiting only the wealthy who pay to elect and keep their politicians in office, not the suffering of American citizens being extorted by taxation without representation to pay the bills.

Long ago it was obvious government jobs were outpacing those in the private sector when it came to wages and benefits. In this manner the number of drones feeding at the public tax trough was being rewarded far in excess of the ordinary working class. In this way a Federal Caesar and lesser state vassals has gained such power and authority as to disdain the masses of people who are becoming nothing more than slaves to this despotic tyrant promising “Forty acres and a mule” to the millions of Mexicans invading and colonizing America.

This worked for corrupt Carpetbaggers and Scalawags intent on punishing and plundering a defenseless South following Lincoln’s War. But the result was a nation divided despite Lincoln’s plagiarizing rhetoric. And the pandering of politicians for votes distinctive of the class has only continued to divide America.

It may take a 9/11 here in my native state to get the attention of politicians who are selling out and betraying us for power and authority, for the sake of slave labor and the “Latino vote.” But whether or not there is no discounting the fact California is fast becoming a nightmare of wage slavery as a consequence of this lack of common sense on the part of our “leadership” to deal with the growing nightmare of millions of illegal aliens from Mexico.

Of this I am certain. While I may have been saved from my own act of stupidity by divine intervention from burning the cabin down, I wouldn’t look for such intervention on the part of either California or America when the leadership acts so stupidly it appears to believe it can burn the weeds while not having the proper tools on hand to prevent the flames from threatening the cabin. That such tools are not available is not the fault of those possessed of common sense, but the fault of those like the ACLU and others that believe you can burn the weeds without the necessary tools on hand to prevent catastrophe.

Well folks, the news all around is so bad you will forgive me if I engage in some reverie about a time in America when it seemed the distinction between good and evil was more clearly delineated, a time when our cowboy heroes did the right thing; they kissed their horse rather than the girl.

Just kidding ladies, it didn’t take me all that long to discover there was something to be said for kissing girls. Certainly as some have been kind enough to say mine was not the “usual” childhood. Between life in Little Oklahoma and here on the mining claim I learned the lessons of life that could only be learned in such environments and among the kinds of folks like my maternal grandparents and the Okies and Arkies Steinbeck immortalized. Here are a few examples.

One of the things I miss here in the twilight of life is playing and singing Cool Water with Oscar and Jerry at Arlie’s Club. There are some memories well worth the keeping. Between sets Oscar and I would share memories about some of those already gone on before us that made so much music throughout Kern County in the “old days.” Oscar was one of the few of my acquaintance who remembered the tune “Dusty Skies” and could recall grandad being a bouncer for the dances at Pumpkin Center where he met O’Dell Johnson, the picker and singer from whom my grandparents acquired the mining claim here in the Kern River Valley, named the Big George, in Boulder Gulch.

The only song I could actually recall by O’Dell from the past was Kernville California, U. S. A.; and the only line from the song I could recall from childhood was: “Snowcapped mountains, ripplin’ streams, it’s not heaven though it seems, in Kernville California U. S. A.” Though I cannot remember any more of the lyrics, after all these years I can recall the melody that accompanied the song. My grandparents had a record of the song; too bad it, along with my grandparents, is long gone.

I do have an old photograph of O’Dell hugging my grandmother strictly in fun as they are both laughing for the photo, though with that beer bottle in hand I suspect O’Dell had a snoot full at the time.

If you know the film Some Came Running, you know of Dean Martin refusing to remove his hat. This calls to mind the only time I remember O’Dell having dinner with us after the move to the claim and it was the only occasion of my grandmother offending God.

Grandad being a preacher, among other things, it was only expected that grace would be said before each meal. As grandad bowed to ask the blessing, O’Dell removed his hat. It was the first time any of us had seen him without his hat on his head, and with good reason: O’Dell was bald as a billiard ball! This took my grandmother by such surprise all she could do as grandad asked the Lord’s blessing on our meal was to stare at the bald shining pate of O’Dell with her mouth hanging wide open.

While living on the mining claim we kept a .410 shotgun loaded and at the ready. It was handy for many purposes, though not against mountain lions or bears; there were the .270 and .30-30 for those. However, being full choke the small-bore shotgun was difficult to use wing-shooting quail, but with its light recoil a lot of fun.

There were always various varmints around our place with which to contend, including wild donkeys. In the old days on the claim we often had to confront a small herd of these, about half a dozen that were particularly attracted to the alfalfa we kept for the rabbits. The donkeys would sometimes come in at night and kick the rabbit hutches over to get at the feed; most unpleasant for the resident bunnies. When we would hear the donkeys, out came the .410 to scatter and frighten them away.

One night grandad hearing noise outside grabbed the .410, and easing himself outside in the darkness he saw the shape of something squatting on one of the hutches. Thinking it might be an owl or bobcat, he let fly. The shape disappeared in the hail of shot and grandad got the flashlight to examine his handiwork, only to discover he had “killed” a gallon jug of coal oil. It took a while to clean off the rabbits that had been unexpectedly drenched in the middle of the night, and grandma had a few opinions on grandad’s inability to distinguish between bobcats and jugs.

Well, living in such an environment where you often had to be quick on the trigger one can easily understand such an error. From such pioneer living came the expression: “Shoot first and ask questions later.” It doesn’t fit well in the present age, but despite “killing” the occasional jug of coal oil by accident it worked well enough in many instances to protect a past American way of life. Come to think of it… well, the knowledgeable reader can fill this in.

We had a hand dug well on the mining claim in Boulder Gulch. The stratum was decomposed granite and the site of the claim had a shallow water table. Consequently, the well was only about 12 feet deep. This certainly helped as we had to use a hand pump to draw the water, and those old iron hand pumps don’t work at any great depth.

But have any of you ever heard of keeping catfish in your well to help keep it clean? Grandad swore by this and it was my happy task to supply the fish. While I didn’t mind the catfish, toads would often get in also and had to be cleaned out periodically. This led to my drinking a lot of milk and coffee.

One summer we experienced a drought and using the old Ford pickup had to resort to hauling water from the river about a mile away. Grandad and I soon tired of this task and he decided to deepen our well using dynamite as the quickest and easiest expedient for the job. Having the stuff on hand for the mining claim, we soon had our holes drilled, packed in the charge and proceeded to blow it out. We did manage to hit water again only another five feet down and were back in business.

Things have changed dramatically around the Kern River Valley since those far-off days before the lake went in, a time when there were so few of us living here everybody knew everybody and who did what to or for someone, and no one thought anything of using dynamite for various purposes.

Now from what I understand you can’t legally just haul out the family supply of dynamite and use it in Los Angeles. Not that dynamite is in short supply in L. A., but it seems the city is not only opposed to digging your own well in your backyard, they are fussy about who has and uses dynamite locally.

I personally know some that believe dynamite ought to be available to anyone that wants it. But don’t count me among them. I’m a lifetime supporter of the NRA, an adamant believer and defender of our right to bear arms, but we need a system of government that actually works and not only keeps dynamite out of the hands of those that should not have it, but also keeps guns out of the hands of those that should not have them, most of all children, rather than continued attacks to disarm responsible, law-abiding American citizens. But like our immigration laws, gun laws are only as good as their enforcement against criminals not law abiding citizens.

Folks, when I speak out against those attempting to destroy America I don’t always do so from the perspective of my qualifications as an academic with a Ph. D. There is too much of Norman Rockwell’s America with which I am familiar to be so limited by mere academic qualifications. And the problems we face now are not going to be solved by those who never got dirt or grease under their fingernails; they can only be solved by those who know what it is like to punch a clock for a paycheck, those who understand what real personal responsibility and personal accountability consist of, who have learned the lessons of life that only earning a living honestly can teach.

While reading about our conscientious congressman Thomas outing a taxidermy hoax ripping off taxpayers, I will be forgiven for a certain amount of cynicism. Such loopholes do need to be exposed and closed, but the bigger fish that need to be fried seem to continue getting a pass by those in Congress.
    
Years ago I read a story about one congressman complaining about government spending (for the sake of his constituency) exclaiming “Why, a few billion here and a few billion there and pretty soon we are talking about real money!”

But the story about Thomas and Taxidermy brought to mind something that occurred while I was a boy living on the mining claim. Life without electricity or indoor plumbing here on the mining claim in the Kern River Valley when I was a boy was difficult. Yet one thing we did not do without were Collier’s Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, The Country Gentleman, and The National Geographic. And grandad being an NRA member we also received The National Rifleman (now The American Rifleman), a magazine I really devoured. These and a battery powered Zenith radio were contacts with the world outside the valley.

However, appreciating my intense interest in being a “mountain man” my grandparents also subscribed to Field & Stream for my benefit. As with the NRA publication I would devour every issue of this marvelous magazine, picking up all kinds of knowledge about fishing and hunting, the lore of woodsmen throughout America and even far off lands mentioned in the Geographic.

But the ads in the magazine were of great interest to me as well. Since I was responsible for supplying the wood for heating and cooking I yearned for things like a power chain saw and exploding wedges. Cutting down trees, sawing them up, and splitting the rounds with nothing but hand tools was by no means “child’s play,” though grandad insisted a two-man saw could easily be handled by one boy. So I handled it, learning things like filing the teeth of the long heavy saw, maintaining the set with ball peen hammer so the kerf in the cut was wide enough, and applying kerosene from a coke bottle with a rag in it (Molotov Cocktail) to the saw as with the proper set of the teeth to keep it from binding because of pine pitch.

Looking back such chores today required of children might very well be construed as “child abuse.” But when children know they are loved, such chores are never considered abusive; and moreover things like my supplying the wood for heating and cooking gave me a sense of self-worth and self-esteem knowing I was making a needed and valuable contribution doing my part for our family. Even so, it was hard work and I yearned for the tools that would make such work easier.

Apart from the tools that would have made the work easier, there were other ads that excited me. Along with ads like “How to raise bullfrogs for fun and profit” one offered a correspondence course in taxidermy.

One part of living a pioneer lifestyle required hunting and fishing for the family pot, something that unlike providing firewood was one of the most enjoyable of my responsibilities. But I had wanted to learn how to “stuff” critters like tree squirrels, birds, and fish; so I sent in the required 50 cents for the first lesson in taxidermy.

When the small booklet arrived I found the information needed to begin with mounting a squirrel. Immediately taking my gun and acquiring the needed critter I set to with a will. Sparing the more sensitive reader details of the procedure, the result of this first effort was quite satisfactory. I had mounted the squirrel posed sitting upright with a walnut in its paws. It was truly life-like, so much so my grandparents were quite suitably impressed with my efforts; and it was a treat for me to show it off at school. Many of the kids then wanted me to teach them how to do it, and of course I was a most willing instructor. That even the girls wanted in on this was a real plus.

But another effort in response to an ad did not fare as well. Some of the ads had to do with companies promising payment for animal pelts. Since we had rabbits it was my job to stretch the hides after butchering and properly cure them with salt. I had also accumulated a large amount of tree squirrel pelts, since the squirrels were especially good eating.

