Today’s question in the Californian about women in the churches prompts me to go back in time to a sermon preached following WWII:

    Clearing his throat, Pastor Samuels asked, “Would you all please turn in your Bibles to Matthew 19, verse 14.”

    We all turned to the passage as he read aloud: But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven. “My friends,” Pastor Samuels continued, “we all know the verse; we all know how precious the children are in the sight of God. But can we agree that children are the closest thing to the heart of God Himself? We all know the Scripture, that Jesus has said unless we become as little children we cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven, that their angels always behold the face of our father in heaven.

   “When Jesus said you must be born again, Nicodemus asked Jesus how a man could be born when he is old. We all know how Jesus replied, but I want you to consider this together with what we have just read and know of his feelings about children. And I ask you all to keep in mind, throughout my following words, the fact that Jesus said all the Law and the Prophets is summed up in this: To love God and to love your neighbor as yourself.

    “When meditating on the problem of good and evil, it seems that only children weep over injustice. I recognize this trait in children; a trait that is too soon lost when the realization sinks in that the good that tries to abide by civilized behavior has always seemed impotent in the face of determined evil. But we, as human beings, are the most reluctant when it comes to facing the part we play in the perpetuation of evil.

    “How, you ask, do we, as good people, do this? We do it, my friends, when we refuse to take action against evil. We do it by our fears, ignorance, and prejudices. If we can agree, and all Christians do, that the love of God is manifested by our love for one another, that Jesus himself said that to love God and one another is the True Gospel of life, we must accept as a corollary that anything that denies or works against this is evil and of the Evil One.

    “I think the most important thing I learned in gaining an education was at least some appreciation of my own ignorance. That is a humbling experience. And we need humility, a word not too often heard now. But we are told of God to humble ourselves. God tells us this for our benefit. True education is the dispelling of ignorance. And it is ignorance that leads to the evils of prejudice and bigotry… and underlying such ignorance is the sin of selfishness.

    “Now it is one thing to be honestly ignorant of many things. None of us will ever know it all and you surely know that is not the kind of ignorance about which I am speaking. It is the sinful ignorance of willing to be ignorant, of refusing instruction that, as God says, leads to destruction. To the hard of heart God says, because you refuse instruction, you will surely die in your sins.

    “I was born and have spent my life among the people of Bakersfield. But wherever Dickens' children of Ignorance, of want and poverty exist and hold sway, there will you find lawlessness, cruelty, ignorance, and bigotry. We consider ourselves civilized, a nation of law… And, as the Apostle Paul pointed out, the law is just and good and holy.

    “But the weakness of the law, as he further says, is in the flesh; that flesh which rebels against lawful behavior. Further, the laws of any nation are of no avail unless you have a foundation of true morality in its citizenry… And such a true morality cannot consist of a foundation of ignorance and poverty.

    “It is often too easy to generalize from a single exception to the building of a whole system of belief on that exception; how many a beautiful structure of philosophy and science has fallen to that very weakness. We need another and new Critique of Pure Reason; a rethinking of the muddy thinking of which I believe so much of humankind has been guilty… and, I believe, led to the horrible war just past. And I include myself in that shameful category of such ignorance.

    “For example, the exclusion of women in philosophy and theology, in the decision-making process of government; this, I believe, has cost humankind dearly for it is well said that ‘Woman is the antithesis of war.’ Women do not bear children to sacrifice them on the altars of the wars of men! And are women of lesser importance, of any lesser value to what Jesus said in regard to our neighbor? Are we men to consider only other men in this regard? You would think so by looking at the record of history; and most especially the history of the church.

    “We have recently lived four years in a world at war, a war that caused unimaginable suffering for millions; a war in which millions died. There must come a time when wars cease or humankind has no future as such. Because of the unimaginably horrible weapons we now have, atomic weapons, we have a greater responsibility than ever in history to make wise decisions, decisions that lead to a future for our children, all children, for the sake of all humankind in concert.

    “We must have a Gospel devoid of the kind of dogma that alienates and is effective in the actual living of the Golden Rule, of people treating one another as they would be treated, thus proving their real belief in God… in One who wants to deliver humankind from selfish ignorance, bigotry, intolerance based on prejudice, to deliver us from the wars such things lead to. Simply on the basis of the indisputable fact that men make war, not women, that women attempt to make homes in the face of the horrors of wars perpetrated by men, that woman is the antithesis of war, should make men wake up to this! And women! This, together with failing to make children the proper priority that God Himself ordained they should be, has doomed attempts to quell violence and gain world peace.

    “One of the major obstacles which humankind is going to overcome is intolerance. You know I do not mean the setting aside of proper judgment against those things like perversion, those things that militate against a civilized society. No, I am speaking of the kind of intolerance that leads to the evils of one thinking themselves better than another on the basis of things like race, religion, or politics, even the evil intolerance of men thinking themselves better than women simply on the basis of gender.

    “Why has humankind been devoted to violence, to war, to the ‘musket worshippers’ as Emerson called them? Yes, excluding women by men not considering them of equal value, not giving children the priority needed are the most fundamental factors. But the various hatreds, prejudices, and too all-pervading ignorance that breeds such things as war and violence have a history… and it is the history of evil, the evils of intolerance, self-willed ignorance, selfishness, all of which is paraded in too many cases in the name of some group that believes itself divinely anointed to spread its own peculiar gospel.

    “Thus the need to find the root of these things, the justification for another way, another path to understanding than that which has been followed throughout history. A New Thing is needed… and his New Thing requires a firm grasp and understanding of the history of humankind. It is my conviction that America as the most blessed nation in history has the duty and responsibility to take the lead in the things essential to leading the world out of violence and on the path to world peace.

    “But to do this, it is first essential to understand our own history. And while there is much to be understood from ancient history, it is a record of the failure of humankind to end war and find peace. It is a recorded history of failure that doesn't include women and children on a basis of equal value to men. And understanding this failure and determining to set it right on the part of men may be the answer to our dilemma. And women must accept their distinctive responsibility in helping to accomplish this.

    “We have been taught to believe in the Rapture when Jesus will return and make all things right. But far too many have abused Jesus and this doctrine by abrogating their responsibility to contend against evil. My brothers and sisters, the weight of Scripture, of humankind itself is against such selfish, muddy, thinking. Nowhere in the Scriptures can we find justification to give up without a fight and simply hand the world to the devil and his wicked servants by default.

    “I would leave you with this thought. What if God needs our help in overcoming evil, what if we are failing to do our part by continuing to exclude women on a basis of equal value to men, what if we have failed to make children the priority they are to God Himself? These, my dear brothers and sisters, are the questions I hope you will take home with you and pray about. And be patient with me and pray for me as we seek answers to these questions and honestly face our responsibility in these things, as we search out a course of determined action against the evil.

    “Finally, I would ask you to consider this: If knowledge plus wisdom equals peace, as most would agree, where in history has there been the wisdom that would lead to peace? Knowledge we have in abundance, but it seems wisdom is an orphan, left alone and divorced from knowledge. We now possess the knowledge to destroy ourselves, to destroy the entire earth. But wisdom demands an honest heart. Let us consider how honest we are in our own hearts and minds. Only when we do this are we to have any hope of the answers we need, any hope for peace."

Now that what I anticipated is coming to pass, those in a corrupt Congress attempting to save their skins trying to retroactively prevent Caesar Bush (and themselves) from being prosecuted for war crimes I offer an article unchanged from when I wrote it in July:

July 13, 2006

The Weedpatch Gazette

    “The four fundamental forces can each be characterized by a dimensionless constant: Strong: Glues together the parts of a nucleus. Electromagnetic: Holds electrons around atoms; explains light. Weak: Responsible for certain radioactive decays. Gravity: Keeps planets, stars, galaxies from flying apart.”

A line from Porgy and Bess “The things that you’re liable to read in the Bible, they ain’t necessarily so” should be applied to science at least as much and more. No one knows what these fundamental forces are any more than science knows the origin of life or what that “something” is that differentiates between life and death. A label in lieu of understanding will not do. There are neat categories of the various kinds of energy, but not knowing what, exactly, energy is, this science cannot define.

These “constants” noted as I have suggested in some of my writing questioning Einstein’s famous equation for example are now being called into question: “‘There is absolutely no reason these constants should be constant,’ says astronomer Michael Murphy of the University of Cambridge. ‘These are famous numbers in physics, but we have no real reason for why they are what they are.’ The observed differences are small — roughly a few parts in a million — but the implications are huge: The laws of physics would have to be rewritten, not to mention we might need to make room for six more spatial dimensions than the three that we are used to.”

This very same statement by Murphy “…we have no real reason for why they are what they are” is equally applicable to the claims made by proponents of Darwinism. But unlike evolutionists at least real scientists are willing to grapple with facts, “inconvenient truths” contradicting cherished beliefs. Unwilling to admit there are things more than inconvenient truths, but truths in the universe beyond even our imagination allows of a wide range of speculation many relegate to “metaphysics” but in too many instances does our science fail to come up to the mark.

Take Caesar Bush, for example. Is he a mad man or a supreme egotistical pragmatist? We lack the science to distinguish between the two options given our present day witch doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists that are as believable as economists, real estate and used car salesmen, and stock brokers.

Some condemned me for taking Caesar Bush to task immediately following the Attack on America because he failed/refused We the People miserably by not ordering tactical cruise missiles fired on Kabul and Baghdad the very evening of 9/11. But his refusal to respond immediately and appropriately to the Attack on America by Muslims clearly indicated Caesar had another agenda, one that would meet his plans for wealth and empire, and so it has proven to be.

My generation had Remember Pearl Harbor! But Caesar Bush and Company together with a cooperating politically correct media would not have Remember 9/11! The Japanese were properly demonized wholesale because of Pearl Harbor, just as they were demonizing Americans. It is absolutely essential to winning any war that the enemy be demonized. Well, my generation was not concerned with offending any Japanese either at home or abroad at the time, so how was it our “leadership” was so very, very concerned about offending Muslims? In a word: OIL!

A good friend of many years, an Episcopal priest, was sharing his concern the other day about the conspiracy theory of Caesar Bush and Company actually being complicit in the Attack on America. But my reply to him was a Federal Caesar that has proven to have lied to us about WWII, Korea and Vietnam, about JFK, about WMD in Iraq, a Federal Caesar talking “homeland security” while refusing to secure our borders and so much more, how do we now separate the lies from the truth, especially when no one in government is ever held accountable for the lies?

The protection of Caesar’s Saudi “friends,” the outright lies about WMD, the refusal of the 9/11 Commission to hold any in government accountable for the success of the attacks by Muslims, all these things and so much more can only lead to the conclusion that those in power intend to profit from war, as has ever been the case in the wars of men.

There are a great many “inconvenient truths” besides global warming, multiplying millions of unproductive human weeds, flag-draped coffins, our unsecured borders for the sake of slave labor benefiting only the wealthy having the rule over We the People, the refusal to protect women and children from the monsters in human guise preying on them, the truth that only the most base of persons like politicians seek power and authority over others, the truth of an utterly failed system of education in America, and so on ad infinitum.

But is Caesar Bush actually mad, as many of his words and actions implied to me early on and I began to question the man’s sanity? And, as to be expected, I’m not the only one addressing the possibility.

MSNBC: “Look at this crazy quote of Cheney’s in Ron Suskind's amazing and terrifying new book, that appears to be guiding this administration’s response to events: ‘It's not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence. It’s about our response.’ Another way of saying ‘madness’ in this context is ‘ideological fanaticism and imperviousness to reality,’ but John Judis opts for the former in his piece ‘The Madness of George W. Bush’ in describing this administration’s modus operandi, and writes: ‘Isn't it conceivable, for instance, that Vladimir Putin secretly desires the downfall of the United States and that under extremely strained circumstances —perhaps a previously undetected brain tumor— he might resort to weapons of mass destruction to effect it? It’s not likely, but it is conceivable. And if it is conceivable, shouldn't we do something about it before it's too late?’ Oh wait, I forgot. Bush looked into his soul (I guess we should be grateful he didn’t kiss his tummy). But the point is, the most powerful nation in the history of humankind is being led by a guy just doesn’t recognize reality. He (Cheney, his Bible) is right. Reality is wrong. The experts are wrong. The Constitution is wrong. It’s like the Soviet politburo all over again.”

The madness of leaders taking nations in the path of destruction is easily seen in retrospect, but who doubts they believed it seemed like a good idea at the time? No one can doubt Hitler believed in the righteousness of his cause, that he was following a “divine plan.” There is something about power that conveys the thought to those holding power they have a “destiny.”

Nothing could have been further from the minds of those German leaders their actions during WWII would eventually lead to that Nuremberg Tribunal. “Impossible!” each and every one of them would have exclaimed should such a thing have ever been mentioned to them as a word of caution. The very thought of such a thing to those German leaders would have seemed bizarre in the extreme. Most believed in what they were doing, most believed in the righteousness of the course they were pursuing under Hitler’s command for the sake of Germany. And the great mass of ordinary German citizens? What did they know of what was going on since all they had was a media under the control of Goebbels? The ordinary Japanese citizen fared no better. And here is the obvious danger of America’s media emasculated by political correctness in its way as dangerous and effective as any Goebbels under Hitler.

Immediately following Caesar Bush’s invasion of Iraq I wrote for my website he was pursuing a course of action reminiscent of Hitler’s invasion of Poland; that Caesar’s mad plan of conquest and empire could not but conjure up images of that Nuremberg Tribunal. Now one only has to turn to Aljazeera for a mock trial of Bush, Blair, and Sharon for crimes against humanity, and right here in America some New Jersey high school pupils put on a mock trial of Bush for war crimes. Silly? Perhaps not.

The toughest job for those supporting Caesar Bush is finding anything positive to say about him. Few now question Iraq is at the very least a quagmire and the stories of abuse and atrocities are multiplying. That most of these stories are of the Aljazeera variety does not lessen the propaganda value of such accusations against America.

During WWII Hollywood was doing a superb job of demonizing the “Rotten Japs” and “Stinkin’ Knocksies!” Everywhere we turned during WWII whether in films, newspapers, radio, even comic books and the funny papers those in the Axis Powers were being demonized. We children were dressed in military uniforms and our games often consisted of killing Japs and Knocksies.

But while writing of Caesar Bush’s attack and invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq reminding me of Hitler’s invasion of Poland and conjuring up visions of that Nuremberg Tribunal, I also mentioned the gauntlet being cast against Islam, the most deadly foe the civilized nations face. It comes down to this: Either the civilized nations of the world will prevail against the barbarian nations of Islam, or that Nuremberg Tribunal for Caesar and America cannot be totally discounted.

Of this we can be certain; there can be no accommodation on the part of civilized nations to the barbarian nations of Islam. And only fools like Caesar Bush believe the fanatics of Islam will not infiltrate our ports, will not take advantage of our porous border with Mexico.

But at the same time Caesar Bush and Company refuses to secure our borders for the sake of slave labor thereby inviting nuclear terrorism they have plunged America into fathomless debt, so much so it cannot but remind me of the story of Babylon and the destruction of that “Great City” in Revelation, the result being the merchants of the world crying who would then buy their goods? The thoroughgoing lunacy of the whole thing cannot but call up images of an apocalyptic End Times scenario, the Presidents of both America and Iran declaring deity is on their side, Kim Jong-il declaring he is deity, all being mad, all pursuing a course that can only lead to unimaginable suffering and destruction.

Then there is always “Fail-Safe” to consider, especially now that computers are taking the place of human judgment, the result of the potential for an accidental nuclear Armageddon becoming increasingly a possibility.

Well, perhaps ongoing events in Israel even as I write will overtake the truth.

In Tora! Tora! Tora! a poem by the Japanese Emperor is quoted, “If all men are brothers why are the wind and waves so restless?”

It’s an ill wind that does not blow some good. Since the pope’s speech Hitler’s Mein Kampf is enjoying a renewal of brisk sales in Muslim nations, dictators threatening America and Israel are getting plenty of face time in the UN and on TV networks worldwide. Meanwhile our “leadership” continues to live on planet Greed seemingly oblivious to We the People, fiddling while Rome burns.

Power corrupts, and this explains why the White House and Congress, state legislatures seem oblivious to the fact America is being destroyed by the enormity of corruption throughout all levels of government, continuing to sell out and betray America to other nations for power and profits, for slave labor from Mexico, and can’t even agree on the need of secure borders and secure ballots.

Some time ago an editor for The Bakersfield Californian published a column calling attention to the aggravation of receiving all kinds of material from banks, credit card companies, government agencies that continue to send out their computer generated propaganda long after a loved one is deceased.

    Granted it is left to the living to inform the appropriate parties that the loved one to whom all of this computer generated junk is addressed has passed on. But this editor pointed out the extreme difficulty one faces in stemming this flood of unwanted and unneeded computer generated material that continues coming despite efforts to stem the flood. Among the difficulties in attempts to inform the various parties and agencies involved of a loved one’s passing are those interminable mindless, disembodied telephone menus that so frustrate any hope of talking to a real, live and breathing human being.

    Unexpectedly I find myself the remaining patriarch with all the folks now gone. I hope I have “cleaned up” after myself, and others won’t suffer any “clutter” after I am gone. We owe that to those remaining after our demise.

Now given the extent of corruption, and yes TREASON! in government at all levels I have to wonder: Who is going to “clean up” after America’s demise?

To use David Keene’s words “The Islamic world, along with the politically correct world, is in a snit” over the pope, all the while Iran’s mad man continues threatening to wipe Israel off the map and make America bow to Allah and Iran. Not really much to be done about these things on the part of us ordinary folks except look to the ballot box and keep hoping, and maybe praying, cooler heads will eventually prevail, and in the meantime keep our powder dry.

It seems a vain hope that any truly civilized solution can be found for Muslims threatening the destruction of Western Civilization. And all the politically correct diatribe aside the pope is certainly justified and proven correct by Muslim reaction to his words. Try to imagine Christians finally reacting with such barbaric threats and violence to the ridicule being continually heaped on them by the ACLU and other of the politically correct. And it is obvious the MSM is avoiding any criticism of Islam and the barbaric actions of Muslims due to abject fear!

Maybe if Muslim boys were raised to value and respect girls, if Muslim girls were raised to value and respect themselves things would be different. After all, girls should be a civilizing influence on boys provided they are raised to value and respect themselves, if they are raised to expect boys to show the proper deference due the fair sex.

