Of the many responses I have had to my articles about UFOs one that really touched me was "A ‘high five’ to the little green men from the blonde chick! I’d vote for them." Hey, given the present crop of politicians we can be excused if any of us think our options might be better with space aliens.

While corresponding with this lovely blonde chick, I made comment about a picture I have on my wall. It shows a log cabin with a small stream nearby. There are two Canadian geese in a pond formed by the stream, there is an old pickup parked next to the cabin. It is sundown and the dim glow of a lamp can be seen showing through the front window. All is so peaceful and serene I look at the picture often, wishing to end my days in such a setting, my idea of heaven on earth. I shared this thought with the lovely blonde and she replied, "No chicks in your pic on the wall? My, my, we have to re-adjust your thinking!!!" That certainly got my attention. I quickly assured her my idea of heaven on earth included a lady with me inside the cabin. Ok, so I’m a very normal man in most respects. Snow on the roof but fire…

Well, granted association with the fair sex and writing of beautiful women and romance is preferable to writing about UFOs. But like a beautiful woman, UFOs do have their attraction for me. And like beautiful women UFOs are open to a lot of speculation, much of which could be cast in the same format of scientific inquiry, some of which I indulge in my book Birds With Broken Wings. And being a fairly normal man I would prefer writing books about women and romance than books about UFOs. Then too, I’ve had experience with women, but have never encountered space aliens or been abducted by a UFO. Though when it comes to alien thinking and behavior and women… but I digress.

In a world made smaller by instant communication satellites it is difficult for us inhabitants of earth to find places where no one has gone before. This makes space exploration all the more appealing. It isn’t like we have exhausted the mysteries here on earth or explored all the ocean depths for example, but there is just something about space exploration that puts it into a class by itself, this driving desire to know what is "out there." It is this reaching for the stars that makes all the bickering and wars on earth so exasperating. What if humankind could solve the problems tearing nations apart and bend our concerted efforts to the science that might enable us to find and colonize other worlds or even make contact with inhabitants of other worlds.

But it would be hard to imagine anything that would so scare the beejabbers out of people than to have a flying saucer actually land on the White House lawn. However, for those of us who really enjoy SciFi and appreciate the speculation on the part of serious SciFi enthusiasts there is always the disquieting "what if?" accompanying such stories. Fact is Tommy Lee Jones was right on the button. The person is ok, but people as a bunch are apt to respond like a mob of frenzied animals when threatened, and I can think of few things that would throw people into such frenzy as that flying saucer actually landing on the White House lawn or other similar well known spot with the TV cameras rolling showing the whole world the worst fears realized by those claiming "We are not alone!" I’m more of the opinion any such visitors would find us considerably lacking in saving graces, especially if they have already formed their opinion of humankind by tuning in on our TV broadcasts.

While qualified scientists can be found on various sides of the issue of Intelligent Design, even some holding to the theory our solar system may in fact be unique in the universe, there is nevertheless too much of a disquieting circumstantial evidence other planets like ours exist supporting intelligent life. While some outstanding scientists like Michio Kaku theorize if other civilizations existed they may well have reached our stage of nuclear development and destroyed themselves, there remains in the minds of most that other civilizations in the universe do exist. But as some have pointed out, if such civilizations have mastered galactic or intergalactic travel so as to visit earth they would be so far advanced technologically as to appear virtually miraculous beings much like the angels of the Bible. Imagine a person today knowledgeable of all our technology attempting to communicate with a Neandertal. That cave man TV ad is funny, but it would be no joke if the comparison held true for alien visitors coming to earth.

While "Contact" was a pretty good film, one of the really serious issues was the "what if" of a tremendously advanced civilization’s first impression of humankind being that televised program of Hitler? I somehow doubt that would be followed by an advanced civilization capable of what the film portrayed wanting to lend any kind of assistance to a bunch of "Neandertals."

Science fiction of the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon variety in the funny papers I knew as a child did seem relatively innocent. Even the science fiction of those like Jules Verne and H. G. Wells was for the most part free of real worry because very few people were taking such stories seriously. Sure, there was talk of Mars and Venus, how creatures might exist on these planets, but for the most part such talk wasn’t taken very seriously; but there was enough such talk and literature to make palpably plausible that one scare in 1938.

The power of radio certainly evidenced itself when Orson Welles made that 1938 broadcast during the CBS Mercury Theater adaptation of H. G. Wells’ "The War of the Worlds." It is difficult for people of the TV generation to comprehend what it must have been like back in a time when radio stars were held in the same esteem one might expect of rock stars today, when people had their favorite radio programs just as people today have their favorite TV programs. What is lacking in TV is the imagination that folks exercised while listening to those old radio programs, and nowhere at the time did this power of radio upon imagination prove itself as in that broadcast of War of the Worlds.