I asked grandad one day, “Why don't we send some of the rabbit and squirrel hides to one of those places that advertise in the magazines for pelts?” Grandad agreed it sounded like a plan.

At the time of this experiment in fur entrepreneurial activity, about sixty pounds of pelts sat at the ready, and selecting one of the advertisers, we boxed and shipped off the hides. The cost of shipping came to $1.64 (this was a long time ago). Anticipating sudden riches, I waited impatiently for the check to come in the mail. In about six weeks it did; in the amount of 68 cents! We had lost 96 cents on the deal, not to mention all the time and trouble of skinning, stretching, curing, boxing and shipping. It was at this point that a good vocational counselor should have recognized my genius and groomed me for work in the Pentagon or Congress.

But you know folks, notwithstanding the hardships the life I had as a boy on the mining claim here was one I wouldn’t trade for all the tea in China; and I wish all children could have learned the things I did as a boy in like fashion. Would that all children could be so “deprived” as I was here in the Kern River Valley those many years ago.

Without getting into the subject of my opinion of Los Angeles as a thoroughly corrupt and degenerating third-world nation of a city, when it comes to suing my native County of Kern so Los Angeles County can use us for its personal toilet I do get a mad on. But after reading so much about this I’m beginning to smell a real rat when trying to follow the money, a generally wise course to pursue when things of this nature arise. And the money trail leads to Sacramento.

On the face of it, the very idea of poisoning the San Joaquin Valley with toxins from waste thereby threatening the bread basket of California would seem to be the spawn of lunatics. But when it comes to the symbiotic relationship between money and politicians there is nothing too farfetched to believe, lunatic or not. And if we look at the record of legislation in Sacramento one only need follow the money to realize what Kern County is up against. Money equals votes, and the legislature has proven it is money and the votes it buys, not what is best for either Kern County specifically or California as a whole that is uppermost in the minds of politicians that have proven many times over they care nothing about the future of our state, but only the next election.

Now, if Los Angeles rams this down the throat of Kern County it will be no time at all before the lawsuits follow by the UFW claiming the toxins from this waste is making field workers sick. But pesticide toxins spread by aircraft inadvertently on field workers has become the responsibility of taxpayers, not that of growers. So it logically follows if workers become sick because of Los Angeles waste it will be, once more, the liability of taxpayers, not that of those that profit from the spreading of these toxins.

It really is a kind of Ponzi Scheme where those at the top of the pyramid get the payoff, but the Great Unwashed at the bottom get to pay the bills for the greed of politicians that care nothing about the future of California, only the money to buy the votes that keep them in their cushy jobs accountable to no one and with an eye to nothing but the next election, not the future of California. And even though this thing of dumping the toxins from Los Angeles onto Kern County fields is a scorched earth policy, as cynical as it appears given the track record of Sacramento who doubts the outcome?

Now I would hope cooler and saner heads would prevail in this battle, but it isn’t a matter subject to cooler and saner heads, it is a matter of following the money and the votes it buys for those in power in Sacramento. And between Los Angeles and Kern County we know how that power will play out, which should give all Californians pause to think about what kind of government is really running our state and do what we can at the ballot box.

When it comes to matters of faith there are many challenges, not all of them of a religious nature. Take Apollo 11 for example. Like many of you I was glued to my TV set on July 20, 1969 when that astounding, spell-binding picture of Neil Armstrong came through showing the first man to step foot on the moon. Or did he? NASA can’t find the original tape of that “First small step.” Well, they are welcome to the picture I took with my camera at the very instant of the TV image being transmitted of that first step on the moon.

Ok, so confession is good for the soul (depending). I watched Glenn Beck yesterday lampooning the moon landing naysayers. But yes, Aldrin did have a twitch of the lips when responding to the question of whether he actually landed on the moon, seeming to lend credence to Bart Sibrel’s accusation of the moon landing having actually occurred at a back lot in Culver City (I used to work in that town). And a few films were made capitalizing on doubts about the moon landing.

The biggest problem I have with conspiracy theories revolving around Foggy Bottom is the fact our government has lied to We the People for so long no one knows when anyone in government is telling us the truth. If this were mere cynicism that would be one thing, but in an increasingly dangerous world the attitude of Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men” reflecting what we have come to believe is the attitude of our “leaders” comes through clearly: “You can’t handle the truth!”

Well, I am one American, and doubtless one among millions of others, that begs to differ with our Federal Caesar. Perhaps it is no more than naiveté on my part, though I doubt this; I believe We the People can handle the truth if only those in government were to start telling us the truth. A pathological liar is one that tells a lie when the truth would serve them better. Has the government come to this? A pack of pathological liars? We have just cause to wonder given the infamous pattern of deception from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Warren and 9/11 Commissions, and now with the wars ongoing and the fingers in DC being pointed in every direction attempting to shift blame for the lies and deceptions.

It is understandable given the lack of virtue on the part of politicians that they scurry like rats attempting to protect their backsides and rice bowls when threatened. But the world has become far too dangerous for politicians to do business as usual, and they had better start dealing in truth rather than lies if they expect the cooperation of We the People.

Fairy tales are the proper domain of children, and as a child I loved fairy tales. But it is at the least unbecoming for the “adults” in our government to engage in fairy tales, and then take umbrage when the Great Unwashed take exception to being treated like children and expected to believe such fairy tales.

An attractive young woman was being pestered by a very obnoxious man asking her for a date until she finally told him “I don’t date outside my species.” It has come to this for me in my attitude toward politicians. They have become so utterly obnoxious in their “wooing for votes” it is far past time We the People start telling them we don’t date outside our species.

But it isn’t just politicians that engage in lies and deceptions, the ACLU being an infamous example.

Those of us who know the real story of the atomic bombs being dropped on Japan, those of us who actually lived WWII and were there during that time in our history know it was the right decision to end the war, sparing literally hundreds of thousands if not millions of both American and Japanese lives by doing so. Both Hitler and Tojo would not have hesitated to use such weapons against us, and but for the grace of God, in my opinion, may well have done so had we not acted as we did at the time.

And those of us who lived that part of American history also know it was imperative those concentration camps for Japanese be used. There was absolutely no way to tell who was an enemy and who was not, and given the hatred for Japanese at that time much safer for those in America to be interned. But there are “concentration camps” right now throughout America wherever Muslims and Mexicans colonize. But neither those in government or the media will admit this. Nevertheless despite the ACLU and timorous lying politicians racial profiling had better begin in earnest now just as it was done during WWII. Just one more example of We the People being treated as though we can’t handle the truth.

Here is another example of a truth Big Brother seems to believe We the People can’t handle. I began teaching in Watts immediately following the riots of 1965. The hatred on the part of people in that community was palpable, but I became accepted because I could teach the kids how to run a lathe and mill, how to weld and fix cars, in short I could teach them the skills that would enable them to escape the ghetto. The community respected this, and came to respect me not as a Caucasian, but as someone who offered young people some hope in the face of endemic hopelessness.

But it didn’t take me long to understand what caused the riots, what engendered such rage and hatred on the part of those living in Watts. The people were for the most part ignorant and uneducated, most had never known anything but welfare as a way of life, had never known lives not threatened by crime and violence. But they did know they had no voice in government, and as a consequence they knew they lived in abject hopelessness of anything ever changing for the better. It is this where I preach a “gospel” of putting the needs of Americans before the needs of other nations, where I believe the illegal invasion from Mexico is doing violence to legitimate American citizens like those of Watts because of the illegal aliens colonizing Bakersfield and San Jose, and the threatening “Latino” votes increasingly causing the legitimate citizens of America to be betrayed for the sake of slave labor to benefit only the wealthy refusing to secure our borders thereby inviting that Muslim terrorist nuclear bomb going off in America.
     Of course enforcing present immigration laws and holding the employers of illegal aliens to account with meaningful penalties and jail or prison time is essential. But in light of the threats against America securing our borders must be the first priority!

Over the years I have been writing of political and social problems there have been those that have taken it upon themselves to attack me personally for my views. But such people remind me of a story in the old Saturday Evening Post.

The manager of a collection agency was dictating a letter to his secretary to be sent to a delinquent debtor. Reading the letter back to her boss, he told her “I think that might be a little too strong.” So, he made a few changes and she read it back to him once more. Again he said, “That’s still just a little too strong.” He changed the wording again, and after reading the letter back to him the third time he said to his secretary, “Now that’s about right. Just drop the words ‘rotten deadbeat’ and ‘no good bum’ and I think we’ve got it.”

You can well imagine how the first letter must have read before the manager decided his final draft was acceptable. And just so with many of the “love letters” I have received over the years of a like nature. I wish those attacking me could at least engage in civilized language, but that is the risk any writer takes when taking on subjects that inspire the evangelistic fervor of their enemies. And though I would like to believe some of those attacking me have the best intentions, like Peter being confronted as Jesus was being tried their speech betrays them.

When asked by one of his Parliament members why he believes so much in America, England’s Prime Minister Tony Blair replied “A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in  ... and how many want out.”

True enough, but the books, columns, and talk shows continue to proliferate as to why this is so. This much is certain, Muslims and Mexicans have no interest whatsoever in America’s heritage and culture, they have no intention of acculturating or assimilating into being Americans; their allegiances are not to America, but to what they have to gain by milking America. Muslims pledge allegiance to Allah, and Mexicans pledge allegiance to Mexico with both groups colonizing, not assimilating.

We the People do have to make the determination of whether our heritage, culture, and language are worth preserving or not. We most certainly cannot depend on politicians that prostitute themselves for votes to have the best interests of America in mind when to even speak of “national security” without secure borders were it not so dangerous would be patently ridiculous on the face of it.

It is equally ridiculous to mouth the meaningless phrase “war on terrorism” when it is so painfully obvious racial profiling is essential at our airports and elsewhere. But thanks to Jimmy Carter forbidding the use of the correct phrase “illegal aliens,” millions of Mexicans invading America illegally became legitimized by the politically correct term “immigrants.” The media in general caved and began to perpetuate this Orwellian Doublespeak. The result has been a descent into chaos when even our police are emasculated by ACLU perpetuated political correctness from doing their job to “Serve and Protect.”

Right now one must reasonably ask who would want the job of policeman or border patrol agent when it is so obvious they will be thrown to the lions if they attempt to do their jobs? And, of course, there is no help to be expected from a Federal Caesar without any vestige of responsibility or accountability to We the People, as the infamous 9/11 Commission so well illustrated.

But follow the money every time. Who profits from the slave labor of millions of illegal aliens from Mexico encouraged by the media, politicians and their corporate bosses? Only the wealthy; and the Great Unwashed, the legitimate citizens of America, those of us who still believe America’s heritage, culture, and language are worth preserving are extorted by taxation without representation to pay the bills. And dare speak out in favor of preserving our heritage, culture, and language, dare speak out about securing our borders and expelling illegal aliens is to invite every form of calumny heaped upon you.