Because of all the bad news abounding with lunatics rattling their sabers I’m going to write about the kinder and gentler civilizing influence girls should have on boys. For example, Sam Clemens wasn’t joking about Tom Sawyer trying to impress Becky Thatcher. Sam easily recalled his own efforts as a boy trying to impress girls. But when a boy meets that special girl, and meets her at that special time in their lives, a whole new world of the civilizing influence girls should be on boys becomes a reality. How many of you men can recall the first time when as a boy that special girl got your attention? I certainly remember that girl when I was a boy, and therein lies a tale.

“Grandma?”

“Yes, Donnie, what is it?”

“Grandma, can you tell me how to dress for a girl?”

If it was anyone but grandma I couldn’t even have uttered such words. Or wanted to. Grandma (actually our great-grandmother. Somehow she became “grandma” and we called my grandmother “Tody,” though I never knew why) was the one person my brother Ronnie and I could tell anything and she would understand. She loved us without reservation; and Ronnie and I knew that when she would tell us if we got hurt or were suffering from some illness that she wished she could take the pain on herself she really meant it. In spite of a bad hip and having to walk with a cane, grandma always seemed to be a strong woman. She wore her silver hair in a bun and had pale, blue eyes that would twinkle when Ronnie and I were younger and would tell her some fanciful story or share some recent capture of a lizard or June bug. But those eyes had the most uncomfortable ability to pierce you through her steel-rimmed bifocals if you had done something wrong or tried to lie to her. We didn’t lie to grandma.

“Why Donnie, whatever is it? Tell me why you want to know?”

“Well, grandma, I met this girl; her name is Jean.”

Grandma hesitated a moment and then asked, “Tell me about this girl, how old is Jean and what does she look like?”

“Well, she’s twelve like me, but a few months younger; her birthday is June tenth. She’s small and kind of quiet, and she has really beautiful, long, light brown hair. And she has violet eyes. I’ve never seen violet eyes before, grandma. They are really beautiful.”

Grandma smiled at that.

“Violet eyes, you say? My, that is unusual. She sounds like a very pretty girl.”

There was a twinkle in grandma’s own eyes and in her voice as well.

“She sure is, grandma, she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life!”

“Well, well, Donnie, now that really is something. I’m going to have to meet this beautiful girl.”

Grandma didn’t seem altogether satisfied with my abbreviated description of Jean, but I was having great difficulty meeting grandma’s expectation of a description. A lot of things were going through my mind, things I wanted to say, but just didn’t seem able to come up with the right words. I wanted to say so much more, like Jean’s eyes, how they seemed to know what I was thinking, but....

Grandma sensed my difficulty and said, “Never mind, Donnie, she sounds like a very nice and beautiful girl and I am definitely looking forward to meeting her. Now, let’s get to the original subject of your question about how to dress for a girl.”

I felt the tension go away. I was really concerned and badly needed to talk to grandma so I plunged ahead.

“Grandma, she made me feel funny. I don’t quite know how to explain it, but I just felt like my Levi’s didn’t fit or I was wearing the wrong socks and shoes when I met her. I felt kind ‘a mortified.”

Grandma gave me a quizzical look before she replied.     

“Well, Donnie, you have very nice clothes you wear for church or going to special events where you have to dress nicely.”

“But grandma those are dress-up clothes. Most all black or brown with a white shirt and tie. I need clothes like regular ones; you know, regular pants and shirt. And shoes. I need a pair more like the clothes; regular shoes that aren’t exactly like Sunday shoes.”

“I believe I know what you mean, Donnie. I’m sure we can do something for you. It’s good to see you finally taking such a special interest in your appearance. You’re the right age for such things to begin to become important to you.”

Grandma was giving me a look I had never seen before. Her kind eyes were still quizzical; and yet there was the understanding in them I was hoping I would get from her. Grandma would understand what I was trying to say even if I couldn’t say it right.

“Well, Donnie, it seems you like this girl very much.”

If anyone but grandma had said such a thing to me, I would have been defensive and embarrassed. But coming from grandma, I knew the statement was well intended. She never embarrassed me and her comments were always genuine. I not only loved grandma, I respected her. This made it easy for me to talk to grandma about things I would never consider talking about with anyone else. Grandma had a way of making you want to talk to her about things you wouldn’t talk about with anyone else. And I really did want her help in trying to understand my mixed up feelings about Jean. So I tried to answer the best I could.

“I don’t know Grandma; well, I guess I do, but she isn’t like any other girls I know.”

Grandma was smiling and the twinkle was in her eyes. But there was a serious look there now as well.

“Donnie, she sounds like a very exceptional girl, and I am very much looking forward to meeting her.”

I went on, “I just never met a girl like this before. If you saw her and talked with her you’d know what I mean. She’s just different and I feel real funny around her.”

“And you say you felt embarrassed about the way you were dressed?”

“Uh, huh. I had clean Levi’s, my fingernails were clean and my hair was combed. I even had my good tennis shoes on. But I still felt funny, as if I just wasn’t dressed right?”

Grandma’s expression turned reflective.

“Well, well, well,” grandma murmured.

She sat back slowly in her rocking chair and with her hands folded in her lap, looked up at the ceiling for a few moments. Then, unfolding her hands and placing them on the arms of the rocker, she started gently tapping her fingers on them. Bringing her gaze back down to me she said, “I’ll tell you what Donnie, I’m going to ask your grandparents to take you to town. I think I know the kind of clothes and shoes you need.”

A feeling of relief swept through me. Grandma did understand.

“Thanks grandma, I love you.”

I gave grandma a hug and kiss and went outside thanking the Lord for grandma. Like the Lord, she never failed us. Grandma always had a way of explaining things that took the puzzle out of them, and this was another reason I knew she would understand what I couldn’t really explain. And though I was too young at the time to appreciate it, in looking back I realize grandma was somewhat ahead of her time in sticking up for what girls were capable of and should be learning and doing. Even so this was uncharted territory for me, and I was still uncomfortable with thinking and talking seriously about any girl. But between grandma and Jean, in some as yet incomprehensible way I knew I was going to have to think about a lot of things I’d never thought about before; intriguing things, yet somehow vaguely uncomfortable as well.

That very afternoon grandad and Tody told Ronnie and me to get ready to go downtown. I was delighted. If things went well, hopefully the next time I saw Jean I would be better dressed than I had been the first time, however being better dressed turned out to be.

A trip to downtown Bakersfield was always exciting for Ronnie and me. The cartoon matinee, for example, was only ten cents. For a dime we could watch two hours of glorious cartoons. And there was always a stop at Owen’s Toy Store, that fabulous place of such fantastic wonders! This was the source of electric trains of all descriptions, of our own Lionel, of cap guns, of peashooters and yo-yos. It was Mr. Owen himself who told me that yo-yo came from the Tagalong language and meant: Come, come. There were bicycles and tricycles and tops and marbles of every kind. I really believe grandad enjoyed Owen’s nearly as much as Ronnie and I. At least he was always talking with Mr. Owen and picking up various toys and examining them, all the time smiling and laughing. Grandad had once bought me a film pistol at Owen’s. A strip of film, mostly cartoons could be loaded, and when you pulled the trigger a light shined through the barrel. The film progressed one frame with each pull of the trigger, and the picture could be projected against a wall or anything you chose. My favorite strip was one of Tarzan.

Nearby was Vest’s Pharmacy with its marvelous soda fountain and delicious milkshakes, sundaes, and sandwiches. The beautiful green and white tile façade of the store was always a delight to our eyes. Nearby, two gray, stone pedestal drinking fountains were mounted on the sidewalk. They were equipped with white ceramic balls that had holes in them through which the water spouted when you turned the handles. These were welcome items for shoppers and children during the extremely hot Bakersfield summers. During the hottest days, the stores would have large blocks of ice sitting on the sidewalks in front of them to cool things off; or at least make you feel cooler by just looking at them. Encased in the clear blocks would be straw hats, skimmers, adorned with red, white, and blue bands. Most of these large blocks of ice came from grandad and Tody’s icehouse on 4^th and Chester.

The trips to downtown held marvelous sights like the magnificent Clock Tower of such intricate stonework. The clock sounded beautiful chimes on the hour. Nearby was the Bakersfield Arch over Union Avenue, and the adjacent large motel built like a Spanish Mission with its towering palms all along the front.

There was a drive-in restaurant that had the tail assembly, the empennage, of an airplane sticking out of its roof. This fascinated me and I always wanted to climb on the roof and examine it up close. Another restaurant mom would take us to not far from Vest’s Pharmacy had electric model trains running on tracks suspended from the ceiling. Ronnie and I were enraptured of the trains running overhead with their clickety-clack, clickety-clack, and the whistles of the locomotives as we ate. The owner must have really loved model trains. The big city certainly had its attractions for us.

And there was a Jewelry store not far from Vest’s Pharmacy with the most amazing “toys” in its front window. These were intricate, carousel-like and clockwork driven, with tiny figures, usually elves, doing a variety of things such as ringing tiny, silver bells with tiny, gold hammers. Ever so often a new creation would be displayed. I remember one that had an elf using a gold hammer to work something on a silver anvil. Ronnie and I would watch these mobile works of art with rapt attention, marveling at the amount of movement and detail in these wondrous displays of the watchmaker and jeweler’s artistry.

Brundage Lane, Niles, Union and Chester Avenues were almost as familiar to us as Cottonwood and Padre or Weedpatch Highway. Other areas were of excitement and enjoyment to us as well. Like China Grade East of Bakersfield where we could look out over the barren oil fields and hills punctuated with the many pumps, bobbing up and down slowly and rhythmically like huge iron birds sipping black nectar through steel straws.

Trips up the canyon along the river on highway 178 to Kernville and Isabella were really exciting and we had made many trips before grandad and Tody had acquired the mining claim. Ronnie and I always gazed with wonder at the tunnel way up the mountainside just before you entered the canyon. Grandad said a mining railway used it. As you drove up the canyon, you could see the tailings from the mine and the trail alongside the mountain that the old donkey engine with its ore cars had followed.

The fantastic granite sides of the canyon with enormous rocks as big as houses, some of them balanced so precariously they looked as though they could fall at any time, were fearfully awesome and fascinating. Tody would find pictures in the rocks. She would always point to one in particular that she said looked like a lady playing a piano. I dutifully looked, but could never make out the picture.

I had a great love of animals, birds, the outdoors and nature. I loved our visits to the mining claim in the forest. But downtown Bakersfield was always a study in people and architecture, and adventurous and exciting in its own distinctive way. While Ronnie and I had lived in some large cities like San Francisco and Cleveland, there was something about Bakersfield that was just different. And it wasn’t just because of it being more like a hometown to us. It was just somehow different in some indefinable way than other cities we had lived in.

Once downtown, Ronnie and I would see a few Zoot-suiters and scantily clad women wearing lots of makeup, strange hairdos and hair colors. A few of the women would elicit the phrase Painted Hussy from Tody, a phrase with which Ronnie and I had become well acquainted from earliest memory. Neither of us, of course, had the foggiest notion of what a painted hussy was; but we had heard the expression often enough, and somehow we had gotten the idea that any woman wearing a lot of makeup was a painted hussy.

But today, the strange outfits of some of the men and the strangely clad and made-up ladies only added mystery, intrigue, and excitement to the atmosphere of the Big City. This trip was different. There wouldn’t be any matinee or visit to Owen’s. I was going to get some clothes, different kinds of clothes than the usual bib overalls or Levi’s. Usually, Ronnie and I made directly for the toy department or the ice cream fountain at J. C. Penney’s. Ronnie did the usual; but grandad and Tody led me to the clothing department, an area I usually avoided with studied indifference if not downright disdain.

A lady clerk came over and grandad introduced Tody and himself and gave the clerk a very generalized idea of what they thought we were looking for. I say we even though my input was not invited.

The clerk looked me over like I was a bug in a jar. She seemed snooty to me. I didn’t like her. Instantly.

“Well, I think maybe we have something that will suit you (this to Tody and grandad, not me).”

The snooty clerk went to a rack of trousers and pulled off a pair. They were some kind of dark blue material. Then she went to another rack and pulled a shirt. It was white, long sleeved cotton. I wasn’t too sure about that. I had a couple of long sleeve flannel shirts for winter. But a long sleeve shirt in summer? What the Sam hill would anyone want a long sleeve shirt in summer for unless you were fishing or hunting in order to keep off mosquitoes or other bugs? Besides, I already had a couple of long sleeve white shirts. Why buy another one? I looked at grandad and Tody and started to say something. But grandad had that “Don’t” look in his eyes and shook his head ever so slightly. Tody seemed to be silently agreeing with grandad. The clerk got a matching leather belt off an oddly shaped wire hanger near the counter and threaded it through the loops in the trousers.

Now why couldn’t she have let me do that? I could sure put my own belt in trousers! I wore proper pants on Sunday; I didn’t always wear Levi’s like I was now wearing! And they had a belt in them, didn’t they? Who’d she think put the belt in them? I was feeling somewhat indignant.

“What is his name?” the clerk was asking Tody.

The way she said this she might as well have said: What is its name! Why didn’t she ask me? Didn’t she think I knew my own name? Indignation increasing.

“Donnie,” Tody replied.

“Well, now, Donnie (she made it sound like it was a word that fitted that bug in the jar) you just go in that dressing room and try these on.”

I went, feeling indignant and resentful. I put the pants and shirt on, somewhat surprised the snooty clerk hadn’t insisted on helping me to dress myself. But I was even more surprised that the pants and shirt fit perfectly. The snooty clerk hadn’t even taken or asked my measurements. Well, I could give her credit for knowing her job. Albeit very grudgingly. I walked out of the dressing room.

“Now go over to that mirror,” the clerk said imperiously. Knowing her job or not, she was really getting on my nerves. But having been taught not to argue with or show disrespect to my elders I obediently walked to the full length mirror, with an effort holding my opinion of the clerk to myself.

Tody and grandad were beaming.

“My,” Tody said, “doesn’t he just look grown up?”

I had to admit the pants and shirt really did make me look grown up. And in a much different way than my Sunday clothes. I hadn’t realized what a difference such clothes, properly coordinated, could make in my appearance. And somehow these clothes felt right on me when I tried to visualize myself standing in the presence of Jean, though I didn’t understand why? But once more I grudgingly admitted to myself that while I didn’t like the snooty clerk she knew what she was doing (I was to frequently confront this lesson about people over and again in my life).

The times our mother had Ronnie and me dressed up in some sailor or soldier outfit came to mind, as well as the year we had spent at St. Joseph’s Military Academy usually dressed in school uniforms. But, except for the Academy, that was playing, acting a part. We knew we weren’t really sailors or soldiers, though we would pretend we were. This was different. I was really going to wear this outfit to see a girl; Jean. It wasn’t playing. In some way that I did not understand, I somehow knew this was very serious business.

“Does he have shoes and socks to match?” the clerk was asking.

Grandad chimed in: “We want to get the boy new shoes and socks to match.”

“Then please come this way,” the clerk said… still snooty, still imperious.

She led us to the shoe department. I took a seat and was made to strip off my tennis shoes and socks and put on the new socks of the clerk’s choosing. They were of a thin, black material and I had to admit they felt good. She introduced Tody and grandad to another clerk (still acting like I didn’t exist), a man that was in charge of the shoe department. He measured my feet. For at least this much, I was grateful. The man didn’t look at me like a bug in jar. He went into a stockroom and returned with a shoebox in his hands, and I soon had on a new pair of black loafers. I had never had such a pair of shoes in my life. Grandad had some though, and I was really feeling proud.

The snooty clerk took over once again and walked me to a special machine and had me put my newly shod feet into it. Through a fluorescent green light, you could actually see the bones of your feet in the outline of the shoes in the device! Marvelous!

“Now, Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell,” the clerk said, “please look for yourselves whether you think the fit is right.”

Grandad and Tody dutifully peeked into the magic apparatus and pronounced the shoes a proper fit.

“Now, Donnie,” grandad said practically, “walk around in them and tell me how they feel to you.”

My heart went out to grandad. He was sticking up for me. Maybe he didn’t like the snooty clerk either? I walked up and down a few times. I was tempted to say they didn’t feel right just to cause the snooty clerk trouble. But that would probably have caused trouble for the man who had selected the shoes and not for her. And besides that, they felt good. And I was beginning to feel a little more charitable toward the clerk. She obviously knew her business. There was another full length mirror just off to the side of the shoe machine. I walked over to it in order to see how I looked in the new outfit, shoes and all… and this time I didn’t hurry because of the snooty clerk. Besides, with grandad and Tody going to all this trouble and expense, the least I could do was to try to cooperate and take a really good look at myself and see if they were wasting their time and money. And now that I was trying to really look at myself, the boy that stared back at me wasn’t me! He was a total stranger! For whatever unfathomable reason, I seemed a different person!

I heard the clerk asking the folks, “Would he like to wear these things or change back?”

“How about it Donnie?” grandad asked me.

Grandad was on my side. He knew we men had to stick together.

Turning from the mirror, I gathered my wits and tried to be nonchalant.

“I think I’ll wear them,” I said as condescendingly as I knew how for the clerk’s benefit.

Grandad had a smile. He looked at the clerk and said, “He’ll wear them.”

The clerk gave a little sniff and replied, “Very well, I’ll wrap his other things.”

I just knew she had wanted to say his old things and was resenting putting my Levi’s, old shirt, and socks into a clean, new store bag and my tennis shoes in the new shoebox.

Serves her right, I thought to myself. I wasn’t feeling all that charitable.

We collected Ronnie; and for his pains he got one of those toy boats that flew apart when a wood torpedo fired from another boat hit it just right. It was worth it just to see his eyes bug out at seeing me in my new sartorial splendor. As we returned to the car, something was bothering me. Then it struck me! It seemed I had never really looked at myself until I finally stood in front of that full-length mirror and tried to really see myself in the new clothes. Apart from the stranger I first saw, the straight brown hair was the same as mine and the hands were the same. But the new and properly coordinated clothes made me not only look older but feel older, and the next time I saw Jean dressed in these new clothes things would be different; I would be different. But I didn’t understand how or why, and that was somehow vaguely pleasant but very disturbing as well.

Well folks this story is really personal, but one I am compelled to write about. Bad enough there are so many criminals preying on the elderly, but when a form of fraud and abuse is perpetrated against the elderly by a tax funded government agency I am going to speak out against it!

There is mounting anger over the failure of our various agencies and courts to properly deal with child abuse, and I am grateful for the coming opportunity to vote for Jessica’s Law here in my native state. But I am finding the elderly to be at increasing risk as well as children.