At the time of Welles’ broadcast The Mercury Theater had a listening audience of millions. But the hysteria created by the broadcast was due to some listeners tuning in late to the show or missing the station breaks and disclaimers. Having gotten the attention of the whole country as a result, Welles became a real household name even getting the attention of the government. To this day it is being debated whether Welles intended the outcome of his broadcast. My point being that the kind of hysteria generated by Welles’ broadcast is the kind we could rightly expect of that saucer landing on the White House lawn.

Last night as I lay in the dark solitude of my little cottage here in the country the thought came to me "What is best to believe?" I think a lovely lady’s comment about "suspended belief" is probably the best course. There are just too many things making demands on our beliefs. In the case of UFOs, while I have seen such things I don’t know what they were; so I’m going to suspend belief in such things. Maybe that Frisco ad for a fitness center that caused such a flap "When they come, they will eat the fat ones first!" wasn’t off the mark. And if so, I don’t want to know. But then, I’ve always had a lean frame and don’t need to worry about them coming to me recipe book in hand on "How to serve man." Some will remember that one. Better yet, I think I’ll ask the blonde chick if she has a friend, one that wouldn’t mind putting up with a man who thinks that log cabin is heaven on earth and only requires a lady to complete the picture. If I’m going to fantasize, better the fair sex than little green men.

For those unacquainted with doctoral programs in Human Behavior it may come as a surprise we behavioral scientists delve into many areas that impinge on the hard sciences and we must study these in conjunction with the behavioral sciences. In many cases it is an apple and oranges kind of thing. But parapsychology, the paranormal, Psi, is sometimes the only thing scientists have left when all other attempts at explanation fail, much as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s observation that when something is not explained by the probable one should look to the improbable no matter how seemingly preposterous.

With an estimated 94% of the universe unknown, and perhaps even unknowable as some scientists surmise, there is much room for speculation about what may be "out there." That this leaves enormous leeway to speculate the things unseen may be more real than those things which are seen is obvious, much in the way our conscious sense of "self" is ever bit as real as the bodies in which the self is carried about, Emerson’s pointing to our bodies carrying our real person like carrying "fire in a pan." The big difference is that we know our bodies are subject to disease and decay; that our bodies will eventually die. But the person in the body, the conscious self, that fire in a pan, ah, that is another matter.

The hard sciences provide us many fascinating clues, but things like string theory nudge up against philosophical speculation, much of which belongs in the area of studies of Psi. Does string theory have room for ghosts for example, does it leave room for things that go bump in the night as well as speculation about time travel and so much more; and the obvious answer is yes. Who knows but what there may be more fact than fiction in the film "Contact" for example.

If human emotions and things like creativity and inventiveness is nothing more than electro-biological chemistry perhaps machines may one day surpass humans in many ways, but even were it to become possible would it be wise to wire machines with the ability to love, hate, hope, dream, and create? Would cyborgs really be a good idea or as SciFi has it will such things be eventually taken out of the hands of humans to decide? Humankind is already on a very dangerous footing by depending upon machines, and in the case of computers the doomsday scenario of a "Fail-Safe" happening is all too real.

The Bible has much to offer when it comes to human behavior and studies in Psi. The writers of the ancient fables incorporate much factual evidence to support their claims of things like miracles, angels, and demons, many things of the supernatural which many people believe as a matter of faith. But removed from theology and religion, the Bible is an excellent study text in human behavior. For this reason and being a behavioral scientist I follow studies like this one with great interest.

Reading an AP release titled Scientists Bridging the Spirituality Gap by Joann Loviglio Jan 27, 2007. PHILADELPHIA - Religion and science can combine to create some thorny questions: Does God exist outside the human mind, or is God a creation of our brains? Why do we have faith in things that we cannot prove, whether it’s the afterlife or UFOs? The new Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania is using brain imaging technology to examine such questions, and to investigate how spiritual and secular beliefs affect our health and behavior. "Very few are looking at spirituality from a neurological side, from the brain-mind side," said Dr. Andrew Newberg, director of the center.

A doctor of nuclear medicine and an assistant professor at Penn, Newberg also has co-written three books on the science-spirituality relationship. He's also played a role in "What the Bleep Do We Know," a movie that blends quantum physics and new-age neuroscience. Newberg's center is not a bricks-and-mortar structure but a multidisciplinary team of Penn researchers exploring the relationship between the brain and spirituality from biological, psychological, social and ideological viewpoints. Founded last April, it is bringing together some 20 experts from fields including medicine, pastoral care, religious studies, social work and bioethics.