As I pointed out immediately following 9/11 when Bush stupidly hired Madison Avenue to put a good face on his actions America has no chance of winning the propaganda war against the enemy of Islam. Our Muslim enemies suffer no restrictions in demonizing America and Israel, but because of university bred and ACLU enforced political correctness America is powerless to properly demonize our enemies, and a politically correct war is unwinnable. But you have to know America’s heritage and culture is not being taught or encouraged in Mosques.

Is this to be the sum of the matter, an America emasculated and powerless to fight a war to win against our enemies because of being sold out and betrayed by our “leadership?” The sheer lunacy of such a thing is obvious to a sane and rational mind. Heritage, Culture, Language, Borders! These define all nations, and the loss of any of these is to lose any identity as a nation. And America is not exempt from this!

Here in my native Kern County it is obvious Mexicans, many of them illegal aliens, commit a disproportionate number of crimes. But none of authority dare speak directly to this issue, and even a Letter to the Editor in today’s Californian the writer dared not specifically mention Mexicans being disproportionately involved in crimes though these were clearly meant by the writer. The police and the media are emasculated by political correctness from even properly describing wanted criminals. It dare not be spoken Mexicans are bankrupting the county through the demands on schools, social services, medical services, stretching police to the breaking point and filling jails and prisons. But to speak directly to this issue as one local TV producer exclaimed to me “We would be eaten alive if we did that!”

Few would disagree with the maxim “Only the truth wears well.” But where is the truth to be found when people are bullied and tyrannized from speaking the truth, when a system of government and the media punishes those who speak the truth? Even as I write of these things I know full well I am inviting such bullying attacks that have served to silence so many. As one policeman told me in respect to trying to do his job “Who needs the grief?” So, you go along to get along. And because those who know better do not do better, when those who know the truth are afraid to speak the truth America is in real danger.

An objective and pragmatic view of the dangers threatening America would lead one to believe the only choices are the lesser of evils, and the inevitable result being evil regardless. How can bankrupting America through ruinous trade agreements serve our future as a nation? How can millions of illegal aliens contributing to this bankruptcy serve our future? How can the refusal to secure our borders do anything other than invite that Muslim terrorist nuclear bomb going off here? How can America retain any identity as a nation without the absolute of a national language, and one that prevails throughout all the institutions of America without the need of “translators,” invariably Spanish, throughout?

But now those who recognize the manifold threats to America posed by Muslims, and Mexicans by the thousands daily streaming across our unsecured borders illegally and speak the truth about the threats these pose to America, those of us who believe we have a heritage, culture, and language worth preserving are labeled “racist” and the bullies win. But if these threats are not dealt with and the bullies win, just what is it they will have won?

The ACLU, Muslims, Mexicans, these want an America in their image. But this is patently impossible of achieving since the inescapable imperative of Heritage, Culture, Language, Borders, these absolutes defining all nations will not be denied. And we seek in vain for any in positions of authority addressing this, but on the contrary are too busy selling out and betraying America for power and profits.

To ask rhetorically: How can an America defined by those who would destroy our heritage and culture, who not only refuse to assimilate and learn English but insist on ballots printed in a polyglot of foreign tongues, who howl for “open borders” and would destroy our identity as a nation be trusted or of any help to the rest of the world? I’m now far too old to be concerned about my future, but those my age do know better, and we are responsible for speaking out because of what we do know of an America that used to be trusted and was once a beacon of hope to the rest of the world, an America that once literally saved the world during WWII.

My generation did not do everything right, far from it, but we knew an America with a national heritage, culture and identity worth preserving. And to witness what our America is becoming demands we speak out while we still can before our voices are stilled.

    Listening to politicians jockeying for position and power brought an appropriate episode to mind from my life as a boy living on the mining claim.

    It was summer time and I had been out fishing. It was nearly dark when I got back to the cabin, and my grandparents were away so the lamps had not been lit. I was barefoot as usual, and upon entering the cabin my bare right foot came right smack down on a snake! All I remember is the feel of the reptile’s sudden, muscular jerking coiling under my foot. I don’t remember leaving the cabin, let alone how I went through the door. All I know is I was magically transported outside the cabin instantly.

    Once my heart started up again, I gathered my wits and courage and very cautiously and carefully stepped back inside the cabin. Lighting a coal oil lamp I made a careful survey of the place, but the snake was not to be found. Looking back, I know the snake had to have been at least as surprised as I was. But the serpent probably didn’t have the propensity for heart failure.

    This world is full of “snakes,” and it behooves us to tread through the often darkness properly shod and light in hand. For many of us, the Gospel is that light by which we make our way through the darkness of this world system.

“And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation than the loss of worship? Then all things go to decay. Genius leaves the temple, to haunt the senate or the market. Literature becomes frivolous. Science is cold. The eye of youth is not lighted by the hope of other worlds, and age is without honor. Society lives to trifles, and when men die we do not mention them.”

Emerson was condemned by many of the clergy of his time because of his transcendental views, his perceived departure from the faith. Yet, in his address to prospective ministers he called attention, as did Benjamin Franklin before him, to the need of worship in a civilized society.

However, both Franklin and Emerson recognized the need of freedom for such worship taking many forms, even Tom Paine affirming this despite his legitimate accusations against the “black coats.” The best minds throughout history have devoted themselves to the support of religious sentiment in various forms, but the best among these invariably with a cautionary word that such sentiment not be given the power of the sword, a condition historically prevailing in Muslim nations that is now threatening civilization and threatening nuclear Armageddon as a consequence.

Of course legitimate blame should be laid upon those like Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, and these should be held accountable and made to answer for the multitude of their lies and duplicity leading America into the present wars. But the gauntlet has been cast and it seems there is no turning back the clock. No matter the efforts toward world peace, the Prince of Darkness and his followers will have none of it. And whether one subscribes to the theological interpretation of world events or not, the best word to describe the lunacy of world leaders seeming to be marching to Armageddon is “diabolical.”

The snakes are everywhere, and we all need a light of some kind to make our way through the darkness. But it is folly on the part of any here in America to attack our Christian heritage and culture thereby encouraging the enemy of Islam.

Those of us living in the Kern River Valley appreciate the quality of life here, the lake and the beauty of the river, the streams and mountains, the diversity of wildlife, the clean air and the lack of traffic congestion or having to contend with crowds while shopping.

However (isn’t there always?), the need to keep areas around our homes free of weeds due to the ever present fire danger is something we live with as well, and few of us would think we are doing violence to the flora by keeping the areas around our homes weed-free. The old evangelist Billy Sunday preached “Booze has its place, but its place is in hell!” Not a few of us would say the same of weeds.

Of his bean field Henry Thoreau wrote, “Daily the beans saw me come to their rescue armed with a hoe, and thin the ranks of their enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead. Many a lusty crest-waving Hector, that towered a whole foot above his crowding comrades, fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust.”

Many of us have had the experience of Henry going out and doing battle with weeds. Whether those who putter in their gardens or those of us who have had the experience of growing fruits and vegetables of necessity, there is something remarkably rewarding to our souls, if you will, about chopping down those weeds that threaten the more noble fruits of the soil.

For those that lacked the experience of growing their own food prior to WWII, the Victory Gardens made such experience a necessity in many cases. Virtually overnight millions of Americans quickly learned the skills of husbandry, to appreciate Henry’s attitude toward weeds, and have taken similar delight in hoeing down those “lusty crest-waving Hectors” with like satisfaction as he did in seeing them roll in the dust.

Remarkably, those of otherwise peaceful disposition, those who would never harm a fly, take great satisfaction in chopping down the weeds in their gardens, “filling up trenches with weedy dead.” Even that most noble of men, Albert Schweitzer, with his doctrine of “reverence for life” was not above using an instrument of violence, a hoe, against the “enemy weeds” in his garden.

One must suppose that the great majority of people, while properly decrying war and violence against Nature, even those like me who count us among “environmentalists” allow an exemption when it comes to weeds. And just so with the “Weeds of Islam." Whatever blame justly accrues to our own leaders, and no one despises this present “crop” of “leaders” more than I do, whatever blame may be justly laid on Israel this is a war threatening civilization; and it is a war that must be fought to win! The problem is a lack of virtuous leaders qualified to wage such a war on the basis of what is right for the sake of civilization rather than one for greed and power.

But I believe America is much better than our leaders, and it this inherent goodness of the majority of Americans that must be counted on just as it was in WWII. And despite the many critics of such a thing, I have made a donation to Israel as a token of my support for the efforts of that nation against the threatening Weeds of Islam.

While scientists still have no explanation or definition for what life is, what “it” is that animates the “clay” and departs at death, nor have an answer to the question about the origin of life, this has not dissuaded those that insist on a simplistic Darwinism replete with labels in lieu of understanding. Abusing the use of taxpayer money in the high-flown rhetoric of “civil rights, diversity, multiculturalism, fairness, equality” etc. insisting on reading into our Constitution things never in the mind of the Founding Fathers the ACLU has been enormously successful in suing and shouting down Christians. Even Nobel-winning physicists and scientists who believe Intelligent Design is the more rational explanation are purposely ignored in the schools due to the bullying tactics of the ACLU together with their allies in the universities, judiciary, and media. It is no accident the universities employ only those adhering to the party line of the ACLU, thereby assuring personnel perpetuating Darwinism as the only acceptable doctrine of origins.

But as the Bible has it given the god of this world, Satan, the accuser and deceiver of humankind, a liar and murderer from the beginning with a burning and intense hatred for humankind this success of the ACLU regarding Darwinism is understandable. Of course this is “religious” thinking about Satan and belonging to the area of theological speculation, not science, and I freely confess such being the patently obvious case. I express such a belief as being just that; a belief, one that to me makes sense of a world otherwise led of lunatics. But in respect to science consider only the following from an abundant wealth of such scientific fact:

MSNBC: “Researchers calculate that the 100,000 ganglion cells in a guinea pig retina transmit roughly 875,000 bits of information per second. The human retina contains about 10 times more ganglion cells than that of guinea pigs, so it would transmit data at roughly 10 million bits per second, the researchers estimate. This is comparable to an Ethernet connection, which transmits information between computers at speeds of 10 million to 100 million bits per second.”

As the Scripture has it we are “wonderfully made,” but many refuse to accept there was a Creator involved who “Breathed into the Adam the breath of life,” whereby the Adam became a “living soul” distinguishing humankind from the beasts of the field and all other life forms; and in my opinion distinguished the Adam, Modern Man, from all the various hominids preceding over millions of years thereby explaining the otherwise inexplicable sudden and abrupt advent of civilization composed for the first time of human beings capable of articulated speech and writing by which it became possible to pass the learning of one generation to another. To be sure there is legitimate speculation about space visitors or immigrants accounting for this, stories surrounding Atlantis and other, but if not it would make the Biblical account about such an intervention on the part of God(s?) in the creation of the Adam of unimaginable significance. But to what purpose?

Since the very beginning humankind has struggled with the questions “Where did I come from, why am I here, where am I going?” the very questions evidencing something differentiating us from the beasts of the field; even the ability to engage in searches for meaning to existence evidencing something other than our lives being the accident of a cold and uncaring Cosmos.