One of the things that come with old age is an increasing awareness of how many unscrupulous people are all about preying on the elderly. Every month the AARP magazine warns of the various scams being perpetrated against the elderly. We see these being the subject of TV newscasts, talk shows and newspapers, there are mailings from various government agencies in the face of a stream of commercials touting products like electric scooters, medical alert “services,” nostrums of a seemingly infinite variety, etc.

There is outright and rampant fraud perpetrated where even homes are stolen from the elderly by forged deeds for example. This actually happened to my grandfather and it took enormous effort and expense to clear this up and bring the guilty party to justice. There are the many frauds by charlatans promising cheap drugs and medical procedures, the multitude of scams promoting mortgages, home repairs, and nowadays the ubiquitous threats of identity theft with which to contend. The elderly are an easy target for these things since many are not able to keep pace with the ingenuity of criminals, especially in an electronic age of computers.

Few of us plan to get old, and few can anticipate the many indignities that come with old age. Bad enough our bodies begin to betray us as the various systems and functions start demanding attention never before experienced while we were young and filled with the vigor and vitality of youth. But it is of no avail to try to explain these things to those who are young, because they have not yet become old; and unlike the elderly who remember their youth the young are unable as yet to look back, the truism of “I have been young, but you have never been old.”

But none of the elderly are so at risk of predators than those living alone. Those fortunate who have loved ones to care for them do not have to live with the many difficulties, and yes even threats those living alone face. This has been especially hard for me since I have been such an independent man all my life, never having had to ask the help of anyone.

However, even as independently as I have lived always doing and providing for myself there came the time when I had to swallow my pride and begin to accept my increasing limitations. And so it happened I began to look at what is euphemistically called “Senior Services” here in Kern County. And I began to get an education in what the elderly living alone are facing.

My first foray into Senior Services was Meals on Wheels. Now I don’t know about the service elsewhere, but the tip off for me as to further efforts to enlist the aid of these agencies should have been when half the time these “meals” would only qualify as hog fodder. Not even the resident cat would touch some of these “meals.”

Further education into Senior Services began about two months ago with a call to a Sharon Caughlin, advertised with College Community Services and having the title of “Case Manager Supervisor, Senior Outreach Coordinator.” She came by about a week later, but seemed unimpressed by my situation, especially since I am still able to drive though very limited in doing so and confine myself now to the valley. Seemed simple to her; if I could still drive despite my physical limitations in other ways like emphysema I didn’t need any help. That I was elderly and living alone without any family did not seem to move her either.

Well, accepting I couldn’t expect anything from this “Case Manager” and having a list of all the Senior Services provided throughout Kern County I called a local number promising “In Home Supportive Services.” The blurb looked promising, declaring help for the elderly not yet needing a hospice to “remain safely at home; an alternative to assisted living.”

The lady answering was a Melody Batelaan here locally in the Kern River Valley. She told me she would contact the appropriate persons in Bakersfield and they would call me. So, no one locally was available to meet with me. I waited nearly ten days and nothing. So, I called Ms. Batelaan again. But she seemed annoyed by my calling a second time and told me because of the Labor Day weekend and other matters there was a backlog of cases and to be patient. I thought nearly ten days was being patient.

Hearing nothing from Bakersfield I decided to take another tack. There was a number for “Adult Protective Services” stating it was “a program for any senior or dependant adult who is at risk physically, emotionally or financially or in danger of suicide or neglect.”

So, I called that number. With the loss of my daughter a year ago I continue to suffer deep depression, so much so my doctor prescribed medication for me which I am still taking. The lady answering was “Cynthia.” She was very kind and listened to me. Then, she asked me many personal questions to see if I qualified for assistance. Satisfied that I did qualify, particularly because of the deep depression, my physical limitations and living alone and without family, she said my request would be sent to the “Aging and Adult Services Department” and someone there would be in touch with me.

There were further delays; further calls on my part before I was told it would be a week to ten days before anyone would be out to see me. So, I waited anticipating a call to confirm an appointment. I had been told the person being sent would be a Mr. Lewis McBratney.

Time passed once more, but to my immense surprise and consternation I chanced to open my front door yesterday and there was a card stuck in it that identified Lewis “MAC” McBratney, C.A.D.C.-II Senior Outreach Assessment Response. There had been no call to confirm his coming by, and I had not been told when he would come by. Now, all I had was a card to show for my nearly two months trying to get someone to talk to personally about my situation.

While answering the questions for Cynthia, which I assumed this Mr. McBratney had received, I made my situation very clear. I lived alone, and living in the country I had no nearby neighbors. Special attention to my situation under these circumstances had to be given when anyone came by in order to meet with me.

Well, Mr. McBratney had come and gone. If he knocked or rang the bell I didn’t hear any of these. And from here where I write at the back of my home I often do not hear a car pulling into my yard.

All this time and effort and now all I had was a business card to show for it! I was angry, to say the least. The card did have an email address so I immediately sent the following note to Mr. McBratney:

Sam Heath 9/18/2006 1:01 PM: I may have been in the bathroom when you left your card. I just don't think you tried very hard when you came by and I will pass this on to  senior services here in the valley. Surely you have dealt with enough seniors living alone to know you can't just knock or ring the bell and expect us to come running.
Samuel D. G. Heath, Ph. D.

That afternoon I received the following reply:

From: "Lewis McBratney" Sent: Monday, September 18, 2006 3:24 PM. Subject: Re: Do what you feel is necessary, I rang your bell 3 times and knocked on the door. There will be other opportunities to discuss this in person on my next visit, or if you like I do not have to visit you again. The choice is yours.

Incensed by this callous response I immediately sent this note:
    No, the choice was yours! You could easily have come to my back door which was wide open! That you did not bother to do so leaves me in no confidence whatsoever in any good intentions for my welfare or that of other seniors in similar circumstances and I will convey this to the appropriate parties in government.

This provoked such an insulting reply that I immediately deleted it! Those suffering dangerously high blood pressure will understand my doing so. I had every right to assume this person had all the personal information I had given Cynthia. But while I deleted the insulting message, it contained his telling me I should consult a doctor for my “condition!” He even had the unmitigated temerity to tell me he had “diagnosed” me as suffering from depression! All of this information was given Cynthia, but this government bureaucrat apparently hadn’t even read the report!

My Ph. D. is in Human Behavior. And here is some bureaucrat making an instant diagnosis of MY mental problems, oblivious to the circumstances I had already described to Cynthia and of the sheer ridiculousness at best of his instant “evaluation” of my need of consulting a doctor! There are the many vicissitudes of old age any professional dealing with the elderly should be expected to know, expected to deal with and never be insulting to the elderly because of these!

Well folks, this is where the rubber meets the road, downright personal and without any polish, just the ugly facts. This is my experience with Senior Services here in Kern County. And you can believe I would not be getting so personal were it not that I fear there are other seniors like me out there suffering the same indignities at the hands of taxpayer funded agencies of which Mr. McBratney may be too typical.

For example, seniors living alone do not always keep up with things like whether their door bells are working, they may not hear a knock at their door, they may well spend a lot of time in their bathroom and be hard of hearing, they may spend a lot of time lying down and napping. And of course there is the increasing hazard of the elderly, especially those living alone, of mixing or missing medications that may leave them incapacitated. And if they are living alone without any family to care for them too often they fall prey to this form of elder abuse I am describing by government bureaucrats, from those holding positions where we have every right to expect them to be fully aware of such limitations on the part of the elderly and act accordingly.

In my case, to not even receive a phone call confirming an appointment, to be left not knowing the hour or even the day when someone would come by is to me unconscionable! At the very least it is unprofessional by any standard. But in my case as well, what these bureaucrats had not foreseen was my being a scholar and academic, a professional writer and still possessed of an especially keen mind. And having been very politically active all my adult life I will follow through on my promise to let those of my political acquaintance know how seniors like me are being mistreated by those that consider themselves to be “untouchable” and above any criticism or personal accountability.

There will be usual protestations on the part of bureaucrats, of their “impeccable credentials,” and “successes,” of how “hard” they tried to help, they will have their stories confuting me to be sure. But this is all whitewash, something we have come to expect from all such bureaucrats. And for those of you who may have elderly loved ones, take the responsibility to stay well informed about how the various government agencies are dealing with them.

If it were only a “war of words” that would be fine with me. I don’t expect the pope or any politician to fall on their sword and a good old southern expression comes to mind, “Call me anything you want, but don’t call me late to dinner.” As with those who take the trouble to excoriate me, as long as they do so in a civilized manner that would be acceptable. But, alas, that would be expecting too much of the uncivilized whether here in America or Iran. So, knowing there is no changing those who not only do not know better but have no intention of doing better, this morning in my reverie of a kinder and gentler America I used to know I recalled the love I used to have for shooting marbles.

I wonder why kids don’t play marbles any more? As a child in Little Oklahoma I lived for shooting marbles. Any child worth his salt, to be acceptable in our company, had to have a good collection of puries, boulders, and stripies. A couple of steelies had to be included as well. One had to be on the lookout for doughies, only used by unscrupulous cheaters.

    How many of you remember the incantation: “Here’s the river ‘n’ here’s the snake; here’s where y’ make your big mistake” while kneeling in the dirt, drawing the appropriate symbols to foil your opponent’s shot? Or, do any of you remember throwing a marble over your left shoulder in order to find a lost one? Losing a marble was one of the hazards of playing chase.

    In order to give the reader some idea of how serious I was about marbles, I came in second in the Bakersfield Championship of 1943. Yes, there really was a citywide championship for shooting marbles. Such was the innocence of the times that a city could have a marble-playing championship for children while the world was plunged into war.

    We could listen to Gabriel Heatter and Edward R. Murrow on the radio and hear news of battles, but bombs were not dropping on Little Oklahoma or Bakersfield. Therefore, the War was an exciting and far-away thing, made real to kids by such things as rationing, Superman and others doing battle against the Axis Powers. Even Bugs Bunny was doing his bit to win the war alongside Humphrey Bogart and George Raft.

    There were also the numerous military personnel in and about, constant reminders that a war was going on; Ronnie and I would be dressed in the diminutive uniforms of soldiers or sailors, there were little flags in windows with blue stars indicating some loved one in the military and, tragically, an occasional gold star declaring the ultimate sacrifice. We children could see AT-6’s and an occasional P-38 overhead from Minter Field. Sometimes we were entertained by them engaging in mock combat. But God seemed to be sparing America from an invading enemy on our shores.

    Back then there was no such thing as TV or gangs of kids shooting bullets at each other. Shooting marbles was certainly preferable, but children had a chance to be children in those long ago, simple days.

    I miss playing marbles; the good, warm, honest alkali dust under my bare feet, so much a part of an America that used to be. However, I never think of playing marbles but an incident comes to mind, one which gave me early pause to question my sanity at times and led me to speculate whether there are not in fact demons that suggest mischievous behavior to otherwise well behaved children (In the following narrative despite my first name being Samuel, everyone called me by my second name Donald, though most often used as Donnie).

    What happened was an unexpected and totally unplanned catastrophe. You know, one of those things that always seem like a good idea at the time but don't quite turn out the way you expect? Then you're left wondering why you thought it was a good idea but never able to say why?

    Now was one of those times.

    It had started as a normal day at school, the last day of school at Mt. Vernon Elementary before summer vacation. It was lunchtime and Charlie and I had been shooting marbles out toward the big chinaberry tree near the end of the play yard. It was a good, flat, bare dirt area and we always chose it to shoot marbles or play mumblety-peg. The sweet grass grew tall in the large expanse of the vacant field beyond the tree and I remember one time being able to fill a whole Prince Albert tobacco tin, one of those flat ones with a hinged lid, with ladybugs from that grass when it was fresh with dew and a hatch was on.

    We had drawn the regulation circle in the dirt for a game of rings and were playing for keeps; though the grownups had forbidden this evil, which made it all the more enticing. I had won the lag, so as first shooter I was concentrating hard as Charlie was busy with a twig scribing the twisting lines in the dry dust and chanting, Here's the river ‘n’ here's the snake, here's where y’ make your big mistake.

    We never knew if this incantation made someone miss their shot, but no boy who took shooting marbles for keeps with the right seriousness could fail to try if he wanted to keep his credentials. Like, if you lost a marble while playing chase, you stood with your back to the probable area of search and tossed a marble over your left shoulder. It was sure to land close to the lost marble.

    Charlie was the first to glimpse the slender, black undulating shape of the small grass snake.

    Hey! Look 'a there Donnie!

    I jerked around and spotted the hapless and harmless serpent.

    Pouncing quickly as only young boys can, I immediately had the wriggling creature captured in both hands.

    Whillikers, whut y' gonna do with 'im, Donnie?

    We were entranced with the small, captive reptile. It was only about eight inches long but lively. I held it tight but careful not to squash it and we watched the small, forked black tongue darting in and out, the snake's cold, black eyes a fascinating and penetrating attraction. I held it so only the snake's head protruded from my fingers, the rest of the small serpent's body twined around my hand and wrist.

    Dunno, gotta keep 'im somewhere.

    How 'bout y'r lunch bucket?

    That's the ticket!

    Charlie's and my lunch buckets were at the ready and empty. As I popped the wriggling snake into my bucket, we heard the bell being rung signaling the end of lunchtime. We grabbed up our marbles and lunch buckets and raced toward the school.

    Trouping into the classroom and taking our seats, we deposited the lunch buckets under our desks. Ella May had the seat in front of mine. She was wearing a yellow dress with small, white polka dots and a white sash tied around the waist in a neat bow behind her. A lacy, crocheted white collar went around the neck and with Ella May's short, curly hair, you could see it was open at the back. A row of dainty, white buttons ran half way down the back of the dress. It was a pretty dress.

    Miz Emelia, our third grade teacher, was busily putting a message on the blackboard informing us that we were required to make sure our desks were all cleaned out before leaving school as it was the last day before summer vacation. She was adding in her beautiful, meticulous, wavy hand (the Palmer method) that she wished us all an enjoyable summer and looked forward to seeing us again the next term. And she would be seeing a lot of the same class since many of my Little Oklahoma classmates would fail and return to the third grade.

    But in spite of my many shortcomings, school wasn't one of them. I enjoyed reading, writing, arithmetic and art. And I loved the music and singing. I was often paired with one of the girls to do duets, standing and singing for the whole class at the front of the room. And, of course, there was shooting marbles, tetherball, playing baseball, teasing girls and catching snakes. For the most part, I liked school.

    I was sitting and staring at the lacy, white, open collar of Ella May's dress. I bore Ella May no animosity. She was no worse than any other girl. In fact, strange, even alien creatures that they might be I even usually kind of liked some of them. I liked Ella May.

    I would never be able to explain what happened next. Maybe it was because it was the last day of school? Maybe it was because Miz Emelia was busy at the blackboard and not watching? Maybe I just went insane? People do that you know. Maybe I was suddenly possessed by a demon? Maybe...?

    The small snake seemed to materialize out of my lunch bucket and the hand holding the wiggling creature took on a life of its own detached from its owner as it reached out and slipped the little reptile down that open and inviting collar of the occupant of the desk in front of me.

    With a shriek peculiar and possible only to small girls with a snake down the back of their dress, Ella May shot up from her desk like lightning and instantly began performing a frantically insane dance accompanied with leaps and war whoops that would have made a frenzied Comanche preparing for going on the warpath green with envy and unable to duplicate! A truly awesome and spectacular performance!

    The chalk in Miz Emelia's hand snapped against the blackboard with the sound of a pistol shot as she whirled around in a state of shock and stood transfixed at the sight of Ella May leaping and whirling about the aisle like a dervish or turpentined cat, ricocheting off desks and shrieking at the top of her lungs! The whole class was in an uproar not knowing what was happening!

    Ella May hit the floor crawfishing, screaming and shrieking piercingly as a fire drill alarm, flopping like a fresh caught trout and clawing at the back of her dress. None of us had seen such a sight since one boy last year had a fit on the playground (But that had been the result of sitting on a mound of fire ants).

    Miz Emelia came out of her cataleptic state and rushed toward Ella May just in time for the girl to finally catch hold of the innocent and frightened reptile and sling it toward the teacher. The snake struck Miz Emelia right in the bosom and she instinctively whipped her hand at it only to throw it on the principal who had just run in the door of the classroom to see who was being murdered. It hit him right in his spectacles. He in turn threw his hands up and the poor snake found itself once more airborne along with the principal's glasses, landing directly in the wastebasket by the teacher's desk.

    It had all happened so quickly that I sat spellbound, unable to grasp the full significance of my handiwork. My mind didn't want to grasp the spectacular and frantic chaos I had caused all around me. I was truly impressed. Especially at the principal's shot into the wastebasket.

    I had never been to the principal's office before. But I knew others who had been. It was described as a dreadful place where Mr. Combs, the principal, had a huge paddle the size of a boat oar with which he meted out terrible punishment to evildoers. The paddle was described as being of oak construction with a series of holes drilled through it. The threat was made constantly: Don't get sideways of Mr. Combs! One older boy was quoted as saying that the holes were there to make it whistle and swing faster and to raise blisters. And when there were enough blisters, the principal would turn the paddle on edge and bust the blisters.

    It was quiet. A large Regulator pendulum clock with Roman numerals that was hanging on the wall in front of me held my attention as though I were hypnotized. Because next to it hung a huge paddle with holes in it. I stared at the pendulum of the clock swing back and forth trying not to see the paddle. I could hear each tick of the clock. I guess I wasn't hypnotized after all; just wishin'.

    I was seated on a chair in the school secretary's room. There was a door next to the secretary's desk with a pebble glass insert. Large, black letters on the glass spelled out Principal's Office. His muffled voice talking on the phone came through the wall, but not loud enough for me to make out what he was saying. But I knew he was probably talking to my grandfather.

    My mind was still numbed by all the excitement and chaos of Ella May, Miz Emelia and my classmates. It grew number looking at the paddle. I kept trying to look at the clock instead. I thought about the Katzenjammer Kids. They would always put a tin pie plate in their pants when they knew they were going to get a lickin'. Why didn't I have a tin pie plate handy? Another mental lapse.

    My brother Ronnie and I were well acquainted with being paddled. But never with a paddle like the one I couldn't keep my eyes off of. And never did we worry about one that raised blisters to be busted with its edge. What kind of monster was I facing? Why did I do it? No answer. I began to hate that clock.

    I could hear Mr. Combs hanging up the phone.

    He came out the door and pierced me with his eyes. One lens of his glasses was cracked and the frame was twisted. These alterations of his spectacles made his look at me all the more terrifying.

    Usually Mr. Combs struck me as a rather melancholy man. We saw him only rarely. He stood about five-feet, ten-inches tall and was gray haired. But he was solidly built, and except for a slight paunch seemed in excellent shape. He would occasionally play ball with the older pupils so we knew he was human.