"The brain is a believing machine because it has to be," Newberg said. "Beliefs affect every part of our lives. They make us who we are. They are the essence of our being. Spirituality and belief don’t have to equate to religious faith," Newberg said. The feelings of enlightenment and well-being some derive from religion can come to others through from artistic expression, nonreligious meditation, watching a beautiful sunset or listening to stirring music. "Atheists have belief systems, too," Newberg said…The integrated medicine center teaches patients with cancer, chronic pain and other ailments to work things like meditation and proper diet into their conventional therapy… "The mind and the body are the flip side of the same coin," said Dr. Daniel Monti, head of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital’s integrated medicine center. "Now we know some of the mechanisms by which that occurs, and it’s becoming better and better understood… Such thinking seemed ‘fringy’ to many people a decade ago, but it is becoming widely accepted by the medical community and patients," he said… "The sky’s the limit as far as the things we can study," he said. (End)

That comment by Newberg "The brain is a believing machine because it has to be" deserves our attention, and especially because of the fact as he points out, "Spirituality and belief don’t have to equate to religious faith." The horrible cruelty visited upon humankind because of superstitious religious beliefs such as those found in Islam betray those that have no interest in the truth, but are committed to the words of a man making the preposterous claim he speaks for a god. Were it not for the difference between the humanity of Jesus as opposed to the inhuman cruelty of a woman-denigrating Mohammad Christians might well be continuing to burn heretics and drown witches. But unlike Islam, Christianity eventually became a civilized religion giving rise to the most civilized nations in history, nations that have room for both the hard sciences as well as philosophical speculation beyond the sciences that allow us free range for our minds and imagination. Moreover, in Christian nations we are free to speak and write of such speculation.

Try to imagine entering into a dialogue with Muslims about the possibility of "Spirituality and belief don’t have to equate to religious faith." We can do that in Christian nations, but not in Muslim nations. And because such discussion in Muslim nations is forbidden these continue in much darkness of the mind as well as the extreme poverty so many in Muslim nations are forced to endure.

In at least one respect both Christian and Muslim nations have this in common: The wealthy few have the rule over the masses. But in Christian nations, the civilized nations, one may believe what they will without fear unless such beliefs come under the stricture of doing harm to others, and I mean real harm, not that of impugning some "god" or "prophet."

But let’s face it folks, even in America our leaders lie to us as a matter of course. How much truth is there to Roswell, Area 51, to scenarios like those of "Independence Day," to UFOs in general and clandestine experiments by our military? Hey, not even Bruce Willis could get an answer to who really killed JFK; and that with our earth being threatened by annihilation unless Bruce and his team saved the day! Now, Hollywood notwithstanding could there really be government secrets so sacrosanct as to be carried to this extreme? One can be excused for thinking so.

A few years ago I personally witnessed the crash of that Stealth Fighter here where I live in the Kern River Valley when that plane was only "a figment of people’s imagination." The whole thing was a scene right out of Hollywood with the military clamping down on the whole area, not unlike "The Andromeda Strain." But the mountainside where the fighter crashed was in plain view of all of us here in the valley. It would have been easy to imagine a battalion of CIA, FBI, military brass and minions, you name it coming in and herding all us civilians into some kind of containment area to keep anyone from spilling the beans. And I have had the experience of being surrounded by armed police; makes for a very intimidating presence by authority. Face it; in many ways Hollywood is only telling things the way they could happen in the name of "national security."

In psychology there is known what are called "pathological liars." These are people incapable of being truthful, people who will lie when the truth would even serve them better, not unlike some forms of addiction. I don’t believe those like Caesar Bush and some others I could name are in this category, but the continued lying and cover-ups by those in government and our military cannot but lead us to believe some are actually pathological and sorely in need of professional help.

Certainly Tommy Lee Jones in "Men in Black" was correct about the person being ok, but people as a mob are given to hysteria and panic, reacting like a frenzied animal. So, cooler heads must prevail to avoid such a thing. But when We the People are lied to as a matter of course for the sake of wealth and power, how can we know the truth of anything? We can’t. And here we find the horns of the dilemma those in power find themselves facing. What I resent as a rational person is being treated like a child by those who are caught in their own lies as though I cannot handle the truth.

I miss the old radio shows; these enabled us to exercise our imagination in ways not possible apart from books. And I believe children need to be encouraged in exercising their imagination, to be able to enjoy doing so. I continue to enjoy letting fancy have wing, to imagine the possibility of fairies, gremlins, leprechauns, angels, demons, ghosts, but as we grow up and our fairytales turn out to be nothing but there is still the need to believe even as Newberg points out. But now that I’m all grown up I want to hear the truth from politicians; I don’t want to be treated as a child for whom fairytales should suffice to "explain" or keep me silent. And even if the truth involves UFOs, if the truth shatters cherished beliefs I still want to be told the truth. And while the brain may be a "believing machine," the truth is often stranger than fiction, even at times shattering the beliefs of those considering themselves too "scientific" to believe in "fairytales." For my part, I choose to believe the truth may very well be "out there."