Whence such questions and searching for meaning if not in response to a Creator? But we are no closer now to any empirical answer than when the questions were first posed. Not all the philosophies or theologies of humankind have been able to provide us an answer to these questions, but they have certainly resulted in the wars of men and incalculable suffering and death throughout our history as a species, making such a history one of continual conflict, suffering and bloodletting.

Still it remains undeniable prayer comes to us as naturally as breathing, it is natural to us as Jesus pointed out to call out to a Creator; and it remains undeniable people cry out to God in extremis giving rise to expressions such as “There are no atheists in foxholes.” However, I believe we find an answer in the beginning chapters of Genesis and elsewhere throughout the Bible.

The universe is not eternal, it had a beginning; and because it had a beginning it will have an end. And while it is impossible for human beings to conceive of such a beginning or end, nevertheless there it is. Of even greater magnitude beyond our ability to understand or even conceive is the fact “something” was before the universe, and “something” planted that “seed” in the beginning. Recognizing the inability of humankind to conceive of such a beginning or end Emerson wrote “Not one step has man taken toward the solution of the problem of his destiny.” And here one-hundred and sixty-five years after Emerson made that statement we are still no closer than he was to an answer apart from the potential, and some would say the inevitability of “solving” the problem by destroying ourselves.

The body of evidence supporting ID is voluminous, but you will not find it in the curriculum of state schools, the result often being a confrontation between parents and the schools with their court imposed doctrine of in loco parentis lending the weight of authority to the schools rather than the home. And from kindergarten on the child is thrust into an environment of structured authority that overwhelms the home.

But children are no longer even taught the rudimentary lessons of honesty and personal integrity because of the fear on the part of teachers they might be sued for espousing a point of view contrary to the laws prohibiting any expression that might be construed as “moralistic” or “religious.” Still, the state mandated doctrine of relativism and situational ethics does not translate into moral behavior. When a child is told it is wrong to lie, cheat, or steal, they need something to enforce such instruction, and being told these are simply wrong has little to commend itself to a child unless it relates to something lending moral force to such instruction. And a belief in God has historically been the motive force for such instruction. But such instruction in the home comes up against an amoral institution of the school frustrating and contradicting the moral instruction of parents, and too often children are forced to choose between the authority of teachers and parents.

As a result of my years in the classroom as a teacher and completing a doctoral dissertation on the subject of education I concluded a system designed for failure could not have been better accomplished had it been done purposely. We live with the proof of my conclusion. Tragically for America this same system designed for failure applies to our government.

On the face of it the systematic organization of hatreds based on both religion and politics are those of lunatics. But eventually the civilizing influence of Christianity became a system from which the very best of the arts and sciences flourished. Even now, despite past abuses in the name of Jesus, one cannot point to the churches as being breeding grounds for terrorists, and no religious system has had more to do with elevating women from being the chattel of men to a place where they enjoy the position they now have in Christian nations.

All debate for the individual ends at death no matter what the beliefs. It is this preparation for your inevitable end that distinguishes between the barbarians like Muslims and the civilized. America’s very foundation is rooted in the work and beliefs of the Christian religion. But, now, the enemies of America, especially Muslim nations, seek to destroy us because of this very heritage and culture of America rooted in Christianity and the Bible. And none are more intent on the destruction, blindly I will say, of America than the ACLU.

Despite the obvious, as I pointed out yesterday, the ACLU is committed to destroying every vestige of our Christian heritage and culture, even attacking our language and borders here in America. This is a “scorched earth” agenda following the pattern of Hitler. Failing to enforce a Germany in his image, he would have destroyed Germany; and just so with the ACLU and America.

Within a civilized nation and culture, one can debate issues. But when it comes to Christianity and Darwinism there is no room for debate with the ACLU, it is either their way or destruction. And given the present path of world leaders, it would seem Muslim nations are in agreement with the ACLU.

I Thessalonians 5:3: For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.

A “Ceasefire?” Just who believes this Muslim fanaticism and Big Oil greed driven propaganda? No one has been more condemnatory of Caesar Bush and Company with their wars motivated by greed and lust for power than I have been. But the fat is in the fire now and a politically correct war is unwinnable. The Muslim enemy must be properly demonized as we did of the Japanese and Germans in WWII, and the war fought to win rather than protracted for the sake of Big Oil, politicians and their corporate bosses. If not, bring the troops home and secure our own borders before that Muslim terrorist nuclear bomb goes off here!
    Given the escalating scenario of End Times predictions in which the nations of the world align themselves for war against America and Israel, discounting the metaphysical there is nothing like a Krakataou or immense earthquake to order priorities. The contemporary equivalent of human manufacture is a nuclear bomb. As Henry Thoreau pointed out reflecting the recent Muslim terrorist effort, you may balk the serpent at one point but it will only appear at another.

What should be surprising is the utter failure of civilized nations to recognize the fact and act on the fact there is no possible way to appease a bully, no possible way for us to accommodate Islam. France and other European nations are being made to confront the Muslim monster they have allowed in their midst and England is learning the hard way Muslims do not assimilate, they colonize. And once colonized will do everything possible to impose their barbaric religion of the sword on others.

It seems foolish in the extreme for anyone to attempt frustrating intelligence gathering efforts on the part of our police agencies, to be howling “Profiling!” at every attempt to concentrate police efforts where they properly belong because of an obvious enemy of America. And at the forefront of this effort to prevent our dealing effectively with our enemies: The ACLU.

Despite the continued attacks by the ACLU on Christians these are not plotting to destroy America, and churches are not breeding grounds for terrorists. No, the greatest threat to America by far is the ACLU with its allied politicians, judiciary, and media being the cause of our treasonously porous borders, and reflecting the scorched earth philosophy of Hitler will destroy America if it cannot have an America made in its image!

You simply cannot look at the facts of the situation and come to any other conclusion, the madness of such a thing the stuff of nightmares as in the passion-driven madness of the unrequited lover telling the object of their passion before killing them and destroying themselves in the process “If I can’t have you, no one else will!” The sheer lunacy of such a thing on the part of the ACLU and its allies is obvious to all thinking persons of sound mind.

So I’m not finished with cats. A close friend who started kidding about cats really being space aliens sent me a picture showing the cutest little white kitten with wide open blue eyes innocently peering at you, the pure innocence of the warm, furry, cuddly little creature touching your heart captioned “The voices are telling me to kill you.” Now come on folks, space aliens or not who wouldn’t laugh at the glaring incongruity of such a thing?

I do confess the resident cat earns her keep around here by keeping the place free of rats and gophers. But when she proudly brings me one of her “trophies,” I’m not sure whether it is to show me her prowess as a hunter and is earning her keep or a sign of affection, willing to share her food with me? Such affection on the part of dogs is legendary, but cats? They seem to be much more selfish in their behavior, seeming to put the lie to the term “affection.” But don’t try to tell that to anyone who loves cats.

When I was a boy we didn’t go out to eat very often, but when we did my grandparent’s favorite place was Bill Lee’s Chinese restaurant. He and my grandparents were great friends and grandad and Bill especially were given to joking and kidding with each other.

During WWII meat was rationed and grandad once asked Bill where he was able to get the meat for his restaurant? With fabled Oriental inscrutability Bill put on his most somber face and told grandad most of the meat was actually rabbit. When grandad asked where he got the rabbits Bill replied, “I go outside the restaurant here at night and shoot them,” to which grandad replied in turn, “Why Bill, you’re pulling my leg. There aren’t any rabbits here in town.” With that somber expression Bill replied, “Sure, I go outside here at night and when the rabbit go ‘meow, meow’ I shoot him.”

Now grandad being the one to usually pull such jokes on Bill, he couldn’t help busting out laughing at being the “straight man” for a change, especially since my grandparents had a large rabbitry and if Bill wanted rabbit all he had to do was ask. Grandad had been taken in and blindsided by Bill, and that made the whole thing all the funnier and grandad appreciating the joke even at his expense regaled many others with the story. But I was a kid, and I began to view Bill’s meat dishes in a new light thereafter.

My great-grandmother was the storyteller in the family. She had a marvelous fund of stories my brother and I never tired of hearing over and over. Her life on a farm in Kansas and the many things that made such a life so interesting were the source of many stories, one of which had to do with two cats. The antics of these two cats was so entertaining my great-grandmother said the hired hands would actually light lanterns to watch them when the cats were going at it in the night. She would then go on to explain in graphic detail about how the two cats would plan elaborate games to play, seeming to plan various ambushes and attacks on each other.

You have to go a long way back in time to understand how such a thing would be worth getting up in the night and lighting lanterns to watch cats at play being worth the effort. But it was a time long before Hollywood became nationwide entertainment or there was a TV in every home. Yet, even in today’s world of entertainment entire websites are devoted to cats with a plethora of comic cat behavior.

When I was a boy, I vividly recall seeing a performance in San Francisco in which trained cats did truly remarkable things. One segment had cats performing as firemen with hook and ladder fire wagon rescuing another cat from a building, truly remarkable as anyone with experience of cats will testify. But herding cats? Forget it. However, who can fail to laugh at expressions like being “nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs?” Hey, cats have “handles” as any child can testify who has sled one around by its handle on a linoleum floor.

In “First Blood” the cop asks why God would ever make a creature like Rambo? Not a few people are wondering the same thing about cats, and when I look at the domestic small pussycat and then consider lions and tigers I have to wonder what could possibly have been in the mind of God to do such a thing? I will say anyone that thinks lions and tigers can be “pets” have to have rocks in their heads. As to God creating lions and tigers, maybe not if one credits Satan as a competitor in the creative process, but whether or not few creatures so well exemplify Nature red in tooth and claw as cats of every kind big or small.

But leaving off any heated theological debates, here of late reading all the comments about cats has been really interesting. There are definitely people who love them and people who hate them. But the history of the old maid with her cat for company is a long one, though not a few old men like me fall into the same category. And oldsters living alone especially often find a dog too much trouble to care for, while cats are relatively easy to keep around.

Then too cats have been fascinating to people since the beginning, those like the ancient Egyptians having a real thing about them. I loved the scene in “The Mummy” with Brendan Fraser (a really funny guy) frightening the creature with a pussycat. A close friend suggested cats are really “aliens,” and it has become a running joke between us ever since. And seldom does the advice “Don’t name something you might have to eat” apply to cats.

I will say at the outset that were it not for their being warm and furry, with their meow and purr, with their displaying such distinctively cat characteristics and antics, their loving the comfort of a warm lap while having their furry bodies stroked and being a pleasant thing for humans to do, their inviting so many cute pictures and cartoons like Sylvester, Garfield, and others there would most definitely be a bounty on the critters, and I can easily commiserate with those who quite rightly complain about the problems they can create.

The present resident cat showed up at my back door here in the country as a “dumpee.” A feral kitten at the time, it must have recognized me as someone who likes cats; and electing to stay has now been here for over seven years. But living in the country as I do, she remains for the most part an outdoor cat though in winter has her own cushion inside my cottage, but often preferring my lap which requires me at times to do my typing around her.