    Well, Donnie, I just got through talking with your grandfather. He couldn't believe you would ever do anything like this. I'm not going to paddle you; he assured me he would handle matters.

    I was suddenly light-headed with relief and became somewhat mortified at being the cause of so much trouble for Mr. Combs. I could afford to be charitable now that I knew I wasn't going to get blisters busted on my backside with that monstrous paddle.

    But there was still grandad to face. And here I was facing him. He towered over me and said in his deep baritone that could shake boulders loose in the canyon: Well young man!

    In a rush of words without pause I poured it out.

    I just don't know grandad? Charlie and I were shooting marbles and he saw the snake and I grabbed it. I didn't know what to do with it and put it in my lunch bucket and took it into class. I was going to bring it home, honest!

    And you actually put that snake down little Ella May's dress and she threw it at Miss Emelia and she threw it at the principal?

    I thought I detected a slight smile forming on grandad's face. The red glow on his cheekbones was fading.

    No, I thought; that's not right, I must be going crazy! A faint hope began to form that maybe I really had gone insane? That would explain everything satisfactorily. Even grandad would have to understand then. Only a crazy boy would do what I did! Encouraged with that thought, I plunged ahead.

    Well, that's what happened but I didn't mean for it all to happen, honest! Maybe I went crazy, grandad?

    It was worth a shot.

    I wasn't crazy! Grandad was actually trying to keep from laughing! That was crazy! Grandad was the one going crazy! The thought scared me. I began to feel like when I tied a string to a loose tooth and the other end to a doorknob; just waiting.

    Well, son, you are going to memorize a chapter in the Bible. And I think I Corinthians 13 is the one.

    I couldn't believe my ears! I wasn't going to get a lickin'? What was going on?

    But I wasn't about to argue the kindness of the fates or try to take stock of grandad's sudden loss of his mind.

    Thanks grandad, I'll get right to it!

    And I did. I even remembered to thank the Lord for delivering me from getting a lickin', especially with that monstrous paddle. But I sure couldn't figure out grandad's reaction? Apart from insanity. And maybe grandad going crazy wouldn't be so bad after all. I could swear I could hear him laughing through the door of Ronnie's and my bedroom and my grandmother saying, Hush Jack, it wasn't funny! (Everyone, including my grandmother, called grandad Jack. I never heard anyone call him John. Well, except when my grandmother was mad at him. Then she'd call him John or even John Caldwell if she were really upset at him).

    The ways of grownups were certain strange and mysterious at times.

    With I Corinthians 13 burned into my memory, it didn’t seem to arouse any special love on my part for Ella May. But I still liked her and maybe all I was trying to do was to get her attention? If so, in that respect most would say I had succeeded admirably and beyond all expectations. I would have gladly apologized and asked her to forgive me except she wasn't to be found anywhere after the incident. It really wasn't my nature to do such things. The thought of insanity in the family intruded into my thoughts once more.

    But that's a girl for you. All that fuss over a harmless little grass snake. And I lost the snake too. That hadn't been fair. However, I had intuited that it might not be good form to press my luck by asking Mr. Combs if I could have my snake back. Oh, well. But I really did like Ella May. And I liked Miz Emelia and felt kind of sorry the teacher got hit with the snake. And Mr. Combs. It wasn't my fault Ella May had thrown the snake at her and then Miz Emelia flung it at the principal.

    Almost as quick as a congressman, I managed to begin to feel some comfort of self-righteousness. Even though I liked her, the whole thing was Ella May's fault for carrying on so. I certainly hadn't planned the thing to go like it did. Whatever conscience I might have had in the affair began to subside comfortably and satisfactorily. School was out and the whole summer was before me, there was no further need of hot water bottles in bed to keep our feet warm; winter was long gone and with its passing any memory of the bitter cold.

    Ronnie and I would be sleeping on the screen porch and going swimming, frogging and fishing, digging holes and catching lizards. There would be long, warm evenings; warm moonlit nights just made for the clandestine activities of children, and warm, lazy, golden mornings and fields shimmering in the heat by 9 a.m.

    There would be going barefoot and our feet would feel once more, after a winter of being shod, the marvelously warm, white alkali dust, feel the honest and unrestricted squish of mud between our toes while watching out for mud-daubers and yellow jackets. Doodlebugs would be making their marvelous, small, funnel-like ant traps and we would take ice cream or Popsicle sticks and dig them up just to discover and look at them. We would find lizards, trapdoor spiders and tarantulas, and, in short, just be kids in that America I used to know as a child despite the momentary lapses of good behavior.

I fervently wish the pope had a wife and daughters. I fervently wish Muslims didn’t treat women and girls as subhuman chattel. Neither, as a consequence, will ever know real romance; and lacking the experience of real romance neither has any claim or access to wisdom.

Now that it is freely being spoken in some quarters, it becomes increasingly clear the pope knew exactly what he was doing in stirring up Muslims, bringing them out in the open for the world to see they are not believers in a “peaceful” religion, but quite the contrary. Nor should it be ignored Muslims are to be “forgiven” for every manner of duplicity and lies to “infidels,” the claims of being “moderates” being an example in order to gain the advantage, the very enormity of poverty and ignorance among so many Muslims giving their leaders ample opportunity to advance this despicable doctrine of Islam, even to the continued warring among themselves.

 And it is a legitimate question as a point of comparison why the president of Iran gets a pass at “Wiping Israel off the face of the map” by Muslims, and not a few others who are not Muslims, but the pope is vilified by so many for his remarks. Muslims danced in the streets over The Attack on America and there were no Muslims being renounced for this by any Muslim nation, nor even here in America, but it is as Jesus pointed out “Every tree is known by its fruit.”

But to listen to the hysteria being raised by the pope’s remarks you hear some saying he is a “Nazi” while others are saying the same of the president of Iran, and even of Bush by some of his detractors. That term “Nazi” is a real convenience to those attempting to smear others and rally people to their point of view.

Alas, those tossing the term of Nazi around have the Swastika denied them. Next to the symbol of the Christian cross, the Swastika is most well known; and unlike the symbol of the cross Hitler’s design of the Swastika with those striking and contrasting colors of black, red, and white and all this symbol came to stand for never fails to evoke a pronounced response far beyond that of the Christian cross. And were it not allied inextricably to Hitler and the Nazis any politician or tyrant would give their firstborn to have such a representative symbol that so stirs the passions. But then, most politicians and tyrants lust for a symbol like KKK, another symbol guaranteed to stir the passions.

After beating up on the snake in one B.C. strip eliciting a really cute quip from the battered reptile, the “fat broad” is left asking herself, “Why is it the snake always has the good lines?” Just so with the Swastika, Nazi, and KKK; but while Nazi and KKK are freely bandied about by those attempting to tar others with the brush not so with Hitler’s Swastika— that one, gentle reader, is handled as though it were plutonium!

But what many fail to grasp is the element of romance Hitler was able to attach to the Swastika. He succeed in making it a symbol of romance, of love and devotion throughout Germany; and while many Germans were not caught in its romantic and mystical sway, many millions, and not all of them Nazis by any means, were so taken. But all Germans were taken with the power the Swastika came to represent. And beyond the bounds of Germany, many in other nations came to view the Swastika in the same way, and even now these many years after the Nazi era it continues its mystical and nearly hypnotic power to sway passions.

That such an interpretation of “romance” attaching to the Swastika is a corrupt one is a given. But this is the “romance” of the religion of Islam as well. What Muslims lust for is the mystical, nearly hypnotic power of the Swastika, but that is denied them as it is to others. It most likely will remain the powerful symbol of Hitler and the Nazis, and one that remains untouchable all pretenders notwithstanding.

As to real romance, this is unknown to those like the pope and Muslims even as it was to Hitler. And in a statement that provokes many a denial I stand my ground in saying emphatically you must have a wife and children to really know romance. That excludes Hitler and the pope, and it excludes Muslims because they treat women like subhuman chattel.

You don’t explain “romance” to anyone that has never known romance; and beyond this limitation it would be like trying to explain the colors of a sunset or the scent of a forest. At that, I have come to wonder whether any man without daughters can possibly know the real meaning of romance?

Since my “Birds” book is one of romance it has elicited not only comments from those who appreciate it, the great majority being women, but from some that simply could not understand it when not damning it. For example, I write it is only to be expected fathers who love their children will, nevertheless, treat their daughters quite differently than their sons. Therefore, boys often grow up with the perception their sisters were treated with more love and affection from dad, that little girls receive preferential treatment from their fathers. But as I told my own sons, they will never learn why this is so unless they have daughters of their own.

The best part of what women represent of real value as one half of humankind I learned from my daughters. Fathers never know how to deal with these precious little “aliens” known as “daughters.” These little angels begin life as strange creatures beyond the kin of a father. Harper Lee did a masterful job of describing the attitude of Atticus toward little Scout. She quite obviously had recalled the difficulty her own father had dealing with her as a little girl.

However, the lessons little girls teach their fathers have everything to do with the subject of romance. And men without daughters to teach such lessons can never hope to fully understand the subject, let alone master it since grown women cannot teach this to men because only the innocent purity of little angels can teach such lessons to men. Understanding this Harper Lee has little Scout dispersing that lynch mob, something Jem and Dill as boys could not possibly have done. While Harper Lee has little Scout finally understanding there are some things only women can do, she also has Scout beginning to understand “there might be some skill involved with being a girl.”

In one of the most clearly defining moments of “To Kill A Mockingbird” little Scout is thinking her father couldn’t do a day without her. And Scout is right. Atticus could never be the kind of man he was, a defender of the innocent, a defender of right and justice without the lessons he learned from Scout. Men without such little angels are not able to learn such lessons of grown women since they cannot teach such lessons to men. And when it comes to the subject of romance it is this holy and sacred, this truly mystical distinction between fathers and daughters and men and women that only little angels can possibly teach men.

In the divine plan, as I believe it to be, sacrificial love is to be taught adults by their children. It is in the care and nurture of children adults are to learn the meaning of sacrifice without feeling they are sacrificing anything. This is the most profound expression of giving without thought of receiving in return. But there is a further distinction between girls and boys and the lessons of love being taught fathers by their daughters; the distinction of the real meaning of romance.

While writing the Birds book I was fully aware many men do not have daughters. And of those that do, many never have the kind of sacred relationship with their little angels God intended that would teach men their proper role as men. To explain, there is a very good reason the prophet Nathan was sent with this story to confront David about his sin with Bathsheba:

“And the LORD sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds: But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter. And there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man's lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him. And David's anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the LORD liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die: And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity. And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man… And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the LORD.”

David was a “bloody man, a man of war” the Lord had called him, a man that had not only killed many in battle but had the blood of Bathsheba’s husband on his hands. The “Sweet singer of Israel” was not easily touched by murder and mayhem, the evil that men do. But the Lord knew when he sent Nathan to David with the story of the poor man’s little ewe lamb, this was the way to reach David’s heart and inflame, “greatly kindle” his utmost outrage and anger! Notwithstanding David being a bloody man and a man of war he had daughters that had taught him the value of these little angels; he had learned the lessons only his little girls could teach him.

The greatest inspiration of poets and artists remains beautiful women. But the sad and tragic fact of humankind is that too few men have learned the lessons only the little “ewe lambs” can teach; and as a consequence too few men today and throughout history have any real understanding of romance, the result being too few men are possessed of wisdom.

A close friend of many years, an Episcopal Priest, and I were sharing our thoughts about the recent remarks by the pope that have caused such an uproar among Muslims throughout the world. And though as I shared with my good friend there is no love lost on my part for the pope, he sure stirred a hornet’s nest pointing to the viciousness and violence of Islam as a religion of the sword encouraged and approved in the Koran by the twisted and perverted Mohammad, and affirmed by the most heinous, barbaric and cruel atrocities that continue to be committed by Muslims not only against “infidels” but against each other.

And while the Muslim leadership in America refused to denounce The Attack on America by Muslims loudly and in no uncertain terms, they are up in arms, in many cases quite literally, in concert over the pope’s comments. So it is reasonable to question whether there is in fact any such thing as a “moderate” Muslim despite the protestations of spinmeisters in defense of the religion.

True enough as dear old Dr. J. Vernon MaGee pointed out Christians are often at odds, but in the case of Muslims despite how they say they love Allah they sure hate each other. And while Christianity has become a civilized religion for the greater part the same cannot legitimately be said of Islam.

But a few questions suggest themselves to me about the pope’s remarks, one being that he is far too experienced, intelligent and well educated not to know what the Muslim response would be, and any protestations on his part about not knowing Muslims would be offended has to be hollow at best if not in fact disingenuous. He must further realize any attempts to ameliorate the situation would be equally hollow and to no avail.

Another thought following these assumptions is whether the pope purposely intended to provoke such a response from Muslims worldwide? And if so, why? A guess on my part, albeit an educated one, is the pope realizes what Bush has initiated whether for the best or most immoral of motives and knows there can be no retreat now from the threat Islam poses to Western Civilization as a result of this door being opened exposing the barbaric intent of Muslims worldwide and has purposely cast the gauntlet before Islam.

As the crocodile tears and hypocritical hand-wringing of the charlatans in Congress over “torture” goes on, one would do well to question where is the reality of warfare to be found? Certainly not among those in Congress that have only the keeping of their cushy jobs in view where they can continue to keep their snouts in the public tax trough. And throughout there is no clear voice denouncing our enemies, there is no clear distinction being made defining the enemy and our troops are being placed in an impossible position as a result of this refusal of our sorry excuse for “leadership” to clearly define and denounce, to properly demonize the enemy.

But in point of fact, the moment any attempt is made to clearly define and denounce the enemies of America here comes the ACLU to sue anyone attempting to do so and deal with them effectively. Because of the ACLU it is now the lawyers making the decisions as to how the military runs warfare. But an ACLU politically correct war is unwinnable and the morale among those in our military suffers accordingly.

I don’t question the good intentions of George Clooney trying to do what he can in Darfur and God bless him for trying. But where is the reality of knowing he is only spitting into the wind? In a part of the world that has never known anything but ignorance and poverty, where cruel and corrupt masters continue to murder countless thousands at their whim any help or money offered only winds up in the hands of these cruel and corrupt masters. And this is the way the UN itself operates.

Lincoln’s War, his attempt at national suicide resulting in a needless 600,000 casualties, was one of attrition. As he assessed it the North would win on the basis of the South running out of men to fight before the North did. It was a pragmatic, cold-blooded assessment of a reality where men are not human beings, but only in Thoreau’s words though peaceably inclined and against all common sense “Men at all? or small moveable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power?”

However, now it isn’t just the men but women as well who are among those small moveable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power. My eldest granddaughter is in the Navy so I have more than a passing interest in this.

In her column titled “Girls gone ridiculous” Kathleen Parker asks “If men are profiting from women demeaning themselves, are the women still in charge?” While Kathleen was not addressing the issue of women in the military the point is still applicable. When women debase themselves, when they pander to men whether by pornography or in the military they lose that civilizing influence which only women can bring to bear on the barbarism of men.

Henry was at a disadvantage in his writing because he never married or had children. So the emphasis on women and children being a civilizing influence on men is missing for his part. Still, his tract on Civil Disobedience rings true in many instances. But to fail in emphasizing the importance of women and children as a civilizing influence is to fail in the most essential thing of all to the argument against the evils of government and the wars men make.

So I ask myself, suppose Islam was not the woman despising thing it is, the religion relegating women to the status of subhuman chattel serving men, their role in “Paradise” to only continue as the servants of men? And what of popes and priests who do not marry and have children, but are egregiously guilty of continuing to consign women to an inferior role in the Roman Church and even in families? And what of Protestants who would take Paul literally in requiring wives to obey their husbands and keep silent in the churches?

It continues to speak to my heart and mind that were women and children given their proper priority and considered of equal value to men we would not now be facing the prospect of nuclear Armageddon because of the wars and hatreds of men. But Muslims and popes, men in general do not consider women and children to be of equal value and the resulting lack of wisdom cannot but foment the continued wars of men.

Absolutely! Despite the threat to my “conservative” credentials I would vote for Kinky Friedman as governor of Texas. But I would rather vote for him as President! I applaud those like Freidman who speak their minds, those who are not cowed by the bullying tactics of political correctness. We desperately need such people unafraid to speak out against the enemies of America, people unafraid to take the moral high road of expressing what they really believe.

Cliff May in his column today writes “President Bush said the United States is fighting ‘the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century.’ OK, but remind me: What ideology are we fighting?”

To answer May’s question at the same time the Star Spangled Banner is getting some much needed attention, though I cringe at any self-aggrandizing “stylizing” of our anthem, here locally the recent “interview” of the Prussian Blue Gaede sisters and their mother together with the politically correct editorializing of it in the Californian does not commend anything approaching fairness. At the same time Mexicans march in the streets of America flying their flag demanding the legitimizing of the invasion of illegal aliens by a feat of illiterate oxymoronic legerdemain transformed into “immigrants” by the politically correct enemies of America, the Gaede sisters and their mother are vilified as “hate-mongers” for sticking up for Caucasians and the America of our Founding Fathers. But I believe they, like Kinky Friedman, are to be congratulated as Americans for sticking up for what they believe in. Despite the incongruity, my basis of evaluation is whether the persons are Americans first and foremost, and not “hyphenated,” before they are anything else regardless of religion, ethnicity, or politics.

For my part, no matter the fault that may be found with the twins and their mother the fact remains because of the enemies of America like the ACLU and La Raza to name two of the worst aided by a politically correct judiciary and media America is not just a divided nation now but a fractured nation, our very heritage and culture, our language and borders under constant attack. And Caucasians are attacked for not bowing and scraping before the “lords of political correctness.”

At the same time our troops are being emasculated from fighting a war to win, just as with our various police agencies here at home, literally gutting morale and aching for the support they need, here in America our enemies are given a free pass to vilify us, the universities and a politically correct media giving the haters of America a bully pulpit from which to spew their vitriolic venom.

But many real Americans are beginning to make their voices heard against this insanity. For example while our Federal Triune Dictatorship refuses to secure our borders for the sake of slave labor benefiting only the wealthy and extorting We the People to pay the bills through taxation without representation for this invasion by the enemy nation of Mexico, a friend in Indiana just sent me the following that would help Caesar Bush define what he means, if anything, by his use of the term “ideology:”

In 1970, the estimated population of Mexicans in this country was 7 million. By 2004, estimates had risen to between 50 to 60 million. Presently, Mexico's population is estimated to be about 100 million. Someone tell me what is happening here? In the name of God, why hasn't the brutality and viciousness of Mexico's ruling families been brought to account? How is it they get a human right's pass on the persecution of their own people? In God’s name, one of the world’s greatest human tragedies is happening south of our border resulting in sustained waves of human flight, one of the greatest human flights in recorded history. Mexico is far richer in natural resources than Canada, so what other explanation besides corruption and cruelty on an unbelievable scale explains this catastrophe? Fact is, I am now supporting military training and arming of Mexican freedom fighters to march south and retake their looted country. Take Mexico back for the mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers whose dignity, from whom even the bread from their mouths, has been stolen from them!