But to my mind there is no excuse for people that dump either cats or dogs to run wild. And while feral cats are not going to maul people to death as some dogs do, they prey on birds which presents a real problem where one would like to have songbirds especially around.

Here in the country I love seeing the quail, doves, and smaller birds all about my place, and I take care to provide water and seed for them. But here is the resident cat, eyeballing them and making the point Nature is somewhat either erratic or uncaring of weaker creatures being the prey of stronger, a continual reminder Nature is far from being perfect, and perhaps a reflection of the command by God in Genesis for humans to “subdue the earth.”

However, there is no solution to the problem of cats becoming a problem for people or other critters apart from responsible people. But like the problems of gangs and graffiti and other forms of vandalism in the cities, the lack of responsible people lies at the bottom of the trouble. Animals will do what their nature is to do, but people are responsible for matters of choice.

I just received a very curious phone call. It was obvious English was not the caller’s native language, and it was very difficult for me to understand anything the caller was saying. But I was finally able to decipher enough to realize the caller was asking if I would please listen to a recorded message from some politician. I responded with a polite “No thank you” and hung up. But are there any politicians out there that actually believe outsourced phone calls from places like India to the electorate in America are going to be kindly received? Has it really come to such a pass in America?

Well, having already explained to some people Lieberman’s loss as a Mel Gibson conspiracy I would much rather write of something that to me is far more significant. Fishing.

Even places like Iraq and Iran have trout streams. So perhaps it takes a more civilized culture to produce the Izaak Waltons and recognize the value of trout streams and the things these can teach children rather than being raised to blow up airplanes and decapitate innocent people and hate others just because they are “different?” And don’t even begin attempting to point out such people in America where decapitating and shooting “infidels” with a promise of “paradise” is the reward for doing so is not the norm. Those who would like to compare such apples and oranges should be living somewhere other than America.

However, when it comes to fishing I emphasize trout streams because they have a very different kind of magic, though fishing as such weaves a magic spell wherever it is done. But whether coffee-colored sloughs, ponds, or rivers where catfish lurk, the marvelous lakes filled with bass or pickerel, once a child is introduced to fishing it often results in a magical transformation, and cannot but bless the parent who is privileged to witness the transformation in both girls and boys with that first fish.

Before I continue; the needed prefatory caveats. My two girls were more than equal to my boys when it came to fishing and shooting. In fact, they were if anything better than the boys at such things. Ok, I know, as the boys often pointed out, their sisters were treated preferentially. My only reply was “Wait till you have little girls of your own.” I learned early on boys will never understand the discriminatory treatment of fathers toward their daughters until they have such little “angels,” more to my way of thinking little “aliens” of their own. Little girls, as I came to believe, must definitely be from another planet.

Their other-worldly status aside the girls loved to fish, and were quite expert at it. So I ask the distaff side to keep this in mind, and grant me some needed latitude in the following somewhat, but only somewhat, tongue in cheek remarks.

    Over the years, I've noticed some differences between men and women. Some will applaud the sagacity and profundity of that statement. It’s true that men and women have many different priorities and notice different things, and I've noticed that when it comes to fishing, men and women often don't communicate on the same level. The real importance of fishing is lost to women who do not love to fish, but is obvious to men. That's why no amount of explanation to such women will suffice.

    Now I know some women like my girls who really love to fish. But some women don't seem to comprehend the religious significance, the true worship of the devout angler. The ritual of adorning one's self with the liturgical vestments and equipment of Holy Office is, mostly, nonsense to some women.

    I have asked a few women if they have something as peculiar to their gender as fishing is to men. So far, none have been able to come up with anything. If you have any ideas on the subject, please let me know. It seems quite a conundrum at the present. I believe we could all profit from a thorough research of the question.

    If women as a whole do have something of a like nature that speaks to their souls as fishing does to some men, it seems an elusive thing for the time being. Remember one thing; if such a thing exists only women, as with men and fishing, will be able to understand it. If it does not, I have to wonder why?

    On a very somber note, justifiable fear is one legitimate concern that deprives women of the wilderness experience. It cannot be denied that women have every reason to be afraid to wander in the wild. Imagine what must go through a woman's mind if she finds herself alone at some distant stream and three strange men approach. It would never have crossed my mind to allow my little girls to fish Bull Run Creek without me along. That’s a very real and tragic condemnation of the human species in too many instances.

    While in today's increasingly dangerous society even men must be on guard against one another, it is women who bear the brunt of having to be constantly vigilant against the depredations of “monsters.” I can’t help but wonder how men would handle such a thing? And this has been the case throughout history. It goes a long way toward explaining some of the resentment and animosity women have toward men since they know full well they should not have to fear men.

    But that said, and ugly as it is I needed to say it, a man who truly loves to fish seems to have an instinct for what is acceptable worship when embarking on Pilgrimage to the trout stream. He knows that to enter the Holy of Holies, the Cathedral of the wilderness, requires the proper sacrifices and attitude of worship or the god of fishermen will not bless his quest.

    The first and most important sacrifice is time. It takes real grit and determination, real honesty and integrity, to make the time available from his busy schedule, for the true believer to “go to church.” He must do this at the possible risk of incurring the wrath of those less devout, like the little woman. She may think it more important to clean the garage or cut the grass. Heresy! But the true believer will not let such inconsequential things stay him from his course.

    It’s unfortunate that some few women don't seem to understand the significance of having a man who loves to fish. If they knew that the time he spends at the lake, river or stream might be the one thing that makes him different from a man who spends his time aggravating her in many ways, she might be properly grateful.

    If you are a woman with a man who loves to fish, it would help you to accept the fact that, like a woman with PMS, he will suffer the same symptoms when deprived of his soul's need of the supply of a pool of trout or catfish. When that time comes upon him, you'd better let him go or be prepared to suffer the headaches, crabbiness, lethargy and other complaints common to the malady. And, of course, nothing you say or do, during such a time, will be right.

    Keep in mind the fact, that, if a man denies the spirit and does not go fishing when it is his clear duty to do so, it will only create a “situation” at home. His inner battle will result in all kinds of inharmonious behavior; he will wander aimlessly and listlessly, he will seem to be distant and not hear when spoken to (Some women will say I have just described their man whether he loves to fish or not).

    In some of the worst cases, he may resort to watching bowling on TV and the situation is irreversible... terminal. You have lost him to a netherworld… a word to the wise.

    Now we all know that there is a difference between the true believer and the fanatic. When I first received the call to fish, I was a small boy equipped with cane pole and string line while a hapless angleworm dangled from the hook at the end. But the Damascus Light struck with my first fish off the muddy bank of the old Kern River. I say the “old” because that sacred spot is now under the waters of Lake Isabella. Sacrilege!

    It was a marvelously sunny, warm summer day. My grandfather and grandmother had taken me to the river soon after we moved to the old mining claim in Boulder Gulch. The river, its surface mirror-like between the rapids, glistening in the sunlight, moving slowly around large granite boulders, its banks shaded by rows of leafy old Cottonwoods looked and smelled like heaven on earth. The good, warm, honest mud of the river bank squirmed up between my toes… heavenly. The water was crystal clear, the rock-strewn and sandy bottoms of the pools easily visible and fish could be seen moving about… electric excitement!

    I don't recall that granddad had given me any specific instruction in the art of angling, but being an honest Okie and half Choctaw Cherokee he probably knew it was in my genes. His own equipment and dress were little different than my own.

    That first fish and I were both hooked irretrievably. Even though my tackle was the most rudimentary imaginable, even though I was barefoot, shirtless and had on bib overalls, I was doing the best I could with the light I had and the Lord rewarded me accordingly. Even though that first fish was the lowliest of the low, a mud cat, it had done its task; the dew of “The Chosen” sprinkled my feverish brow. It remained for time to do its work in establishing a systematic theology, a doctrine of belief and acceptable Worship and Service of Devotion.

    But, for the sacred moment, holding aloft my wriggling treasure of the deep, the sun sparkling and glistening from it Izaak Walton, split-bamboo rods and Royal Coachmen, hand-tied, were yet future unknowns. I had much to learn, was ignorant of so much, but I had entered upon the Pilgrimage and my calling and election were sure.

    Time has passed, and while the spring has long gone from my steps and my pilgrimages to trout streams are now only memories these serve to take me there whenever I choose. Pity those who know nothing about such things and have no such memories.

Gone Fishing. It is a phrase one easily equates with Norman Rockwell, Mayberry, and the Waltons, and I feel a twinge of melancholy nostalgia over not seeing this posted in stores and other places as it used to be.

Sam Clemens, a consummate master of words, was nevertheless addicted to the word “freighted,” and “adumbration” is a word to which C. I. Scofield was addicted in his Bible notes. But the word is quite accurate in describing the foreshadowing of me as a fisherman.

I was only three years old when my parents took me to a park with a nice stream running through it. To keep me occupied and out of their way, I was given a “fishing pole” made of a small branch with a piece of string dangling from it to which my mother attached a safety pin at the end, and I spent the time happily “fishing” in the small stream: Adumbration.

Perhaps the most peculiar thing about this foreshadowing aspect is the fact that though I was only three years old at the time the magic of the clear water moving over the sandy bottom of the small, shallow stream, the park with marvelous green grass and trees surrounding and the very scent of these things all adding to the magic is after these many years still a vivid image in my mind.

Burt Lancaster delivers one particularly distinctive line in “Valdez.” When confronted by the question of his past as an Indian fighter hunting Apaches he replies “I learned better.” I’ve always thought the scriptwriter had Henry Thoreau in mind.

Over time Henry left off his gun, while advising mothers to encourage their boys to be hunters until they found “more worthy game.” And, over time, Henry left off fishing as well believing he had more worthy pursuits. Still, Henry thought fishing to be the proper vocation for a poet and prided himself on his skill as a fisherman.

But while good people may disagree with Henry, and he did contradict himself on occasion, the plight of those who write but do not trust others to “proof” their writing, his point reflecting that line by Burt Lancaster is that most of us engage in activities we later come to regard as unworthy when we “learn better,” though fishing in my opinion does not fall into this category and I believe even Jesus would agree.

I recall reading some years ago about a judge being asked why he spent so much time fishing. The judge replied “Because it serves to remind me of how very unimportant most issues of life really are.” Any person who loves to fish readily understands the judge’s reply, not unlike the comment by one who believed “The hours spent fishing are not subtracted from one’s life.” Though fanciful to the logical mind and reason, it’s an appealing thought that perhaps the many years I spent fishing explains why I have lived so long. The logical part is the fact that meditation is good for the soul and body, and one does a lot of meditating while fishing the pristine, pure water of a trout stream sparkling and tumbling through a wilderness setting, an environment especially conducive to becoming one with Nature. It is this that brought to my mind as a boy heaven would not be heaven without a trout stream.