Many of you have heard of the student that was suspended for wearing a shirt with “Remember 9/11” on it. That should have been the rallying slogan of The Attack on America, but the refusal of Caesar Bush and Company to secure our borders for the sake of slave labor, the refusal to articulate the enemy of Islam not only has led to leaving We the People with no idea of what “ideology” Caesar is talking about, this is acerbated by the continued infighting and jockeying for power on the part of the conscienceless scoundrels in Congress that being without virtue have no ideology themselves but that of greed and avarice.

Perhaps circumstances like that of Fail-Safe will make the final decision about ideology. At my age, time flies whether you are having a good time or not. It seems the weeks and months now fly by and turn into years without any real perception of the time having passed. But there is no denying the “computer age” that has had such a profoundly marked influence on the passing of the years.

The hypocritical pretense of sincerity on the part of politicians is infamously proverbial, and has been around as long as there have been politicians. I recall reading many years ago in the old Saturday Evening Post of one such incident in which the politico was campaigning. He recognized a man in the crowd, and while vigorously shaking his hand asked him in an unctuous voice, “And how is your dear mother doing?” The man replied, “Oh, she’s still dead.”

However, at least in this case there were human beings involved irregardless the human frailties. What with the computer age this is becoming ever less the case, but despite the increasing reliance on computers I do not anticipate a computer generated Rembrandt, Washington, Emerson or Harper Lee.

Tim Russert’s interview some time ago with David McCullough having to do with David’s book 1776 was one of the best of such interviews I have watched. But the painful fact brought glaringly and painfully to the fore during the interview is something of which as a teacher of many years experience I am too well aware— the fact that Americans have become illiterate when it comes to our history as a nation.

    There were several, large old pines on our mining claim. As a boy I was able to build a platform in the branches of one of these not far from our cabin. Thither I would resort to do my schoolwork on occasion, and in addition to the usual math, history, and English I would often take some books for pleasure like a National Geographic or a novel.

    Sitting on the planks in the branches of the old tree, I would look out to the dun-colored, sere hills to the east, and moving my eyes north to north-westward to the majestic, forested and granite grandeur of the mountains I was master of all I surveyed from my aerie. What child could help but imagine all things were possible in such surroundings? But it took good books and good literature in conjunction with such grandeur of my surroundings to fire my imagination.

Long ago the teaching of American History in our universities and their product schools fell to the wayside; as has the teaching of great literature in our schools; and no amount of “computer literacy” will compensate for this monumental loss to our young people especially.

   Computers were in their infancy many years ago when I read a Sci-Fi story in which a person got caught up in a relatively innocuous problem. But through having to deal with computers in attempts to resolve the problem, it escalated to his being condemned to death for a capital crime by the government though the fellow never was able to contact a living human being in the process. There would appear to have been a degree of prescience on the part of the writer of this story so many years ago.

Those interminable mindless, disembodied telephone menus that so frustrate any hope of talking to a real, live and breathing human being, those ongoing computer generated messages from the various disinterested, disembodied entities, beyond the aggravation of mechanical systems dedicated to taking our money whether dead or alive I fear our government agencies operate in much the same way. And like the film Fail-Safe when things become so complicated and complex relying on computers removing living, breathing, human beings from the system, when you have no one to hold personally accountable as with government throughout you have a system virtually destined to break down. And with so much nuclear saber rattling around the world this lack of personal accountability does not bode well for our survival.

    It is good to put a human face on these systems, and to demand accountability. However, with those in government as with business motivated by greed and avarice, their lust for power, Emerson was tragically correct in pointing out the study of Shakespeare will not produce a Shakespeare, and the virtuous whether Socrates, Jesus, or Washington have left no “class” and each generation must find its own way. And I fear for this generation that has no leader of virtue to lead the way out, and is moreover forced to rely on computers, which if computers take over voting outsourced to Venezuela or India may well doom the real voice of We the People.

In my book Birds With Broken Wings I devote one chapter to love letters, one reason being that while many great names suggest themselves in the field of literature there are few in history known for love letters. One of my favorite German proverbs has it, Schoenheit verghet, Tugend besteht. Beauty fades, Virtue remains. Not a little of why love letters are a lost art form. While women attempt to make homes men make wars, and where there is an absence of virtue, barbarism fills the void.

    But we have read the books and seen the films in which love letters had great prominence. Even within my own generation love letters were commonly written; but with a coarsening of American society, a loss of virtue, it seems such an art form, and the writing of such letters is a genuine art, has fallen on hard times.

    When did the love letters stop? I’ve wondered about this for some time. As a romantic, some would say an anachronistic dinosaur of a bygone era, I love to write to, and about women. Naturally, prudence is required in this and I try to exercise some degree of caution and discretion in doing so. Nevertheless, the writing of such letters should be the natural outcome of real romance and an expression of love for someone.

    In discussion of such writing with a number of men and women, it occurred to me that the love letters stop shortly after marriage (if they were written at all). Now why is that? I asked myself. I’m plagued by the habit of asking myself all kinds of disconcerting questions (But my greatest problems often arise from not keeping such questions to myself).

“You’ve Got Mail” was a cute warm and fuzzy film, but while email served the purpose for it and love letters were not being exchanged no email will take the place of an actual, handwritten love letter. A whole art form has been lost to this generation: The writing of love letters. And that is a real tragedy. A woman should have such letters. Furthermore, if the thrill of the chase has been consummated in marriage why shouldn’t the letters continue? But they usually don’t.

    I once shared this question of why the love letters do not continue with a married acquaintance. His response: “Why should they? You got the girl.” I knew him well enough to realize at the time he was attempting to make a joke of the question. On the sober side I knew him well enough to realize I had struck a nerve; and one of conscience. But as callous and uncaring his reply how very many men he spoke for.

    What woman wouldn’t be delighted to receive acknowledgment of appreciation for her beauty as a woman, of things a man finds special about her? Such a thing should go with the flowers and poetry in homage to beauty, love and romance. A woman has a right to expect such things of a man who truly finds her special, an inspiration to him ever as much and more than a rose or magnificent sunset to the best of poets.

    There are women of such natural beauty they make the sun shine in a man’s soul just by looking at them. Such women should naturally inspire the writing of love letters to them. Then there is a beauty of attitude and personality. Such women make others glad to just be around them; they have a gift of making others feel important and needed. Many men will respond to such women irrespective of any deficiencies of physical attractiveness.

    There is a beauty of language. Women were created with such distinct voices that like songbirds they make music simply by speaking. But few things can make a beautiful woman ugly so quickly as coarse language that mars her beauty. No man wants a woman to be coarse or vulgar. This so-called equality on such a basis just gives men an excuse to use and abuse such women who think using vulgar language makes them equal to men, mistaking such misguided attempts at “equality” for “value.” A real lady knows she is beyond the pale of such coarse vulgarity. Real gentlemen know and appreciate the difference. When it comes to beauty there is the virtue of character to be considered. As Emerson wrote of it, “There must be romance of character, or the most fastidious exclusion of impertinences will not avail.”

    Why do the letters stop? This isn’t just one question with one answer. Obviously it involves the whole complex of the relationships between men and women and the differences between how each feels and thinks; and there is no discounting the corrosive effect upon men and women of a society that seems to have lost sight of the value of those things of virtue distinguishing real ladies and gentlemen. Nevertheless I suggest the writing of love letters as a mechanism to explore the ways in which men and women think; an attempt to understand their own thought processes. And women should, I maintain, receive such letters.

    A courtship should definitely be comprised, in part, of such writing. It is to the benefit of both the man and the woman in order to understand each other. The man in the writing, the woman in response to such, should give both a better grasp of the real intentions, the real thinking and feelings in a relationship. But if someone is worried about how such letters may become a problem, even becoming something used against them this speaks more for this present age of “serial monogamy” and shallowness than any sincerity of real love and romance.

    Having spent a number of years as a musician and singer, I used to choose a particular woman in the audience and sing to her. A lovely woman once told me after such a time, “Sam, I have never had a man sing to me before.” I was incredulous! Here was a beautiful woman who had never had a man sing to her? This beautiful lady was created to sing to! And no man had ever done so? No wonder women are so starved for romance. Don’t you men know anything about women? Or worse, don’t you care? Questions I find myself increasingly asking. But then in honesty I am forced to confront the truth of that ancient German proverb.

“In congruous assembled, therefore, we affirm the world is insane an’ will elect a nutty leader to cope with it! Thereby giving him an out! No matter what he does he can be proven innocent by reason of insanity.” There now folks, you see what a real education including a Ph. D. can do for you. The truly educated can reach into the great literature of America and come up with the pearls of wisdom bequeathed us such as Walt Kelly giving us this invaluable and prescient political insight by Porkypine forty years ago. But alas, such learning did not come from the universities I have attended where Porkypine would be given short shrift, which has always been a source of consternation for me considering the really nutty people running the universities.

Hey, taking into account the decisions and policies emanating from the White House one might be excused for believing what Porkypine suggested has in fact been accomplished. Not a few credits a lunatic in the White House, but where are We the People to find any of sane minds that would do any better? Pretty scant pickings; which is a most uncomfortable (bland intended) situation in which to find ourselves.

Even as a child I recognized the funny papers as the truly intellectual part of a newspaper, and as I grew older I discovered the real genius of those like Al Capp and later that of Walt Kelly in dealing with the most important issues facing America. Pricking the balloons of pompous asses like politicians is the forte of those with a genius for humor. Nowhere but in our best humorists like Capp and Kelly do we find a picture being worth a thousand words so applicable.

I am a well qualified Bible scholar, and this book that has had the greatest influence in history bringing about the best of the civilized arts and sciences, the book without which there would be no Western Civilization as we know it remains without parallel, and no one that has not read the Bible in its entirety and knows somewhat of the history of the book has any right to the claim of being “educated.”

But while knowing the Bible and being able to quote Scripture and glean the best of the book in order to advance one’s ideas of morality, of civilized behavior has its proper and invaluable place in America one must also know those like Walt Kelly. I have recourse to the Bible and the towering intellect of Emerson among others from which to form my own thoughts, but those like Sam Clemens and Walt Kelly make their contributions as well. The best of our humorists drag the demons, often kicking and screaming, from their darkness into the light of day in order for us to confront and overcome them.

However, the real genius of humor does not indulge anything tawdry or base, is not low or mean. While Harper Lee with her genius was able to capture and expose those things most wrong in America as well as those things most right, the humorist enables us to deal with these issues by helping us to laugh at the very silliness of our prejudices. Unfortunately in too many cases we feel like little Dill who would be a clown when he grew up because he would rather that than spend all his time weeping over the lunacy of adult injustices.

One should not discount the demons plaguing the humorist; Harlequin remains laughing on the outside but crying inwardly and Dill would still have that to confront, and like Sam Clemens who cautioned our public opinions must be carefully barbered and perfumed before being presented his genius for humor derived from his knowledge and experience of the ugliest speech, prejudices and actions of which we humans are capable, and then casting these things in a humorous way made palatable for public consumption.

I am fortunate to have a close friend who daily sends me cute animal pictures. How much rather see TV news including pictures of those momma ducks with their ducklings, pictures of bunnies, squirrels, and other critters than a constant parade of violence and destruction, of duplicitous politicians pandering for votes. But butterflies and rainbows are the proper domain of those who do battle for what is right and just, not those who wring their hands over the evil men do without confronting and doing battle against such evil.

Like most of you I take my excursions down “Forget Me Not Lane,” that lane being somewhat longer in my case than for most of you. And like many others I find much humor in the pompous assess that take themselves far too seriously, often making the innocent suffer in the process. But as with economics of which Henry Thoreau pointed out lends itself to much levity but cannot so easily be disposed there remains the ugliness of the world with which to contend. And while humor and the critters help us to maintain whatever equilibrium we can in the face of the ugliness all about us, there is nothing of humor to be found in the fact it cannot be a better world for your children until it is a better world for all children. And that to my mind should be the focus of attention on the part of leaders presuming themselves to be sane while leading the world in an insane direction toward nuclear Armageddon.

Is a large part of the seeming lunacy of world leaders due to their being gambling addicts, but the “game” being gambling with people’s lives? It is understandable when those with great power become incapacitated by such power, eventually making stupid blunders when the enormity of the conditions overwhelms their ability to function mentally. There is kind of madness that comes upon such people when circumstances begin spiraling out of control. This is what concerns me about our own leadership, not just the leadership of Iran and North Korea among others. Professionally I am very well qualified to address this issue, but my academic qualifications notwithstanding when it comes to the various forms of addiction gambling is right up there among the worst.

While living in Las Vegas six blocks from the Golden Nugget at the time of the premier for My Friend Irma Goes West I learned I wasn’t cut out to be a gambler. My stepfather at the time, Jim Blaine, was a very popular disk jockey for a Vegas radio station so I had opportunity to meet several celebrities of the era like Spike Jones, Red Skelton, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and the so very beautiful Marie Wilson. My Friend Irma was one of my favorite radio programs, but to see her in person was the thrill of a lifetime. Even at my tender age I was struck by her beauty, like that of a golden-haired angel!

Even as a boy I found Las Vegas an exciting town, and the evening of the premier for the movie a stage had been set up in front of the Golden Nugget, a place with an impressive display of one-million dollars cash in a front window, where the cast for the film was to be introduced. And this was done by Dean Martin with Marie Wilson beside him in a fire-engine red Cadillac convertible driving up the main drag towing Jerry Lewis on roller skates behind the car; a really funny sight to behold.

It was a wonderfully balmy desert evening, and there was quite a large crowd in attendance as Dean parked the car right in front of where I was standing and the three of them ascended to the stage. But my attention was on the beautiful Marie Wilson, dressed in a flowing white evening gown, her long golden hair positively glowing in the stage lights and the reflection from the brightly lit casino.

Dean started by telling a couple of jokes with Jerry being the straight man, and then Dean turned his attention to Marie. Now this stunningly beautiful girl played the quintessential dumb blonde on radio, and hilariously funny in that role. So all of us in the audience thought we knew something of what to expect from her. But to our surprise Dean said “I hear you are quite interested in poetry Marie, do you have a favorite poem?” In that unforgettable girlish voice Marie replied, “Why yes Dean, I do,” to which Dean replied, “Well, do you think you could recite it for us?”

We all waited in eager anticipation as the stunningly beautiful angel Marie took the microphone and in that marvelously girlish voice of an innocent ingénue recited the poem: “Of all the fishies in the sea my favorite is the bass; he climbs up in the seaweed trees and slides down on his… hands and knees.”

The roar of laughter all about me nearly drowned out my own reaction to this beautiful young blonde goddess. As I was later to take stock of the situation I realized I had learned something. You can’t judge a book by its cover, and people, even beautiful girls can disappoint you. All the innocence of believing had been on my part. But I could never enjoy My Friend Irma the same thereafter. The years would pass and eventually I would learn not to expect more of others than I expected of myself. We are all frail human beings, and it is most unfair to expect perfection of any of us.

As to gambling, I had been sent on an errand to a small grocery store to pick up a loaf of bread. There was a young woman ahead of me with a baby in her arms. After paying for her meager purchases among which were some jars of baby food she stopped at a slot machine next to the exit and put the change she had received into the slot. She won nothing and left the store. But something struck me as being wrong with this. I have always been sensitive to the moods of people, and this young woman seemed to be in distress. Was she an unwed mother? Or did she have other concerns wearing her down, making her appear despondent? And if so, why would such a young mother her baby in her arms be putting her change, money I sensed she could not afford to lose into that slot machine? Why would such a young mother with a baby be gambling at all, wouldn’t the money be better spent on things necessary for her and her baby?

Of course, like the girl in Ode to Billy Joe I was only a child. What could I be expected to know of such things? Perhaps, like the girl, more than adults thought I was capable of knowing at the time. But the memory of that young mother with the baby in her arms stayed with me while traveling through a number of “gaming towns” and living in other places like Lake Tahoe, and no matter how often the term “gaming” is used it is still gambling.

I have known several addicted to gambling, and it is a horrible addiction. And what are state lotteries but a diabolical invention to take money from those least able to afford losing it?

While attending St. Joseph’s Military Academy near Jacksonville, Florida one of the really fun events was a “gaming” night where both students and their parents could play various gambling games and win prizes. And like the ubiquitous bingo games in the Roman churches all for a “good cause.”

But I continued to have a problem with seeing people who could ill afford it throwing their money away by gambling. Perhaps a hitherto unknown perverse streak caused me to “get even” on one occasion.

Many of you will recall the scene in The Godfather where the Mafioso is pinning the money to that doll for the church. We were living in Cleveland, Ohio at the time and my brother and I were enrolled in a Catholic school, St. Mary’s. On one occasion the nun who was our teacher showed the class a beautiful angel doll with several ten-dollar bills pinned to it to be raffled off, and we were all given cards with places for twenty names. Chances at the doll were to be sold for ten-cents each.

I found the local bars the best places to do business. We were living at the time in a Polish “ghetto” where everyone was more Catholic than the pope, a place where West Coast Catholics were considered apostates from the one true church. In this environment a kid selling chances in the bars on a raffle for the local church and school was quite acceptable, and in no time I had sold all twenty chances and had the two bucks in dimes in my pocket. Ah, enter the “evil one” to tempt me. I tore up the card and kept the money. And to compound my sin, I told our teacher I had lost the card! First stealing and then lying to a nun to cover the theft! The flames of hell yawned before me!

To this very day, gentle reader, I do not know why I did such a thing. Was it in retaliation to what I knew was wrong, using children to bring in gambling money for the church coffers at the expense of innocence? Of this I am certain, whatever the motive it wasn’t the money. I was raised better than that, and stealing and lying were not only wrong, they were grievous sins! But on this singular occasion they were not ones I included in my weekly confessional.

The Scripture has it “Will a man rob God?” Sure, men do it all the time. But it never crossed my mind in this instance that I was robbing God; for whatever reason what I had done was retaliation for something a better conscience had told me was wrong with an institution that would use children for the purpose of gambling. And I heartily resented being used in such a way!