Such a trout stream is Bull Run Creek right here not far from Kernville. This is where I was introduced as a boy to the magic of such a stream running wild and free thorough the grandeur of rugged forest and granite. But when I was a boy, few local people spoke of the stream. I began to think this was because they did not want it known to “outsiders” such a precious jewel existed here. Fortifying my suspicion was some of the local merchants when asked by outsiders long before the lake went in where to find good fishing would never name Bull Run. But this was a time when Isabella had a population of 36 and Kernville 115.

Nor, it seems, would I have learned about the stream had it not been for an old fellow who chanced by our cabin one day. As my grandparents set a meal out for him, he shared the fact he lived and prospected at a place up Bull Run Creek. He did indeed appear the stereotypical grizzled old 49er one sees in films, and this fascinated me. But during conversation he learned I loved to fish. He began to describe this beautiful stream where I could catch all the trout I wanted, but he went on to say it was an especially difficult place to reach requiring some stiff hiking through rugged terrain to get there. He then drew a rough sketch of how to reach the stream.

At the first opportunity and using the sketch I was off making the five-mile hike, the last mile of which was as rough as the old-timer had said. But long before reaching the stream I caught the scent of it, and as I drew nearer I began to hear the music of the flowing water and my heart leaped at the prospect of seeing it. And then there it was! It was absolutely beautiful! In no time I was catching trout from the clear sparkling water that varied from magnificent waterfalls pouring over glistening granite bedrock into deep pools so clear and clean I could see their sandy bottom to small rapids tumbling and splashing over the smaller granite rocks. And I could see the many trout lazing about in the pools requiring great stealth in approaching so as not to spook them.

When I first came to the Kern River Valley with my great-grandmother and grandparents in 1948 I fished the Kern River, and my first fish was a lowly mud cat. But with that first fish I was equally “hooked” by the electric thrill of the tug on my line to finally pulling the sparkling “treasure” from the water, the surrounding scent of the water and old cottonwoods together with the squish of the marvelous, cool mud through my bare toes on the bank of the river adding to the magic of the whole world of fishing.

It would be some time before I was to read Izaak Walton’s “The Compleat Angler” and devouring each issue of "Field & Stream." But eventually I began to become a “real fisherman” with split bamboo rod, tying my own flies for trout and making my own lures for bass.

I can honestly say I have never met a truly mean person who truly loved to fish. And maybe this has to do with these being the kind of people who reflect the same attitude of that judge, those who truly love Nature and a pristine, wilderness trout stream where you are fully at peace and at one with your soul and the Creator of it all who must surely be a poet to have created such wondrous beauty.

Having been raised to the company of both farm animals and those of the forest, I often have recourse to stories about them just to take a needed departure from so much bad news and dealing with somber issues of the day. And I will say that in many instances I have found critters better company than many humans I have known, since birds and animals are not noted for things like hypocrisy and other less flattering human attributes.

But the critters do present occasional hazards, and you would not want to cross the path of a momma bear with her cubs. As to the smaller denizens of the forest, one morning as I was sitting here writing it sounded like a bomb had exploded in my living room. As the resident cat ran and cowered under the bed, I turned in my chair to look through the doorway to the living room from where the noise had erupted. I could see a substantial amount of fragmented drywall and dust from the ceiling scattered on the floor, and in its midst a very large pinecone.

Going into the room and looking up at the ceiling, I saw a large gaping hole through both roof and ceiling. The large, fresh pinecone from the tree right next to my cottage had plunged through both the roof and ceiling!

To understand how a pinecone could do this, you have to know the cones from these old “digger” pines can grow very large and reach a weight of five pounds, and falling from the great height of this old pine they can become lethal missiles.
     As I surveyed the damage another pinecone hit the roof; but bounced off, as they usually do. I then knew who was responsible. Sure enough, I walked outside and saw the “bombardier;” a large, beautiful gray tree squirrel busily at work.

     Henry Thoreau pointed out something I learned as a boy; you do not reason with squirrels. Any attempt to do so will be met with what Henry called “irresistible invective” on the part of the critters; and knowing this to be the case I resigned myself to cleaning up the mess. Later in the day I cut the bottom out of a large coffee can, crawled up on the roof and made a “temporary” patch. It’s still there, mocking the term “temporary.”

     It may have been the same squirrel that got his comeuppance some weeks later. The weather having moderated the back door was open next to my desk here where I write. A fluke of timing caused me to swivel around in my chair just at the exact moment to witness a large pinecone come crashing down just outside the door and holding on riding the pinecone all the way down to the ground was a squirrel!

     We stared at each other for a moment; then shaking its head as though to clear what passes for a squirrel’s “mind” it quickly regained its composure and scampered off, seemingly no worse for the wild ride.

     Henry Thoreau found the critters of Walden great company, he especially enjoyed the squirrels which he pointed out behaved like a dancing girl always presuming an audience. Over the many years of acquaintance with squirrels here in the Sequoia National Forest and elsewhere I can attest to Henry’s observation about them.

     Few things so charm us as birds and animals, and despite the hole in my ceiling and roof gratis the squirrel, I so very much enjoy the company of forest critters, watching the quail and doves in my yard here in the country, the multitude of other birds taking advantage of the water and seed I provide them. And who of us does not wish more TV newscasts would relieve the doom and gloom with squirrels and baby ducks? Commercials featuring things like the AFLAC duck are real winners, and in the midst of so much lunacy among people and nations ongoing what a relief it is to be treated to stories about birds and animals. Sure there are TV shows dedicated to critters, but I do wish TV newscasts would dispel some of the pervasive bad news with more segments showing squirrels, baby ducks, and bunnies.

Having experienced a flood in and around my place here in Bodfish Canyon, I can sympathize to some limited extent with the Katrina victims. But the recent disaster calls to mind a similar problem with housing following WWII.

Living accommodations were difficult right after the war and returning veterans faced a critical problem finding suitable housing, especially if they had a wife and children. A popular song at the time is burned indelibly into my mind titled No Vacancy:

Not so long ago as the bullets screamed many was the happy dream I dreamed, of the little nest where I could rest when the world was free. Now the mighty war over there is won troubles in thousands just begun, as I face that terrible enemy sign No Vacancy!

I saw that sign declaring No Vacancy in many a window as our mother and returning stepfather together with Ronnie and I walked the streets attempting to find some place to live in Cleveland, Ohio where we were at the end of the war. But after a year in Ohio we returned to California where our third stepfather (mom was in a habit of marrying) had gotten veteran’s housing at Minter Field just outside Bakersfield. The base had been used to train pilots during the war; but finding places to live had been such a problem for returning veterans many military bases were opened to them for emergency housing. So Ronnie and I wound up at Minter Field before moving back with our grandparents in Little Oklahoma.

    As much as Ronnie and I would have preferred being with our grandparents, Minter Field did have its own attractions and excitement like the Base Morgue. We children sure had “fun” examining that place with no adults present. But one especially wonderful discovery was a tall tower that had been used to train pilots in bailing out of disabled aircraft. Mounted on the top of the tower was the cockpit section from the fuselage of a fighter. An apparatus with a parachute harness was swung over the cockpit. You could put on the harness and jump out just like you were bailing out of a real fighter. But I was the only one who tried it out. I don’t know why the other kids were afraid of it because it was a real thrill.

    There were colorful and detailed posters of various aircraft in the flight tower and the base headquarters. One showed the field of fire for the guns of B-17s, Flying Fortresses. That was fascinating. It made me wonder how any enemy plane could get through such a withering field of fire? But I knew many had. The floor of the base headquarters had a huge American star, the emblem of Army Air Corps aircraft, inlaid in the linoleum and outlined with thin gold-colored metal strips. It was beautiful.

    We would inspect the numerous, now largely empty barracks on the field. It was interesting to see stainless steel mirrors in the bathrooms. Of great interest were the numerous posters of various kinds. Among the usual warnings like The Slip of a Lip Can Sink a Ship, one that held all us boys spellbound warned about venereal disease and the proper use of condoms. None of us had ever seen such material before. Especially not right out in the open like these posters. Most of us kids didn’t know anything about a condom until then.

     I recall coming across the site of a crashed trainer on one of these excursions. It had hit at about a 30-degree angle and buried itself in the earth clear up to the windscreen of the cockpit. I wondered at the time whether the pilot had been able to bail out before the crash? It was obvious no one could have survived such an impact. Had the pilot been an instructor with a cadet? If so, had they both gotten out ok?

    Another thing that contributed to the excitement of living on the base was shooting jackrabbits, which were plentiful around the abandoned airstrips. Many of the returned veterans had military rifles, some of which were Japanese and German souvenir weapons. Some nights, our step-dad would take me along when he and some of the other vets went shooting jackrabbits. But in spite of my experience with grandad’s .410 and .22, I was considered too young at the time to do any of the actual shooting with those high-powered rifles; but it was still exciting. The large bore guns really tore a jackrabbit apart.

     I particularly remember one very large old jack being cornered in a revetment. These semi-circular earthen-works dotting the field had been built in order to park and protect aircraft. Caught in the glare of the headlights of the cars, there must have been more than fifty of the rabbits. As the men began shooting at them, this one big jack came bounding out straight at us. One of the men swung his rifle by the barrel like a baseball bat and smacked him with the stock like he was hitting a home run. The old jack had gone sailing off in a spray of blood.

     It puzzled me why the man would risk splitting the stock of the rifle just to kill a jackrabbit? But guns and killing were in the blood, it seemed, of many of these men. As young as I was at the time there was no doubt in my mind men like these had been trained to kill. They knew what they had to do to win a war. But in regard to the present wars in which American troops are being required to show “respect” for our enemies, had those of the Great Generation been the product of political correctness, restrained by “respect” for Mein Kampf we would all probably be speaking German today.

While reading the paper this morning the excellent article about how we oldsters handled the heat in the past really caught my attention. Those of us who recall living with outhouses and ice boxes, and without electricity in many cases, didn’t think of ourselves as poor or underprivileged under the circumstances, we simply made do with what we had or did without. As to the heat, somehow we handled that largely without complaint. After all, what was the use of complaining in any event?

Certainly a trip to the Fox Theater to enjoy the cooling there was a real treat. But I have a 1939 photo of the Arvin Theater advertising “Sno-Breeze” atop a tall cooling tower over the theater. I have the photo because my grandparents owned a small dress shop “Lorainne” named for my grandmother next door and the folks took the picture for that reason.

But the folks also owned an ice house on the corner of 4^th and Chester. I have fond memories of visiting there where the blessed coolness inside the place filled with magnificent large blocks of blue tinged translucent ice made you feel even cooler just looking at them. And some of you may remember downtown at the time where blocks of ice, some with red, white, and blue trimmed straw hats (skimmers) encased in them, were distributed on the sidewalks. And these made folks feel cooler just seeing them; parents had a job keeping their children from sitting on them.

The wet sheets hung on windows provided some relief from the heat, and my grandparents having a large rabbitry it was one of my duties to keep the burlap hanging over the hutches wet to spare the bunnies. During WWII the rabbitry supplied much of the meat for our neighborhood of Little Oklahoma in Southeast Bakersfield. That was when grandad anticipated John Wayne by telling me “Never name something you might have to eat.”