Over these many years of living and traveling throughout America I have witnessed this same abuse of children everywhere, children used and abused for the evil men do, especially in the name of religion something being accentuated in Muslim nations where children are not selling chances on a church raffle but learning to hate all non-Muslims, and in too many cases how to kill them! Even by giving their lives in the process with the fairy tale promises of “Paradise” for doing so!

And now with the wars of men killing and maiming children throughout the world, with so many lives being sacrificed to the evil men do everywhere are we at the mercy of lunatics addicted to gambling with people’s lives? I do wonder. When I say this war against Islam must be fought to win or America is lost, that word “win” had better not be in the sense of a game where the leadership is gambling with people’s lives. If so, I will tear up the card and keep the money.

“Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so.” On this date five years ago my daughter Karen was the only one who called me. The horrific Attack on America left us all numb at first, the horrifying scenes unfolding on our TV screens across America and throughout the world too dreadfully shocking, too dumbfounding to our minds and senses to really comprehend! But Karrie called not just because of her concern for me, but because I was the only remaining point of stability in her life, the only one she knew who loved her absolutely unconditionally.

And this was a time when the need to reach out to loved ones was of paramount importance in a world suddenly seeming to have gone mad, and Karrie and I only had each other to reach out to. Had she not called me first, I would have called her. But now my beautiful little girl is gone, and with her went the best part of my life, the very best of the beauty this world will ever afford me, and I have only those thoughts left that find me young, and keep me so.

But only those thoughts of beauty to which Emerson referred find us always young, thoughts not only of love but about an unimaginably immense universe and the stars that speak of such mystery while at the same time speak peace to my soul because they remain the same and unchangeable scene of the heavens to me, nothing of the evil men do can touch the stars and the quail, about a hundred of them, are feeding around my cottage and taking advantage of the water I supply them here in the country as I write, a reminder that some things continue as before, even things like the quail hereabout I have known from childhood, a kindly touch of normalcy in Creation in an otherwise seemingly lunatic world led of lunatics.

We all need such points of stability in our lives, things of beauty that do not change and because they do not change have that characteristic of finding us always young. Of such may be the remembered scent of a field of alfalfa or that of a forest after a refreshing shower that together with the marvelous aroma turns everything immediately as though by magic a brighter shade of green. It may be watching a great old film like Gone With the Wind, Casablanca or a musical like South Pacific, it may a particular kind of music that evokes thoughts of beauty, but those thoughts that always find us young will invariably be about things of beauty else they would never keep us young.

Some find fault with me because I continue to draw from the past in so much of my writing and applying these things I have experienced and learned to the present not seeming to realize those my age are “living history,” replete with the experiences of having lived so much and so long and with a keen awareness of the axiom those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Which is why, of course, during the seven decades of my life I have not known a world at peace, but only the ongoing, seemingly endless conflicts between the nations of the world.

It is tragic in the extreme that whether Republican or Democrat We the People will not be offered a choice of virtuous people for elected office, there will be none who reflect a choice for beauty. The world is now far too dangerous it seems for either truth or beauty to have much of a chance. And neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to commit to a war to win against the enemies of truth and beauty, against the enemies of civilization.

But now the world faces dangers never before known because of nuclear weapons, and barbarians that will doubtless use such weapons against civilized nations in the name of Allah. Columnist Burt Prelutsky reflecting my own writing on the subject today writes: Jihad this! I no longer accept that we are only at war with Islamic fascists or Islamic fundamentalists or whatever the heck we’re calling them this week. I believe that we in the West are at war with Islam, period. I have heard any number of politicians, up to and including President Bush, claim, contrary to all reason and evidence, that Islam is a religion of peace. If you buy that load of malarkey, I’ve got a Brooklyn mosque I’d like to sell you. This is the religion that was founded by the violence-prone Mohammed fourteen hundred years. It was he who established the practice of converting at the point of a sword; a short while ago, two journalists kidnapped by his followers were converted at the barrel of a gun. In 14 centuries, it seems only the technology has changed…

I would ask those who believe any Muslim has a real appreciation of beauty while at the same time being a proponent of this religion of the sword to reconsider. The very ugliness of such a religion that would make women “sub-humans” cannot have any real appreciation of beauty, and contrary to being receptive to those thoughts of beauty that always find one young are thoughts of death and destruction to all who do not bow to their god and glorifies those that commit murder in the name of their unholy god and religion.

Perhaps there really are children of God and children of the Devil, those who appreciate beauty and those that bend every effort to destroy it? Where do the monsters in human guise come from that prey on women and children and foment the wars and other evils men do?

Did God intervene in a Satanic creation red in tooth and claw, in a world given to violence, to wars, death and destruction? Is the “Adam” of Genesis a special creation by a God of beauty?

Humans strange, Neanderthals normal. Humans have twice as many divergent features as Neanderthals. By Charles Q. Choi, from LiveScience.com. Sept 8, 2006. Neanderthals are often thought of as the stray branch in the human family tree, but research now suggests the modern human is likely the odd man out. "What people tend to do is draw a line from our ancestors straight to ourselves, and any group that doesn't seem to fit on that line is divergent, distinct, unusual, strange," researcher Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, told LiveScience. "But in terms of evolution of our family tree, the genus Homo, we're the outliers and the Neanderthals are more toward the core." Humans are not at the inevitable end of a sequence, Trinkaus said. "It just happens that we happen to be alive today and Neanderthals are not."… "In the broader sweep of human evolution, the more unusual group is not Neanderthals, whom we tend to look at as strange, weird and unusual, but it's us, modern humans," Trinkaus said…

There are well qualified scientists who subscribe to a Creation of Intelligent Design and point to Modern Man, the “odd man out” as a special creation of God, and one that would uphold standards of beauty in the face of so much ugliness abounding, this special creation of the Adam accounting for the sudden and otherwise unaccountable beginning of civilization after so many millions of years.

 But whether or not, the looming specter of a nuclear Armageddon haunts the world. And whether Republican or Democrat, whether Christian or atheist should this happen who will be left to declare their side was correct and their side “won?”

Going through my mother’s scrapbook containing so many things surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor where she was at the time, it seems only a short time ago to memory this catastrophic event took place. And mom’s scrapbook is a kind of time machine transporting me back to that time still so alive to my memory.

Immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor my grandparents tried to contact my mother. But there had been no way for the folks and my mother to communicate since all telephone and radio usage was committed to the military and strictly controlled. America was now at war, and everything in our lives would now revolve around and be subservient to that ugly fact.

Eventually the folks were allowed to send an RCA Radiogram to my mother, but that was not until nine days following the attack, then there were the additional anxious days awaiting a reply. I recall my grandparents crying with relief when a message finally arrived and we learned that though she had been injured in the attack my mother was alive.

Transport for my mother back here was extremely difficult to arrange. But eventually she was assigned to a ship, the S.S. President Taft of the Matson Line, and returned safely though the threat of being sunk by Japanese submarines was foremost in all of our minds. The instructions to passengers aboard the ship were quite detailed warning about things like not throwing anything in the water since any such items, even scraps of paper might be picked up by a Japanese submarine and betraying the presence of the ship.

I look at the Radiogram in mom’s scrapbook, the menu she saved along with those instructions to passengers aboard the ship, the form she had to fill out before being assigned transport, the many photos and artifacts before and after the attack she included in the scrapbook, some showing the beauty of the Islands and the beauty of her life there, and some declaring how drastically and suddenly her life was changed because of the attack. One photo showing her wearing a gas mask really spoke volumes of the change.

It seemed no time at all following the attack on Pearl Harbor we began to see those small flags with blue stars in the windows of homes throughout Little Oklahoma declaring some loved one in the service, soon to begin displaying gold stars declaring the death of a loved one. In no time at all we children were buying war stamps in school, contributing to scrap drives and rationing began to impact our lives. Our comic books and the funny papers, the cartoon matinees at the Nile and Fox theaters had Bugs Bunny and others doing their bit against the Axis Powers.

On one occasion, we children at Mt. Vernon Elementary had bought enough war stamps to purchase a Jeep. The Californian and the school decided it would be a good idea to take a photo of the Jeep on the steps of the school. But it was to be taken with a couple of children in military uniform sitting in the Jeep. However, the children attending Mt. Vernon at the time were largely from dirt poor communities where parents were hard pressed to provide proper clothing for their children to even attend school, let alone those “cute” diminutive military uniforms in which those better off would often dress their children, my brother Ronnie and I being among these. And so it was that Ronnie and I were in that Jeep on the steps of the school for the picture appearing in the Californian.

I have quite a few pictures of Ronnie and me as children in military uniforms of the Army and Navy, and we loved dressing up like real soldiers and sailors. So I am qualified by experience to speak and write of many things surrounding WWII, things you will not find in most textbooks purporting to address that time in our history.

But even after all these years there are things our government has not allowed to see the light of day concerning WWII, and even I don’t know the extent to which my grandparents were involved, things like their association with the FBI at the time, things involving “important” people in Kern County and their associations with the black markets and espionage to which my grandparents were privy. I do recall one attempt on their lives when at a hotel in San Francisco. The FBI had arranged this “safe” place in order for them to give testimony in one case, but as a child the details of this were kept from me. And of course there are no written accounts available apart from those buried by the government like so many other things of that extremely dangerous period of our history. And as with the “disappearance” of the Ark of the Covenant in the film continues to be hidden from public view by our Federal Triune Dictatorship.

The recent arrest for espionage of Muslims in Bakersfield remind me of what my grandparents were dealing with during WWII. The enemies of America are always close at hand, not just in far off lands.

As a child I didn’t understand why grandad was given such unique status as the powers in Kern County appointing him a “Special Deputy Sheriff.” In retrospect it made sense because it was dangerous to send regular deputies into Little Oklahoma, and because of grandad being a preacher and without any taint of prejudice or bigotry he was the only Caucasian acceptable to the large Negro community to the north of us.

But could there have been more to the story? I’m sure there was. It was a dangerous time in America and “unconventional means” were being demanded in order to meet the dangers we faced as a nation at that time. In the case of my grandparents there was the very real threat to them through my brother and me. One way for the enemy to reach parents, or in this case grandparents is through their children. Ronnie and I couldn’t understand some of the precautions taken by our grandparents for our safety that resulted in so much travel around the country by train at the time, especially when such travel was being severely restricted for the war effort. And there were the posters everywhere asking “Is This Trip Necessary?”

Will it come to this because of the “war on terrorism” that Muslims will attack the real Achilles heel of those in power through their children? Are those in that mosque near you holding planning sessions how best to kidnap Bush’s children or the children or grandchildren of those in Congress? All the while attention is being given screening in airports is the danger far closer to home for those in power? Of this I have no doubt, those in power are extremely vulnerable to such a thing, and there can be no doubt our enemies will find willing accomplices in places like Mexico to effect such a thing as kidnappings.

We faced many real threats to America here at home during WWII. As a child I couldn’t possibly be aware of many of these threats; for example I couldn’t know why my grandparents took such extraordinary measures at times to protect my brother and me. All I knew there were times when my play was severely restricted, and impromptu trips around the country interfered with the lives of Ronnie and me.

Now I can understand why those internment camps were essential during WWII. You never knew who might be an enemy among the Japanese here in America, but we did understand and know Remember Pearl Harbor! And I have cause to remember it better than many others. We are in no better condition now with the mosques in America, all of which teach hatred of America and the “infidels” and are a breeding ground and safe haven for terrorists. And from experience I know it will only take one singular terrorist attack like that nuclear bomb being set off here to witness all Muslims being rounded up and those internment camps to once more appear in America along with our military in force along every inch of our borders.

The speeches will be made, politicians will pander unashamedly attempting to trade on 9/11, and all the while our borders remain open to any and all terrorists that want to do us harm. Caesar Bush will be telling us how much “safer” he has made America and the despicable white trash Clinton will keep howling about The Path to 9/11. But what will be missing is anything of a substantive nature done by politicians to ensure another 9/11 does not occur. Each will be posturing, pandering and prostituting themselves for votes, none will do what is best for America that will risk the “Latino vote” or secure our borders.

Certainly the parallel is plain between those like the president of Iran and Hitler, the parallel between WWII and what we are facing now is plain. But unlike the attack on Pearl Harbor that galvanized America and caused us to come together and unite as a nation to defeat the Axis powers, we are a fragmented and divided nation because of unscrupulous people in power that have led us to this dismal condition, emasculating us from coming together as a nation and uniting in order to defeat our enemies.

The axiom remains those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. It is also axiomatic a politically correct war is unwinnable. For those of us who recall the realities of how a war is fought to win there is no forgetting the lessons of such history, and if I appear harsh in my condemnation of America’s “leadership” today my condemnation is all too well founded, and much of it has to do with my recalling the sacrifices made by the Great Generation, sacrifices now appearing to have been betrayed and of no lasting purpose or value. Of this I can be certain; either this war will be fought to win, our enemies will be named and properly demonized as they were during WWII or this time America will be lost.

Ah, gentle reader let’s hear a resounding round of applause for “National Brotherhood Week” and a national “Make Fun of the Handicapped” observance. Of course everyone hates everyone else and “everyone hates the Jews.” Before he threw in the towel and retreated to Santa Cruz Tom Lehrer gave it a good run. So much of his humor pricked the balloons of pompous asses taking themselves far too seriously I readily related to him from the very beginning, teaching my own children some of his gems like the Hunting Song: “I just stand there looking cute, and when something moves I shoot.” One would think Tom was referring to the way Republicans and Democrats are handling what is euphemistically referred to as “national policy.” It is certainly accurate in describing Caesar Bush’s “war on terrorism.”

Shoot first and ask questions later? Is that to be the doctrine of both Clinton and Bush haters knowing neither has the real interests of America in view, but rather that of their own? And that self-serving interest born of lies and deception on the part of both? “He’s a liar, but he’s our liar!” Some choice. Either/Or: F-9/11 or The Path to 9/11?

At least Tom could skewer outside the box of a growing stricture of political correctness with his gift for humor, and he helped us laugh at our prejudices. Now, as with The Producers, Blazing Saddles and other films that poked fun at those taking themselves too seriously it is not only forbidden to laugh at such things we must make a pretense of their not even existing. But like Blake’s Tyger there they remain burning as brightly as ever “in the forests of the night” though the evil men do in secret remains open scandal in heaven. At least those like Tom with a genuine gift of humor brought the Tygers out into the light of day and enabled us to laugh at them.

But now in an age of political correctness run amok where everyone is a “victim” of somebody, unless you are a Caucasian in which case you are required to keep apologizing to everyone who is not for your accident of birth, it becomes increasingly difficult to laugh at anything. Bad enough to have to deal with the very real threats of Muslims committed to a doctrine of “Death to the Infidel!” without having to deal with our own leaders seemingly committed to national suicide.

One wonders what with so much energy being expended by pundits taking themselves far too seriously stomping ants while the elephants are rampaging through the village where the stories are that focus on how ordinary Americans are struggling to swim upstream in the face of so many attacks on just trying to make a living honestly and trying to live peaceably with their neighbors.

But as the leopard cannot change his spots, neither can the politician change his ways. The species lies to gain elected office, then lies to stay in office and We the People are left not knowing who or what to believe.

Folks, we used to be able to laugh at ourselves. And now because of the unrelenting lies on the part of politicians, because of those dedicated to professional victimhood status and punishing all who do not fall in line with this hellish doctrine, because of the growing threat of nuclear Armageddon somewhere along the way we have lost the humor that was once our salvation from any taking themselves too seriously, and the evil men do is forcing us to choose between liars.

One of the more melancholy tasks I had to undertake here of late was making sure the Pearl Harbor material my mother had given into my keeping not long before she passed away was placed in the proper hands in order to assure it being available to serious students for historical study. Having been in Pearl Harbor when it was attacked, a shell exploding in her kitchen injuring her, my mother had an intense interest in all the events surrounding that Day of Infamy and kept quite an extensive scrapbook of that period in our history.

For the historian nothing takes the place of primary source material; all else is educated guesswork. And being a scholar of history I knew the importance of my mother’s memorabilia from that era and the responsibility I had in making sure it was made available for others doing historical research into that period of time. Even the Pearl Harbor first anniversary edition of the Los Angeles Examiner my mother had saved had great historical value, since most newspapers of that time were committed to being recycled for the war effort and it might very well be this issue of the paper is the only one available for study. The importance of this particular edition of the paper being among other things like the first critical review of a new film titled “Casablanca,” this was the first time actual photos of the attack were made available through the War Department for the general population to see and the paper using color requiring government approval for the picture showing the very moment a Japanese bomb struck the U.S.S. Shaw.

Shortly after the Attack on America a columnist from the L. A. Times and I were discussing the need for a slogan like Remember Pearl Harbor, and we both agreed Remember 9/11 was the most appropriate. We both knew such slogans were essential as a unifying force bringing a nation together in common cause against a clearly defined enemy.

 But sadly, we were to be disappointed since we both came to realize this was not going to be a declared war against the enemy of Islam, that this enemy not only was not going to be clearly defined, but this was to be a politically correct war not intended to be fought to win, but one to protect the guilty and further enrich and empower those who intended to profit from the Attack on America. The only thing we were unsure of was whether 9/11 like December 7 could have been prevented but was not because of sheer ineptitude or something darkly evil and malevolent on the part of those in power. Even today it is being argued whether FDR purposely encouraged the attack on Pearl Harbor for the “greater good.” Caesar Bush and Company? By now, even people not given to conspiracy theories have cause to wonder?

The problem confronting us is the fact we don’t know who is lying or who is telling the truth about 9/11. We know Sandy Berger is a morally bankrupt liar, we know he stole papers that pointed the finger of guilt at the Clinton administration. We know those like Albright have “selective memories” of the events surrounding 9/11 and bin Laden. But there is also “Bin Laden who?” Rice who, among many others, would do anything to protect Bush. And few doubt the 9/11 Commission, as with the Warren Commission was an exercise in protecting the guilty.

Summing the scum primarily from the Clinton camp screaming over the forthcoming ABC miniseries Kathleen Parker concludes her column on the subject “To our great peril, nothing much has changed.” Right, Kathleen, and when it comes down to whose word We the People are to take the fact few trust any from either the Republican or Democrat side of 9/11 speaks for itself, especially the refusal on the part of both to secure our borders for the sake of slave labor, underscoring why nothing much has changed. Politicians and their corporate bosses have only power and wealth motivating them.

Diana West asks “It’s been five years, so who’s the enemy?” Well, to answer Diana I would say when you don’t know who is telling the truth it is impossible to know who the real enemy is. During WWII many Germans came to realize they had been lied to, but by the time they realized this it was too late and Hitler had total power.

We the People know we are being lied to, but what can we do about it? Is it already too late? We know when primary source material is destroyed to protect the guilty we are in the hands of those no better than Hitler or Stalin. Still, in a nuclear age and faced with the implacable foe of Islam we can only hope our leadership will come to realize pragmatically the stakes are too high not to fight this war to win, even though for the most base of motives. The alternative is … what?

“The Path to 9/11” the ABC miniseries will air Sunday and Monday. But it is already catching hell from the left, especially by those kindly disposed to the Clintons and lapdog Janet Ruby Ridge/Waco Reno. However, the facts are indisputable concerning the utter emasculation of our intelligence agencies making them incapable through political correctness of gathering the necessary information to the end of protecting America. Eventually we wound up with an FBI the leadership of which couldn’t even turn on a computer, let alone use one!

The maddening part of all of this is the fact whether Republican or Democrat no one in government is ever held personally accountable for the part they play in making things like 9/11 and the Katrina debacle possible. And as a consequence of consistent whitewashing and downright lies We the People never know the truth of anything from the mouths of politicians and their lackeys.

Only fools could fail to understand the civilized nations of the world are facing an implacable enemy in Islam, an enemy committed to a woman-hating religion of the sword that believes it is ordained by God to destroy all non-Muslims! But to repeat the obvious: A politically correct war is unwinnable!

In “The American President” an unabashedly Hollywood/ACLU film Michael Douglas says “Maybe someday someone will explain to me what a ‘proportionate response’ really means.” Michael Medved turns the tables on Douglas by asking “Why seek ‘proportional’ warfare?” This has been my question from the beginning of this phony “war on terrorism,” that like the phony “war on drugs” is phony in every aspect made so glaringly obvious by many things beginning with not prosecuting a war to win, but the refusal of Caesar Bush and Company to secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws for the sole purpose of slave labor benefiting only the wealthy! Something so obvious the whole world easily recognizes the hypocrisy of such a thing!

The despicable Rumsfeld accuses those like me of “moral or intellectual confusion,” even accusing us of being “Nazis” for calling attention to the fact this shameful, self-serving disgrace to America had no plan for prosecuting a war in Afghanistan or Iraq except to sacrifice American troops to the egos of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld. But are those of us calling for Rumsfeld to resign going to be labeled “anti-Semitic” for doing so? After all, he is in fact a Jew.

When a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle called me a “Nazi” because I continue to demand our borders be secured and our immigration laws be enforced, considering the source I took it as a compliment. Kinky Friedman, though a Jew, will be called a Nazi if he is elected governor of Texas and fulfills a campaign promise to send 10,000 troops to the Texas border to stop the invasion of America from the enemy nation of Mexico.

What we just witnessed in that attack on a reporter in San Diego by those Mexican barbarians is the usual way of doing business in Mexico, and now imported into America. What leaped out at me during a televised interview with this reporter was that after weeks of his investigating these barbarians when asked if they were illegal aliens he replied he didn’t know!

How, after weeks of investigating this barbaric couple for identity theft, real estate fraud and other crimes, and interviewing a number of witnesses who claimed they had been threatened by these two, even threatening one witness with breaking his legs and raping his wife the reporter couldn’t even answer the question of whether they were illegal aliens? Now that folks is political correctness run amok! I have no doubt the reporter knew the answer, but even after being savagely attacked and beaten by these Mexican barbarians was emasculated by political correctness from answering the question.

America is being threatened by Iran, North Korea, and Mexico. But the refusal of our leadership to address these threats in any meaningful way gives our enemies the advantage, not just in propaganda but in reality. Whether Republican or Democrat it remains that politically correct warfare is unwinnable. And the only proportionate response to our enemies is to “Bash their heads in!” The refusal to use the “Big Stick” can only be construed by our enemies as weakness, and quite properly so.

   An article I wrote some time ago for our local paper The Kern Valley Sun was entitled “Barflies: An endangered species.” This came about because of my being in attendance while a couple of young attractive women were rousted by police at one of the local pubs. I had become acquainted with the girls before the cops arrived, but the vice cops were making the rounds here in the valley at the time, and while the girls were not “soliciting” it turns out the cops had been sicced on them by a disgruntled barroom Romeo whose unwanted advances were rejected by the young women.

But all the pubs in the valley were being subjected to these “visits” by vice cops at this time due to some kind of “crackdown” being ordered from on high. And I had to wonder whether some of the rousts were not due to some of the local girls turning down the unwanted advances of more than just barroom Romeos? Would a cop actually go so far as soliciting some of these girls by way of enticement? Or could a couple of them actually be looking? Unthinkable!

Ok, so maybe not all that unthinkable. But the whole thing caused me to come home and write the article. A good friend even made a poster with two cartoon flies drinking through straws from martini glasses and I handed them out to all the local bars. The caption read, “We thank you for your patronage and your support of this endangered species: Barflies!”

Alas, some of the good people in the valley failed to see the humor of my article; some even questioning my Christian credentials. To my critics I answered Jesus must have appreciated a good time what with providing those many gallons of wine for that marriage feast in Cana. And no, it wasn’t grape juice as many of my good Baptist friends would have it. When the fellow in charge of the ceremonies pronounced the wine (Greek: oinos) Jesus provided better than what they had been drinking previously he wasn’t comparing grape juice.

Eventually this episode became a chapter in my book Birds With Broken Wings, in which I suggested politicians would do well to get out and mingle with the people frequenting bars if they really wanted to become acquainted with an honest “Slice of life.” And I mean the kinds of bars far removed from those in Georgetown, Kennebunkport, or the song “Cocktails for Two,” bars like Trout’s in Oildale or those here in the Kern River Valley.

However, I had an edge over most politicians doing “field work” of this nature. Being tall and handsome as well as playing guitar and singing in some of the clubs gave me a distinct advantage while writing the book, and while some are tall and handsome there aren’t that many politicians that can successfully mingle in the bars by playing guitar and singing. More’s the pity.

I loved playing clarinet and tenor sax and did so for many years, but guitar must have been in my genes or a product of Little Oklahoma. However, playing the clubs and coffeehouses of the 60s in SoCal was far removed from the “education” I was to gain by playing some of the cuttin’ ‘n’ shootin’ honkytonks. Politicians need a strong dose of this kind of education.

So my “credentials” for writing as I do are more than that of the academic or strictly literary person. But if politicians have lost touch with the reality of how We the People suffer as a consequence of their decisions not a little of this lost contact has to do with their not getting out there and mingling with real Americans living their real lives in the face of so much adversity. And the folks in the bars should have the ears of politicians ever as much as those one finds in the churches. In point of fact, while I love the rural churches of America as being representative of the Real America I don’t discount that part of the Real America to be found in bars as well.

 “America is safer, but we are not yet safe.” For a White House infamous for vacuous inanities and empty rhetoric this one is really right up there at the top alongside “Mission Accomplished.” With the floodgates open to millions of illegal aliens pouring across our borders aided and encouraged by the Bush administration for the sake of slave labor benefiting only the wealthy at the expense of legitimate American citizens extorted through taxation without representation to pay the bills for these barbarian hoards that have no intention of giving up their nationality and allegiance to Mexico We the People need to be told “we are not yet safe”?

Conspiracy theories abound and are given credibility because those in government are consistent in lying to We the People. Who do you know in our leadership you can depend on for the truth. They lie to gain elected office and they lie to stay in power.

I can relate from personal experience of people to little Scout's observation of Mrs. Grace Merriweather sipping gin out of Lydia E. Pinkham bottles. It was nothing unusual for, as Scout observes, “Mrs. Merriweather's mother did the same.” And when Scout's aunt Alexandra descends on the household in order to help Scout become a lady and she is asked by Atticus how she would like her auntie staying with them, she admits, “I said I would like it very much, which was a lie, but one must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can't do anything about them.”

Has it come to this, that we must accept the circumstances politicians describe as justification for their not telling the truth? But who in their right mind believes the circumstances politicians describe when we know they are liars, even lying when the truth would serve them better? Why isn’t the truth being told about the decisions these politicians make and are making bankrupting America and plunging us into fathomless debt to foreign nations like China?

Does it have to come to what one German told me of Hitler: “My family was starving before Hitler came to power. But when he was in charge of Germany we had meat and potatoes.” That man reflected the attitude of all those suffering extreme poverty that are ready to welcome any “White Knight” riding to their rescue! Sinner or Saint will then be a matter of “interpretation,” the only thing that will matter is delivering the goods, delivering the meat and potatoes.

And with our porous borders no one of any sensibility believes things regarding national security have improved since 9/11, and Katrina only served to emphasize the utter failure of government from top to bottom so far as responding to any national emergency. Our “leaders” throughout are intent on only these things: Power, profits, and saving their own backsides, a “policy” guaranteed to assure the destruction of America.

But we seek in vain to find any better leaders among Democrats than among Republicans, or any Democrats less committed than Republicans to the “Latino vote” or any less committed to betraying and selling out America while extorting legitimate American citizens to pay the bills for the invaders from Mexico and elsewhere, the result being an alarming increase in gang violence throughout America as these foreign invaders and homegrown terrorists take over entire cities like Los Angeles. Hint: “But we are not yet safe.”

Let’s see both Republicans and Democrats insisting on securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws before crediting any with having the best interests of America in mind, before crediting any with telling the truth about concerns for “national security” or the welfare of We the People as they go about campaigning calling each other names, let’s see some honesty addressing the fact Muslims and Mexicans do not assimilate; they colonize! And because neither assimilate, both are a clear and present danger to America!

Being neither naïve nor altruistic I realize we have a political system that does not offer us candidates of virtue, but only those who have made the required Mephistophelian deals in order to even mount campaigns. And whether Republican or Democrat the lesser of evils remains evil. Our problem is one of the history of politics and politicians. As Emerson pointed out who would want to be a politician when they could choose some noble occupation? Sam Clemens had it an “honest politician” was one that had not been in office long enough to sell out. Where Sam missed it was the selling out had taken place along the way to elected office.

Things have only worsened in a politically correct America where nothing can be called by its correct name, where the truth is sacrificed to the ends of those like the ACLU and La Raza that will either have an America in their image or destroy America in the process. And these organizations do so by extorting American taxpayers to foot the bill while attempting to erase everything distinctive of American heritage and culture, even attacking attempts to secure our borders, to rid ourselves of ballots printed in foreign tongues and make English our national language by law! And an evil system of politics that offers us only the choice of the lesser of evils plays directly into the hands of the enemies of America.

Such a system of government led of scoundrels that America suffers and is leading us to destruction is nothing less than diabolical. I use the term here in the dictionary sense, though it is my belief such a system that rewards scoundrels while punishing any who would speak the truth has been purposely designed and set in place by Satan.

The fault I find with those declaring “There is no God!” is their hypocritical refusal to acknowledge this as a belief, not empirical fact. I am careful to qualify my own beliefs as beliefs, not empirical facts. I believe there is a God, but I do not know there is a God. And those who deny there is a God have only their own belief about this, not fact.

For many of us it is easier to believe than to not believe. And among such believers are some of the greatest scholars and scientists the world has ever known. The qualifying term is “believers,” not “knowers.” It would serve both sides best to admit to having beliefs rather than insisting on confusing beliefs with facts whether Christian or atheist.

But no matter whether believer or unbeliever we live in a world and in an America seeming intent on self-immolation, not peace. And “diabolical” is the fitting word for this. And when disaster in the form of a terrorist nuclear bomb strikes here in America those crying for help are not going to be understanding of “Press One for English.” National disasters of such magnitude require a common language, and Mexico and Iran aren’t offering “Press One for English,” nor even “Press Two!”

When I was asked to do a book signing of my critique of To Kill A Mockingbird at Russo’s Books because of the novel being featured through the Bakersfield reading program I willingly agreed. But this brought to mind the fact most knew of the novel only through the film version, and had the scriptwriters and editors known it was destined to be named one of the most influential films of all time they would have paid much more attention to what they were doing and not allowed some of the poorly done scenes and glaring inaccuracies and contradictions to slip by them.

However, lacking prescience those responsible for the final cut of the film did not pay attention to these details and it suffered accordingly. But the timing of the film brought it much critical acclaim despite its weaknesses, and were it not for Lawrence of Arabia might have won the award for best picture.

There is no discounting the film deserving the praise heaped upon it and the honored place it now holds. But the film is far short of the real story Harper Lee told in her novel, and in my opinion is the reason she never wrote again. This needs some explanation from the opening words of my critique:

The weather is moderating here in the Kern River Valley around Lake Isabella. It has been a beautifully mild day with abundant and glorious sunshine. This evening after sundown, I was able to take a turn around the grounds of my little cottage. An occasional bat would flit about the oaks while a coyote barked in the distance and was answered by some closer neighbor’s hound. Doves, quail, and other assorted birds had roosted for the night. It was time for the bats, raccoons, skunks, owls, and other nocturnal occupants of this small corner of my world to take their turn in company with me and begin their rounds.

The soft mildness of the evening following the mild weather of the day was a real tonic to me. It was good to be able to be outdoors so late and enjoy the reflective mood such weather and such an evening always calls me to. For some reason, I found my mind dwelling on Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird.

As I watched the first stars begin to appear, a slight, night breeze began to stir the leaves of the trees with enough hint of a chill to remind me that winter had not yet had its full say. In fact, a storm is being forecast for this weekend.

I most reluctantly went back inside, pausing only to look up once more at the stars through the now black-silhouetted branches of the tall old pine next to the cottage, and settled down to the writing.

My favorite non-fiction book is Thoreau’s “Walden.” My favorite novel is “To Kill a Mockingbird.” It, together with Walden, occupies a space on the table next to my bed. And perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to give both books to college graduates along with their diplomas.

One reason for my keeping Harper Lee’s wonderful and masterful novel so close at hand is the fact that I was a contemporary of the era Miss Lee describes; and I was born into, and raised in, the identical culture with the identical kinds of people straight out of the Dust Bowl and Grapes of Wrath with the identical ignorance and prejudices all around me (and diet and idiomatic dialect), described in the novel, which is not to discount the very best of civilized manners and behavior portrayed by Harper Lee characteristic of the South.

And thanks to my maternal great-grandmother and grandparents, I am most familiar with the best of the values, sense of justice and fairness, good manners, and civilized behavior so characteristic of the best of Southern people like Atticus Finch. And I am ever grateful loving people so representative of him raised me.

But I am also well acquainted with what cruel poverty and ignorance can do to any people of whatever culture or race.

I repeatedly watch the film as well as read the novel, never tiring of the film with its marvelous score by Elmer Bernstein nor failing to gain inspiration from hearing the little girl’s singing to herself, and her happy, giggling laughter during the introduction of the film, for there is no sweeter and joyful music this side of heaven than a child’s singing and laughter. And I don’t doubt God chooses children for His heavenly choir.

The poignant, heart-tugging scene of a little girl drawing, and tearing, her crayon picture of the mockingbird accompanied by her singing and laughter, is an unforgettable adumbration of the events to follow, the ugly events in contradiction to the singing and laughter of children which have been, without let throughout human history, so successful in inevitably stifling, silencing, the voice of children’s singing and laughter.

God knows how badly, how desperately, children (and adults) need the Miss Maudies and Calpurnias, the Heck Tates and Atticus Finches! And we desperately need them far more than all the great men and women of history, far more than all the great philosophers and artists of history, none of whom, including all the manufactured deities, messiahs, religions and prophets, have provided the wisdom that would deliver the world from the continued abuse and murder of children or led the world to peace.

Few people know of Harper Lee’s childhood association and friendship with another child, Truman Capote, and her using that childhood friendship in her novel. For that matter, few seem to know that Miss Lee’s first name is Nelle.

When I first read the book so many years ago (it was published in 1960), and then saw the film starring Gregory Peck, it never occurred to me that a madman, Boo Radley, would become so influential and important to me.

Long before I was able to fully appreciate the true social implications of the book, I was taken by the charm of childhood Miss Lee made so convincingly real through the eyes of little Scout. Nor was I aware when I first read the book that I would be going through a similar metamorphosis as Miss Lee in my own writing, trying to awaken the child both in myself and in others.

For those who have seen the film but never read the book, you have cheated yourself of some of the most important points that make it a truly great story told in a masterful way, and you will never be able to understand how truly powerful the message of the story is; a message told in such a way that removes it far from being the usual morality play. And told in such a way as to be so very deserving of the Pulitzer Prize Miss Lee was awarded.

But what the film did not do was capture Harper Lee’s real, authentic South in many ways she does in the book. This is not to denigrate the film, for the film is recognized by all as great in its own way. But the film is very, very far from the whole story Miss Lee has told in the book, a story that in its entirety was worthy and deserving of the Pulitzer. The film, while addressing the monumentally important issues of racial prejudice and injustice, could not, due to its brevity, tell the whole story in spite of Peck’s Oscar-winning performance. But I will always believe little Mary Badham should have received an Oscar for her role as Scout. At least she was nominated.

This makes me think of Judy Garland’s Oscar for her part as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. And Judy certainly deserved the award, though it was given for the special category of Best Performance in a Juvenile Role. But in 1939 we Americans were much more given to the joy and laughter of children in those decades past. There was Snow White for example in 1938 as a precedent for the marvelous fantasy of Oz.

And I often ask myself when I reflect on those years past, where did we as a society lose our love for children, our love for the joy and laughter of the children and the joy and laughter they used to bring to adults?

I do know that in 1939 we knew the magic of childhood and music, and honored it in a way that was no longer possible in 1962. The song Somewhere Over A Rainbow in Oz won an Oscar; It Might as Well be Spring in State Fair of 1945 won an Oscar for best song; but in the 60s and thereafter? We seemed to have lost our way as a nation and the music of the laughter of children, the music of the ideals of love and romance declined making way for the cacophony of noise that is called “music” today.

As is common with great writers I believe Harper Lee wrote better than she knew when she used a madman to balance the scales of justice. Certainly she knew this of the children and Boo Radley, of Tom Robinson, and the evil Mr. Ewell. But that such a madman as Boo would be needed to balance the scales of justice for the children of the world against all the Ewells?

The whole point of such “madness” is to free children so that boys can be gentlemen and girls can be ladies. And this is the responsibility of madmen, not madwomen, since it is men who bear the primary guilt of the decisions that prevent children from becoming ladies and gentlemen; it is disproportionately men that are responsible for the laws passed that either protect children, or protect the monsters that prey upon children.

What inept civilized law and law-abiding citizens could not do in confronting evil with determination to win in order to protect children, only a madman could and would do.