But the uncomfortable nights trying to sleep on clammy sheets and pillows were restless ones, and the resulting listless lethargy nagged you the following day. The expression Okies and Arkies brought with them from a sultry South “You have to make a mark to see him move” had real relevance to us during hot Bakersfield summers.

When I bought this little cottage in the outskirts of Bodfish (Bodfish has “outskirts”?) fifteen years ago it had neither A/C nor swamp cooler, and I have continued to live without either. But not to minimize the hardship of many getting what to me are outrageous electric bills for running their A/C, I read of those $1,000 electric bills and look at mine for $37 during the same period and have to wonder? The words of Henry Thoreau come to mind, would the "savage" be wise to trade his wigwam which he owns for the mortgaged palace of those civilized? Reminds me of something a car salesman said to a customer looking for a car that would be easier on gas: “If you want economy you have to pay for it.” Well, if you want comfort you have to pay for it. And if oil hits $100 a barrel? Some are saying not if, but when.

Long before any talk of “Global Warming” Henry commented it would be easy to anticipate how the thread of humankind might be cut by a slightly colder winter or slightly warmer summer. And indeed, by such a slender thread do we hang.

Now at my age especially I am all for comfort, and I may yet break down and get a small room cooling unit for next summer, especially if the forecast for even hotter summers is correct. But I was raised to a generation that knew how to make do or do without.

In the beginning after years of work with children in the worst possible circumstances imaginable I finally came to realize nothing short of a constitutional amendment would serve in making children a priority in America rather than the present system in which a molester receives probation in one state and fifteen years in another for the like crime. Fortunately when the idea first suggested itself to me I had recourse to two friends, one a fine constitutional attorney in Atlanta, Georgia, a man who had pleaded such cases before the U. S. Supreme Court, the other a state senator here in California, both of which cooperated in drafting the proposed amendment. It is this that prompted serious personal letters concerning the amendment from Bill Clinton, George Bush, and a number of U. S. Senators together with twenty-two state governors. Many other professional people, including several lawyers have contributed to the archive of responses.

But over the past eight years since first proposing the amendment I have learned a great deal more about human behavior than was covered in the doctoral program for my Ph. D. in the subject. This has led to the writing of many articles and two lengthy books.

On the face of it the amendment is straightforward, but the enormous social implications of the amendment are complex in the extreme. It is the sheer enormity of these social implications that required the writing of books and caused those like Bill Clinton, George Bush and others to respond to it personally. One should not lose sight of the fact that while politicians in general appear dull-witted in too many cases, they do not gain their positions of power and authority by being so in fact. On the contrary, most are very intelligent and well educated people which explains why corruption is so rampant in government and seldom is any politician prosecuted for such corruption. But since I was dealing with very intelligent and well educated people, those who responded immediately recognized the far-reaching and enormously complex social implications of the amendment.

To say the amendment is fearful in its social implications is not extreme, which of course is the reason none of real power and authority at this point in time have come out in open support of it. And being a person who does not betray confidences, I will not name those who have written me in support of the amendment, though one prominent nationally syndicated columnist at the time promised to “make me a star.” But as I explained to her, it was the amendment that needed “stardom,” not me. Unfortunately, when she discovered her bosses wanted nothing to do with any support of the amendment, her ardor cooled.

However, to ignore the need of such an amendment making children a national priority is to court disaster. In far too many ways does America fail in making children such a priority, and while much of such failure is due to an uncaring government and judiciary much of such failure is due to apathy. And apathy does in fact lead to real disaster in some cases.

Having had a lifelong love affair with airplanes from building models as a boy and eventually becoming a pilot, and owning two planes when it was not quite the hobby for the wealthy it has become, I was distressed to read this: AP August 3: “An experimental plane crashed, killing two people, because the ailerons were incorrectly connected to the control stick, federal safety officials said… The flight was the first since the plane’s aileron linkage had been disconnected and reassembled during a maintenance check, the NTSB said.”

Every month I would devour the AOPA publication, especially the section of the magazine having to do with accidents due to pilot error. In many such cases the accidents were the result of a lapse in performing essential preflight duties. But in the case of the cited crash it was caused by the failure of the pilot to do one of the most fundamental tasks of all. Once you have taxied to your takeoff position you do a run-up to check engine and instruments, then you visually check ailerons, elevator, and rudder action. Had the pilot done this latter he would have noticed immediately the incorrect action of the ailerons. The omission of performing this essential and most fundamental of tasks cost the life of him and his passenger.

When a pilot becomes apathetic to the point of failing to perform the most fundamental of tasks before taking off the result is too often catastrophic. But it is human nature to become apathetic about such things. After you have had a thousand successful takeoffs without accident, a false sense of security can lead to becoming merely perfunctory in your preflight duties.

One of my closest friends, a pilot who had flown fighters in WWII and Korea told me of the time when he was coming in for a landing and saw the red light flashing from the tower while his radio was blasting a warning and the horn was sounding in the cockpit, all of this because he had not lowered his landing gear. But none of this registered in his mind. Fortunately at the very last minute his brain kicked in and he narrowly avoided a disaster.

Once he landed an explanation was demanded of him, but the only explanation he had to offer was there was so much commotion and noise going on all at the same time none of it penetrated his consciousness. The constant drill of repetition over and over of performing some tasks can lead to apathy, even stupefaction in an emergency. And while this does not always result in disaster, airplanes are most unforgiving of any delinquency in performing dull but essential tasks. In the case of politicians and others giving lip-service to “concern” for children, most of it amounts to little more than noise and commotion in the face of impending disaster. And though the noise and commotion, “sound and fury signifying nothing” may be well-intended, these alone do not get the needed attention to the reality of an impending disaster, but may even become a kind of “overload” obscuring, even defeating their purpose.

Ok, so I love writing and talking about airplanes and flying but what has this to do with the amendment? Just this: We the People may become so apathetic about the real and existing plight of children the real danger to America by such apathy is largely ignored, and the “overload” of information about the plight of children has a stultifying effect on the senses. After all, how many pictures of abused and starving children can be absorbed before a kind of callus on the brain forms?

If the proposed amendment did nothing more than generate real and meaningful, intelligent and well informed dialogue about the welfare and future of children in America it would have served an essential service. But first it needs a bully pulpit in which the seriousness of the plight of children will be openly discussed. However, as I have learned over the years due to the enormously complex social implications of the amendment most of those in power and authority fear and want nothing to do with such an open discussion.

To anticipate, I will not use this forum attempting to answer questions about the amendment that have already filled two books and continues to generate articles and essays on the subject. Those intelligent and well educated enough to recognize the complexities will not ask for “sound bytes” in this limited forum, nor will I abuse it attempting what it takes books to answer. Some of these questions are addressed on my website for the amendment, and if requested I will supply the URL by personal note.

Proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution

An adult convicted of the molestation of a child will be sentenced to prison for a term of not less than ten years.

If the child dies as a result of the molestation the person(s) convicted of the crime will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

A child as defined by this article shall be one who has not attained their sixteenth birthday.

The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

(The above proposed amendment was sent to Congress nearly eight years ago. It was posted on my own website shortly thereafter together with my justification of the need of such an amendment).

While conducting his experiment of “Simplicity in Living” at Walden Pond Henry Thoreau made comment “For human society I was obliged to conjure up the former occupants of these woods.” Some have taken me to task for my comments about “living with ghosts,” but I continue to commune with God, with loved ones and friends throughout the day and in the dark of night with my head on my pillow just as Henry did. But you will not find those faulting me for such a thing faulting Henry for doing so. In this those presuming to take me to task betray their own hypocrisy.

When I was a boy living on the mining claim here in the Kern River Valley before the lake went in I had the whole of the Sequoia National Forest to explore on my own, seldom ever seeing another human being. But I would often find the artifacts left by Indians that once populated the area, and I would reflect on what their lives must have been like before the infusion of the “white-eyes” that over time disposed the native people. Henry had such thoughts when uncovering arrowheads and other remains of the Indians that once roamed the woods around Walden.

Though Henry did not comment on the way Indians treated their children, such a thought would intrude itself on me as I hunted and fished this area as a boy. After all, I was not living much differently at the time than those Indian children my age gone on before me. Perhaps that part of the Choctaw Cherokee blood coursing through my own veins gave rise to such thoughts as I peopled the woods hereabouts as did Henry, and much as I enjoyed the solitude of the forest I was in no less need than he for society.

But Henry was not naïve about society and reflected the thought of his mentor Emerson who wrote “Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.” And it is this thing of “society” with which much fault is to be found.

My opposition to the death penalty does not reflect my opinion that monsters in human guise committing acts of atrocity do not need killing. I could personally take delight in dispatching many of these monsters myself. No, my opposition to the death penalty is the very capriciousness of the way it is handled from state-to-state, the lack of a national standard in such cases. The result has been to make a mockery of justice as the appeals process, especially here in California, drags on interminably while lawyers stumble over each other making money from a chaotic “system of justice” where the rule of law “How much justice can you afford?” is the criteria.

We the People know you are more likely to suffer the full weight of our justice system by being found guilty of cruelty to animals than cruelty to human beings, for killing a deer out of season than killing a human being. But in no other area of our judicial system do we find such state-to-state capriciousness as that to be found in the disposition of cases involving crimes committed against children.

Eight years ago I proposed a constitutional amendment for the protection of children from molesters. Over time I received letters from those like Clinton and Bush, from senators and governors, but none would undertake for such an amendment. I understood their reluctance. It was a fearful thought to many that children for the first time in the history of any nation would be made a national priority by the foundational charter of its government. And too there was this to consider as well: Since it is little girls who are the primary and disproportionate victims of molestation, men who have historically been the predators do not want to disturb their “hunting ground.”

John Walsh was there where he belonged when Bush signed the much needed and long overdue national sex offender registry law. But it will take children becoming a national priority rather than the subject of lip-service by self-serving politicians for America to become a nation that in fact cherishes its young. And so long as America continues to countenance, even encourage perverts and perversion this is not going to happen.

Still, just as the death penalty demands a national standard of application and adjudication so does the need of such a standard in cases involving cruelty to children demand such a national standard.

I applaud John and his wife for their unswerving dedication to removing from civilized society the monsters preying on children. But there are some things too profound to articulate. The loss of a child is certainly one of these things. Friends will attempt to console, but there are no words that suffice to comfort and the psychosis of grief can quite literally drive parents mad over the loss of their child. It’s the kind of madness that prevents sleep or food; that prevents the ordinary daily tasks we take for granted, and while over time one may recover the ability to function, the aching void remains as proof of love being the cruelest of human emotions since it will inevitably be betrayed by death or in some other fashion. It was this betrayal of love by death that led Sam Clemens to remark he believed death to be “the only pure and unalloyed gift of God” since only our own death will bring peace to the mind of those suffering the loss of a child or other loved one. The loss of a child is especially cruel; ever after you live in a kind of hellish prison of the mind and it is an unrelenting hellish prison in which every memory is corrupted by attacking demons, by the haunting image of that lost child.