Mr. Dolphus Raymond does not appear in the film. After all, the makers of the film were not thinking in terms of saving the children of the world. Their attention was on the adult issue of racism, apparently not realizing, or ignoring, the fact that racism is a children’s issue long before it becomes an adult issue.

But to let the reader know how important the real point of the novel is, here is an excerpt as little Scout relates it of Mr. Raymond:

I had never encountered a being who deliberately perpetrated a fraud against himself. But why had he entrusted us with his deepest secret? I asked him why.

“Because you’re children and you can understand it,” he said,” and because I heard that one—“

He jerked his head toward Dill: “Things haven’t caught up with that one’s instinct yet. Let him get a little older and he won’t get sick and cry. Maybe things’ll strike him as being - not quite right, say, but he won’t cry, not when he gets a few years on him.”

“Cry about what, Mr. Raymond?” Dill’s maleness was beginning to assert itself.

“Cry about the simple hell people give other people - without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they’re people too.”

Harper Lee knew that there were things children understand that adults don’t. She knew children weep over injustice and lose this wisdom as they grow into adulthood. Adults excuse this loss, this forsaking of wisdom, by claiming it is a part of growing up, a part of the real world, never realizing that their real world is a world of their choosing and making, a world that has ever failed to attain unto wisdom, the wisdom they, in fact, had as children. And the forsaking of such wisdom contributes so much to this loss in the resulting failure of good people to confront injustice, to confront evil with absolute determination to win!

Harper Lee, since she was very well educated, prefaces her book with a quote from one of my favorite essayists, Charles Lamb: “Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.”

Granting the difficulty we face in giving lawyers any credibility of being children once, Miss Lee nevertheless chose Atticus Finch, the model for whom was her own father, as the preeminent humanitarian and a man who even as a lawyer kept the best part of the child alive in himself.

But Atticus had the extreme good fortune of having little Scout (Jean Louise) to keep him honest. It is Scout who, innocently, and because of such innocence that must be cherished, is the best part of her father’s life and compels him to stand up and be counted for truth and justice. Being a good man, how could he ever betray such believing and saving faith, trust, and innocence as that of his little girl!

I haven’t forgotten Jem (Jeremy) in this. But Jem is growing up. And Miss Lee gives Jem a lot of credit for his own sense of truth and justice. But Harper Lee knows how little girls differ from little boys. As she has Scout say at one point, “I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl.”

Harper Lee epitomizes the need to include women and children in The Great Conversation: Philosophy, the King of all Disciplines. There is indeed some skill involved in being a girl. And boys and men are in desperate need of such skill on the part of girls and women. The constant refusal on the part of men, who were once little boys, to accept women and children as of equal value to themselves is at the heart of the problem which has kept the world at war and without wisdom, and as a result without peace, throughout history.

Harper Lee must have recognized this. But it must not have been as conscious to her as a grown woman as it was to her as a little girl. And how could it be otherwise when men still exclude women and children from The Great Conversation?

To say she has forgotten is not a criticism of Harper Lee. The little boy in me is far more aware than the man of the things Harper Lee’s little girl knows that she had forgotten as a woman, the things that are in fact the well-spring of intimations and hope of immortality.

I mentioned the social implications of Harper Lee’s novel. But what was the real impact? Certainly it had an impact on me, both because of my own background and because it wasn’t long after the book was published that I found myself teaching in Watts at Jordan High.

The results of the Watts riot were fully in evidence and I was a part of the whole milieu of that time in our history. You might say I was at Ground Zero during the 60s.

But decades after the riots, what has changed for the better? Nothing. If anything, things have only gotten worse in respect to Negroes in America; and for children, the future of America and the world.

Riots and rhetoric, films like To Kill a Mockingbird, A Woman Called Moses, Mississippi Burning, Ghosts of Mississippi, A Time to Kill, The Tuskegee Airmen, Miss Evers’ Boys, and Amistad, have not changed things for the better. And the world lacking wisdom, with evil seeming to be ever in the ascendancy how can they? Nor can Hollywood have it both ways; pretending to fight discrimination on the one hand and hypocritically supporting violence and perversion on the other.

Nor can we ignore the fact that so many Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning works have failed to make any substantial changes for the better, including To Kill a Mockingbird.

But to quote the Chicago Tribune (one of many sources of praise) about the book: “Of rare excellence ... a novel of strong contemporary national significance.” A reviewer for the Minneapolis Tribune wrote: “The reader will find ... a desire, on finishing it, to start over again on page one.”

And so I have; many times.

Abundant and well-deserved praise was heaped upon Harper Lee and her extraordinary novel. But far too often do great themes such as hers concerning inequities, injustices and discrimination, find the deserved applause and rewards of good people while never accomplishing the avowed goal of righting these inequities, injustices, and discrimination.

And one can go back into the furthest distant past to find the same themes being declaimed by good and wise men (there must have been equally good and wise women, but they weren’t allowed a voice). There is nothing new in these themes.

Yet, in spite of the great works of so many great thinkers throughout history, the world has yet to know peace. It is as Emerson noted, Socrates, Jesus, Washington left no “class,” and the disciple is never above his master.

But doesn’t it puzzle you, as it did me, why this should be so? Perhaps the answer may be found in the following.

In Harper Lee’s novel Tom Robinson was convicted of a crime that he did not commit, and died by the ugly and hateful mechanism of racial prejudice in 1935. And sixty-three years later in 1998, more than a generation later, a Negro was dragged to death behind a truck driven by monsters posing as human beings solely on the basis of his being a Negro!

What, any civilized person has to ask him or herself, has changed for the better in this respect for Negroes in the last sixty-four years to date? Or since 1960 when the novel was published?

The sustaining of racial and religious prejudice is by no means peculiar to America. It is, in fact, far, far worse in other parts of the world where Caucasians are killing Caucasians, Negroes are killing Negroes, Christians kill Christians, Moslems kill Moslems, and Jews and Moslems continue to kill each other.

Knowledge is abundant. But Wisdom is, as ever, conspicuously absent, an orphan from knowledge. Since true wisdom is derived from love and compassion with an instinctive hatred of evil, it isn’t surprising that the world lacks wisdom and people continue to torture and murder for the sake of ideological differences and in the name of God.

It should not be surprising that the same crimes and cruelties continue to be repeated without end in spite of all the great books and apologetics designed to overcome the hatreds, ignorance and prejudices that continue to make their contributions to an increasingly demon-haunted world.

The point that knowledge is confused for wisdom is made by even the best attempts to meld knowledge and wisdom without facing the fact that until women and children are accepted as of equal value to men, and until children become the priority of nations, wisdom will continue to be orphaned from knowledge and unachievable! Nor should it be surprising that knowledge dictates we must become wise or we will most assuredly destroy ourselves!

But at the same time we are reaching out to heaven, hell is abundant throughout the world, a world as much and even more of a demon-haunted world as it ever was on the basis of ignorant and prejudicial hatreds thousands of years old! Wisdom? Where?

Too often I find myself having to point out the obvious: If children are the closest thing to the heart of God, how is it that so many live as though there was something of greater importance? And all too often things done in the name of God are absolutely contradictory to the welfare of children! The time would fail me to list such things.

Harper Lee makes some very good points concerning this in her novel. For example, she recognizes the religious animosity toward women. That of the Moslem and Jewish religions is patently obvious. But when Harper Lee points out the preaching of the “Women are unclean and a sin by definition doctrine of Christianity,” she strikes at the heart of the matter. And most ministers would certainly get their backs up over her accusation that ministers are preoccupied with the subject. But I believe she, and all thinking people, realize why this is so.

Sex by any definition is still sex, whether cloaked in religiosity or not, whether God is profaned in the process of preaching such damnable doctrine or not. Consider how many preach women and children are of lesser value than men. Of course, men don’t come right out and say it; but it is there nonetheless. Such an abuse of religion is a bullying tactic of men, too often supported by women themselves, designed to keep women appositionally inferior to men. Such tactics led Thoreau to write:

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints. Our hymnbooks resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring Him forever. One would say that even the prophets and redeemers had rather consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of man. There is nowhere recorded a simple and irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable praise of God.

While Henry put his finger on the problem, and while he had Margaret Fuller as a prime example of the equal value of women, due to the era in which they lived neither he nor his renowned friend Emerson understood nor recognized that such bullying by religion had a primary focus on women and children.

The wisdom of childhood causes children to separate from bullies if at all possible. Children will not play with bullies. And it is the bullying of religion, as much or more than that of education and politics toward women and children, that led Sam Clemens to comment, “He was as happy as though he had just gotten out of church.”

In respect to the kind of madness and bullying that seems all-pervading and prevents good people from seizing the initiative in acquiring wisdom, Harper Lee has Calpurnia telling the children, “You’re not going to change any of them by talkin’ right; they’ve got to want to learn themselves. And when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.”

And sure enough most do not want to learn; they not only have no interest in talkin’ right, they want to bully others into talking their language no matter how ignorant or self-serving, to be polite to their idols, myths and superstitions no matter how harmful to wisdom. The worst of these insist on everyone either talkin’ their language or they will mount a jihad in order to destroy anyone who does not!

In spite of how very, even selfishly, ignorant their own language may be, they not only do not know better, like the ignorant Ewells of the novel, they have no interest in doing any better.

When the jury in the novel due to ingrained, ignorant prejudice find Tom Robinson guilty of a crime he so very obviously did not commit, Dill and Jem cry. Scout would have cried if she had been just a little older. She was just old enough to realize a great injustice had been perpetrated, but still young enough to not understand and cry about it. She would learn to cry about such things later.

And when Jem asks his father how the jury could have done such a thing, his father tells him, as Mr. Raymond told Dill, “I don’t know ... when they do it - seems only children weep.” (to be continued)

Fairy tales add a needed dimension of life in order for children to exercise their imagination. Fortunate is the child raised in an environment of books and reading, and how well I recall those earliest stories from Mother Goose and the Brothers Grimm, Hans Brinker, Black Beauty, Snow White and so many more. Even Henry Thoreau mentions Cinderella.

Granted many fairy tales and nursery rhymes had very dark beginnings before they became suitable for children. But as they evolved over time many of these became stories of magic and enchantment often with a beautiful moral important to the instruction of children.

Much of what we hold on to in the realm of fantasy as adults has its earliest beginning from the fairy tales of childhood. We are loath to give up beliefs in fairies and all those things belonging to the domain of childhood. In many cases the beliefs do not change in adulthood, but take on other forms as a compromise with reality.

While stories of magic and witchcraft apart from those contained in the Bible are anathema to many churches, I continue to believe Halloween and Santa should be fun and the domain of children, just as with the stories by J. K. Rowling.

At the time of its introduction a news item read, “The age of Potter VI officially dawned today as millions of fans from sweaty New York to chilly Australia got their hands on ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ and began the darkest of J.K. Rowling’s fantasy novels.”

I commend Rowling for bringing a world of imagination and fantasy to children, for the great encouragement she is giving to children causing them to want to read. And while I don’t know, it would not surprise me to learn she owes a debt to the Bible and early Sunday School lessons for Harry Potter. Apart from the history and lessons clearly intended for adult readers, the Bible is replete with the stories of demons and witches, conjurors and sorcerers, of enough magic and fantasy to fire and encourage any child’s imagination.

Having been born into the age of radio long before TV in homes, children of my era had the benefit of all those great radio shows that required and inspired imagination. Reading and radio— a magical combination that gave free rein to our imagination. To read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn is to involve yourself in the world of imagination the peculiar domain of children Sam Clemens so well understood, and had the rare genius to communicate. Harper Lee certainly understood the importance of books to Jem and Dill, and emphasized this in To Kill A Mockingbird.

The old radio programs like Let’s Pretend along with Terry and the Pirates and a host of others had most of us children tuned in. But there were also programs like I Love a Mystery, Inner Sanctum, and The Whistler that drew children into a darker world of imagination.

Admittedly, many fairy tales, radio programs, and children’s books of my time included a large amount of violence, of murder and mayhem. But the visual element made so graphic in films and TV were, apart from some illustrations, lacking, which left us largely to our imagination, and it was the stimulation of imagination required that among other things made my generation the last of the real readers and writers in America, primarily because TV being a passive media simply cannot compete with books and those old radio programs when it comes to exercising one’s imagination.

However, it should not surprise anyone that the visual stimulation of so much violence in “children’s programming” on TV and in video “games” causes great harm to children. And while my generation had Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, the so-called “cartoons” of today are a virtual parade of violence far beyond what children used to be exposed to. And unlike the cartoons in the theaters of my time, TV spews a continual stream of violence into the homes across America. And the noise! This is why I seldom tune in the FOX news channel. This is one of the very worst offenders when it comes to mind-numbing, crashing, screaming, piercingly shrill noise the producers seem to believe is needed for viewers. Shouting and screaming at adults, the noise and babble of people talking over each other punctuated with station breaks to the accompaniment of noise that would sterilize frogs and salamanders 300 yards distant! One wonders what kind of audience such programmers are trying to attract? Perhaps they all grew up to the kind of piercingly shrill mind-numbing noise too many call “music.”

But when it comes to the power of graphics, and not just that of violence and pornography, this is a double edged sword. Charles Lamb in his essay Witches, And Other Night-Fears writes of a book in his father’s library History of the Bible in which there were several woodcuts. One of these depicted the conjuring forth of the last judge of Israel, the prophet Samuel, by the Witch of Endor. Of this picture Lamb writes, “I wish that I had never seen.” With the keen perception peculiar to his genius Lamb concludes, “Credulity is the man’s weakness, but the child’s strength.”

However, as Lamb continues to point out in his essay that woodcut haunted him all his life due to the strength of his “child’s credulity,” requiring his need of a night light from childhood on, of his words of admonition to parents not to leave their children alone in the dark “where there be monsters.” The child’s strength of credulity lends itself, as Lamb recognized, to both beauty and monsters. The harm of it in adulthood is to subscribe to harmful fantasies, to be gullible and easily taken in by the “fairy tales” of charlatans and scoundrels, and one can only wonder what Lamb would have to say of the monsters children face today, the graphic and all pervasive violence and perversion children are being made to endure today.

In a world seeming gone mad and intent on nuclear annihilation unless sanity is restored, there is a lot of comfort to be found in the old hymns I knew and sang as a child in my grandparent’s small church in Little Oklahoma. They brought me a lot of comfort in the very uncertain and dangerous world of WWII, one in which children needed all the help and encouragement, all the comfort and escape from grim reality they could find. And children continue to need things to stir their imagination and encourage them to read, those better things offering a source of escape and comfort in a world adults seem intent on making increasingly unfriendly and dangerous to children.

A father kills a pervert for molesting his little two year old daughter and I say “Good for him!” I can only hope this father will get an attorney and a jury like those of “A Time To Kill.” It is an evil system that gives perverts more protection by law than their victims, but when good people serving on juries in such cases are making the decisions there remains a chance for real justice.

Ma Joad understood the realities and exigencies of life; and her only question to Tom when he told his mother of killing a man was “Did he need killin’ son?” The only flaw in Steinbeck’s account here was Ma even asking Tom if the man needed killing. The real Ma’s of those like Tom would know their sons better than to ask such a question. But if like me you were raised among those people Steinbeck immortalized in “The Grapes of Wrath” you would understand they had a very practical and pragmatic view of justice, and had a very good understanding of the fact that some people simply “need killin’. “

The monsters in human guise preying on women and children simply “need killin’.” And if not simply killed, those like Jeffs and others of his species simply need to be put in prison for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately for women and children there are too many of the same species in politics, our judiciary, the media and Hollywood that promote an agenda of perversion and pornography preventing removing the monsters like Jeffs and others of his species permanently from society. In too many cases this leaves only “vigilante justice” as the only kind of appropriate justice. But then I call to mind Caesar Bush calling the new Minutemen patrolling our borders “vigilantes.” Why in either case should there be a need for such “vigilantes?”

It is this same species of those like Jeffs that promotes hatred toward all normal people like Ma Joad and her son Tom that understand some people simply need killing, it is this same species including those of the ACLU and La Raza that promotes hatred toward those of us who believe you cannot make nice to perverts, Muslims, and the enemy nation of Mexico and still have a secure America or a nation that cherishes its young and families, that promotes hatred of all of us who believe America should be a sovereign nation with secure borders and a national identity based on our heritage, culture, and language.

Many of the enemies of America are salivating over “Death of a President.” (AP) “Peter Dale of More4, which is the digital offshoot of Britain’s Channel 4 network, plans to show the program on Oct. 9. The White House declined to comment on the network’s announcement, saying it would not dignify the program with a response.”

No one despises the Triumvirate of Caesar Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld more than I. And if America survives for a history of this reign to be written it will go down as the worst administration America has ever suffered! And ever since 9/11 I have been one of the most vocal in making my hatred of this Triumvirate known.

But from the beginning I have also noted that once this “war on terrorism” was initiated by Caesar Bush and Company there was no hope of winning unless such a war was prosecuted to win! And while whining Democrats have absolutely nothing to offer as an alternative, my continued hatred for Bush and Company is based on their not fighting the war against Islam to win, but sacrificing Americans all the while attempting to appease their Muslim “friends.”

Muslims and Mexicans do not assimilate! They colonize! Neither group has the slightest interest in being real Americans! And both groups constitute a clear and present danger to America! Only when I see Caesar Bush and Company address this clear and present danger to America will I change my attitude toward our own “Axis of Evil” or believe they or any in Congress have the best interests of America in mind.

The right thing, the most responsible and appropriate thing to have been done by Caesar Bush and Company the very evening of 9/11 was, as I suggested at the time in a letter to Bush, cruise missiles right on top of Kabul and Baghdad! And then when anyone complained to respond with “You want some of this too?” Had that been done there would have been no further loss of American lives in wars fought not to win, but rather to protect corporate interests, and there would be no present Iranian or North Korean nuclear threats.

But do those in the media have the best interests of America in mind? Do those in the media display any interest in telling the truth rather than engaging in politically correct diatribes, panaceas, and analgesics? No! Too many are “plastic,” not real Americans. As a result of all the betraying and selling out of America we are being forced to confront the question of what kind of America can possibly emerge once more worthy of the trust and respect of other nations?

We need a leadership that proves it has the best interests of America as its goal, not corporate profits. And failing this kind of leadership America cannot possibly survive no matter how many “proxy wars” are fought in the meantime. There is no appeasing the tyrants and bullies of either religion or politics; like child molesters they simply “need killin’.” But America has no such leadership capable of either telling it like it is, of telling the truth or prosecuting a war to win against our enemies.