To be sure some have the consolations of religion to assuage the grief, and the stories and sermons are replete with things like the child now being in the loving arms of Jesus for example, of God wanting another “little angel” in his heavenly choir and so on. And it is good to find some kind of hope your child’s death is not the end, that like David you will eventually be reunited with your child. Were it not for such a hope many would not be able to work through the psychosis of grief and be able to function once more.

Bad enough children die by accidents or disease, but what of the child who dies at the hands of a satanic, diabolical monster in human guise, a monster that an uncaring government and judiciary continues to loose in order to continue their depredations against children? It is here above all other where society, where our system of justice makes a mockery of the professed “concern” for children in America.

Never to excuse in any way the utter selfishness of those that would drive while drunk and murder the innocent because of such utter selfishness Mel Gibson is demon possessed, and my heart goes out to him because of this possession. Henry Thoreau described New England rum as a demon that first comes in as a friend, but once invited goes on to murder whole families.

Certainly Billy Sunday and the resulting Volstead Act were an aberration in America, but Billy’s sermon on Demon Rum exclaiming “Booze has its place, but its place is in hell!” moved hearts and increased the numbers signing pledges and joining temperance movements. Cooler heads did not prevail in America at the time, the result being a bootleg industry and organized crime having a field day from which our nation never recovered. Good intentions and all that.

But I fear Mel is not going to find an exorcist. An alcoholic I loved put it very well when she told me: “No one can save me but me.”

Being professionally qualified to do so I helped a group found the first drug and alcohol abuse center in Lancaster in 1975. But it took loving and living with an alcoholic to really open my eyes to this affliction. At that, no one really understands an alcoholic but another alcoholic, and as cruel as it is the alcoholic only has one true love, only one true friend, and that is the booze. But no one loving an alcoholic wants to believe this.

A few years ago I lost someone I cared for deeply to alcohol. His name was Nelson, a very intelligent and artistic man with whom I had many profound conversations. By the time I met him he had lost everything to the booze, his family, his job, and he was forced to live with his elderly parents in Kernville. But with their death, he was forced to fend for himself. Things became so bad that when I would visit trash would be everywhere, the refuse from frozen dinners and other things accumulating to the point the place looked like a health hazard. But he would not allow me to get someone to come in and do any housekeeping, the booze made him paranoid about having anyone but me even visit.

I had driven Nelson to doctor’s appointments with the VA in Bakersfield when he could no longer make the trips safely. But in conversation with him I became aware he was holding something from me; such was the closeness of our association I could intuit something amiss.

But it was when he could no longer even make the drive from his place to the liquor store in Kernville that he lost all hope. That morning when he did not call me and I could only get his answering machine I knew he was dead.

Having a number for a neighbor of Nelson I called and asked if they would check on him. In a short time the neighbor called confirming my suspicion. The police were there by the time I was able to drive to the place. Discounting booze being his only “friend,” I was the closest human association to Nelson, so it became my responsibility to wait for the coroner from Bakersfield to arrive, but I couldn’t watch as Nelson’s body was taken from the car in which he had taken his life. Bottles of brandy and beer were in the car and on the ground next to it. But Nelson had been hoarding pills given him at the VA, and these and the booze were the method he chose to end his life.

It was summer, and Nelson had placed a portable radio next to his car tuned to a music station. The car was running with the A/C turned on when the neighbor found him; Nelson had made himself comfortable to the occasion. But it was left to me to make “final arrangements” for many things. The alcoholic never considers the burden they place on others and true to form Nelson had made no arrangements for his passing. What can one consider about such things when whatever demon takes possession of the mind?

Granting in some cases suicide may be a permanent solution to a temporary problem years ago I stopped passing judgment on those that take their own lives. The fact is that whether because of physical or emotional pain life is no longer endurable, when the hopelessness is so consuming death is the only way out is not for anyone to judge. Sam Clemens had reason enough to call death “the only pure and unalloyed gift of God.”

Once I had taken care of the essential things that morning, I came home and was compelled to write an account of Nelson and what had transpired. I gave this account to a friend at the Kern Valley Sun who chose to publish it in full, feeling it would not only be a kind of eulogy for Nelson, but a caution to others.

But booze makes no distinction based on family or friends, on position in life or any amount of wealth or fame, and the wino in the gutter living on the streets is no worse off in their prison of booze than many of great rank. AA has a history of helping alcoholics and they do good work. But while I wish for a happy outcome for Mel Gibson no one can save him but him.

Mel Gibson’s tirade certainly exemplified the Jykell and Hyde in all of us, something even the Apostle Paul recognized: “The good that I would, I do not. And the evil that I would not, that I do,” and this without the “benefit” of alcohol loosing Mr. Hyde.

For those who would attempt to discredit my belief I live with “ghosts,” the spirits of loved ones and friends Emerson had this to say about the subject: “Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years.”

I find comfort in the fact someone like Emerson, arguably the greatest intellect America ever produced, shared my own thoughts on the subject of joining our loved ones and friends in a “hereafter.” But as to Mel Gibson and Mr. Hyde, I am reminded of such an occurrence in my own life, though I don’t believe it would qualify as particularly “evil.”

    There is a man (Larry) out there somewhere still telling, no doubt, about the night a huge beast almost got him in the Piute Mountains. I am ashamed to admit that I am responsible for this lurid, dread tale that may have falsely captured the imaginations of countless folks. Thanks to me, the Piute Bigfoot began his legendary career.

    Back in the late forties when we moved to the mining claim here in the Kern River Valley grandad managed to acquire a mineral light. Tungsten is a very valuable mineral, essential to making steel. Tungsten (and uranium) prospecting was popular in our hills at the time and the light would allow us to look for tungsten traces at night. This material fluoresces a strikingly beautiful blue under ultraviolet. My first experience using the light was startling. I discovered scorpions are fluorescent. I was also amazed at how many of the varmints were out and about our place of a summer's eve, and in further nocturnal forays I was more careful about being barefoot.

     One night I came across a rose quartz boulder one side of which lit up like the starry heavens. Nearby, I found a nugget of pure tungsten about two inches long. I knew I had struck it rich! Unhappily, try as I might, I could find no other traces of these magnificent specimens. For those of you that are interested in treasure maps, I'm open to offers. Time, and sore, old joints permitting, I may even take up the search myself someday. At least I know where to start.

    But enough of mundane, everyday wealth to be found in the ground. Back to the serious matter at hand. Some friends, Harold and Ruby along with her boy Larry invited me to go tungsten prospecting in the Piutes. We camped at Saddle Springs and began our search. The days were beautiful and the nights glorious in these high mountains and we scarcely ever saw another soul. We spent part of our days looking for promising spots to check out at night using grandad’s mineral light. We thought we had really found a strike once, but the material turned out to be something used in manufacturing fireworks. We also discovered that while it had some value, it was cheaper to ship the stuff from China than to mine it here. An early lesson in foreign trade economics.

    One day while in camp trying to amuse myself, a couple of tin can lids caught my attention (I still think kids are better off using cans and boxes than most of the stuff that passes as toys today). Harold, Ruby, and Larry had gone to town to get supplies and the idle mind is the devil's playground. A plan, unbidden mind you, to destroy Larry began to invade my dark side. It was a sheer stroke of genius worthy of de Sade, an inspiration to a future Stephen King.

    Now I want to make it clear at the outset that I have never been a particularly mean or malicious person, not even as a child. But some opportunities present themselves that one, in all responsibility, cannot avoid. This was one such.

    Taking two can lids, I folded them in half. Next, I found a suitable length of firewood about two feet long and nailed the lids to it about a foot apart and slanted them slightly. I placed my “eyes” up the side of the mountain from our campsite where I knew they would easily be caught in the beam of a flashlight. As Wylie Coyote would exclaim, “Sheer Genius!”

    That evening when the folks returned, I took Harold aside and unfolded my sadistic plot. He was genuinely proud to take part in such an imaginative undertaking.

    As usual, that evening we stoked up the campfire and once it was blazing nicely, according to our plan Harold suggested we tell ghost stories for the fun of it. I had primed the pump by telling how I had discovered strange tracks of some large animal around the camp that day. The night was pitch black, no moon, and the heavily forested mountains in the firelight provided a shadowy backdrop that a Vincent Price or Bela Lugosi might well envy.

    In the middle of an especially lurid tale of a little boy entering a haunted house on a dare (Harold doing the telling at this point), I suddenly whispered, “What was that?” indicating by my manner that I had heard something on the mountainside. Harold responded, “Yes, I hear it.”

    Of course there are natural night sounds in the forest, but Larry and Ruby were sure they also heard something strange now. Switching on my flashlight, I began to play it around the side of the mountain until, suddenly, my manufactured “eyes” lit up in its beam. The reaction was most gratifying. Larry and Ruby’s eyes suddenly plumbed new dimensions of growth and the stifled screech of Ruby was accompanied by a satisfactory burrowing of Larry’s whimpering head into her lap. I used the light in such a way as to make it appear that the creature had moved out of the way into the trees. Grabbing my rifle I said to Harold, “Let’s go see if we can spot it,” bravery to the nth degree.

    Harold and I proceeded up the mountain where I then picked up the eyes and, under cover of the darkness, moved them to another spot. Coming back down to the camp and finding Ruby and Larry clutching each other in abject terror was most gratifying. We explained that while we were unable to see the creature, we had found very large tracks that looked like a cross between human, Grizzly bear and mountain lion. Hunkering down to the fire, Harold and I repeated the scene of hearing something and, using the flashlight, I was able to pick up the eyes in their new location. Three times this experiment in terrorism was repeated. By now our victims were reduced to the satisfactory level of hysteria and, crawling into our sleeping bags, Harold and I could sleep the sleep of the self-righteous. Ruby and Larry did not sleep and kept a large fire stoked all night.

    It has occurred to me over the years that the great, Tehachapi earthquake that took place a couple of days later might be, in some measure, due to God’s attitude toward my little joke. It literally pounded us out of our sleeping bags. You could actually see the ground heaving up and down, throwing gravel into the air. At any rate, neither Harold nor I ever disabused Ruby or Larry of the notion that somewhere in the Piutes there lurked a phenomenal beast of terrifying proportions and features. Between the beast and the ensuing earthquake, our prospecting was soon halted and we returned to civilization. Larry and Ruby did acquire some little renown in describing their close encounter with the creature and Harold and I enjoyed the status of brave and intrepid men who fearlessly faced certain death at its jaws and claws. Hence, the Piute Bigfoot still lurks in the forest and only now is the truth, ashamedly, told. Confession is good for the soul and perhaps I am seeking absolution by laying bare, to all, this sordid act.

    But, if there is a moral to be derived from this story it has successfully eluded me. I enjoyed frightening the wits out of Ruby and Larry; and apart from the earthquake, which may not have been directed at me at all, I got away with it. My grandad gave it four stars, so you might guess who contributed the quirky gene for my own sense of humor.