 Being a real aficionado of SciFi and all the science explored by those with imagination what if people were the size of ants and all other life forms on earth were reduced to the same proportionate size; "The Incredible Shrinking Man," but with the spiders also of proportionate relative size. At present our planet is being stressed because of the lack of concern for our environment, and with the combination of excess consumption and lack of birth control there is genuine concern over how many mouths can be fed long term. As it is half the world does not get enough to eat. Ah, but if we were the size of ants…

It’s not that farfetched when you consider a human being begins with a single cell, this tiny, microscopic entity containing all the information needed to build either a human being or an elephant. Nor, as computers are beginning to evidence does mass equal intelligence. While physical animal brains at present may require mass, who is to say an equal intelligence to that of a human may not be placed in a brain the size that of an ant’s.

Perhaps those who believe in UFOs and little green men are not thinking in the correct proportions. The circumstantial evidence to me is space aliens exist and UFOs are real. I’ve had my own experiences with UFOs and other inexplicable sightings, and while not yet having been abducted, nevertheless I’m willing to credit some experiences recounted by others of "close encounters." We have a broad field labeled Parapsychology with its kin Paranormal or Psi, not all of this having to do with Tarot Cards, Ouija Boards or crystal balls.

Maybe "visitors" are found in stone and other artifacts declaring the truth of such, and maybe the explanation for the Sphinx and the great pyramids is to be found from alien intelligences. Perhaps Atlantis was real and the remains may yet be discovered. However, as some scientists have pointed out interplanetary travel is difficult for our own science, but intergalactic travel is far beyond anything on the drawing board. Within imagination there exists the possibility of Einstein’s "spooky communication at a distance" by which the tachyon is not limited by any constraints of our known physics, and if the tachyon why not aliens provided they have mastered the science enabling them to travel at the speed of imagination, the speed of a thought without any of the physical constraints of time or mechanical devices; a case of "to think to be there is to be there- Instantaneously."

But if such intergalactic or interstellar travel were possible for aliens, the means of doing so using mechanical devices like flying saucers poses a conundrum. How would such a means of instantaneous travel as suggested incorporate any mechanical devices? Perhaps they were/are not needed. What if there exists a universal consciousness giving birth to lesser entities finding planets throughout the universe amicable to life? The stars are scattered, broadcast throughout the universe like the sower sowing seed, and solar systems are formed that allow of the physical life forms we know on earth.

If the earliest progenitors of life on earth were microbial why not the earliest intelligences on earth, in which case aliens the size of ants suggests itself to the imagination. What is the Empire State Building compared to the size of a person? See the captain of a super jumbo airliner standing next to it, or the captain on the bridge of a huge ocean going liner; such puny creatures, yet capable of building such huge structures. In watching the construction of such magnificent, huge structures how can you not think of a bunch of tiny ants scurrying busily about each one contributing their own tiny bit to the completed structure; each "ant" putting its own small piece of stone or metal in its proper place.

I’ve had the experience of sitting in the pilot’s seat of huge cargo aircraft. You sit there in this huge monolith of metal three stories off the ground, contemplating the mental adjustment it takes for a tiny "ant" to presume firing up the huge engines, racing down the runway and the tiny ant at the controls using only his puny hands lifting this metal leviathan into the air! The captain of an aircraft carrier, here is an ant moving this behemoth with the touch of fingers and hands, such a huge, monolithic structure put together by a host of other ants using their fingers and hands.

If aliens have put together such structures here on earth using only their intelligence and tiny hands, aliens that are easily hidden by their diminutive size from human eyes, perhaps giving rise to the fables surrounding fairies and other like creatures, perhaps abiding under the oceans or other large bodies of water, who can say? Sasquatch sightings are often reported, but what of very tiny, diminutive alien beings? It may be they constructed their UFOs here on earth, that they need such things to carry out the physical nature of their purposes, whatever these may be. After all, "Donovan’s Brain" had to have human instrumentality in order to accomplish what the brain devised, but was physically incapable of doing. The intellect still needs human, or other physical instrumentality.

Gremlins were popular during WWII, and I still laugh at the Bugs Bunny cartoon, Bugs doing battle with a gremlin. But what if the stories have a basis in fact? Superior intelligence far beyond our human intelligence must, if believed, be capable of things beyond even our imagination. But if we suppose even such superior intelligence to need physical means of accomplishing its purposes then diminutive aliens, "fairies" and "gremlins" may not be as farfetched as many suppose, and even angels and demons may find a place in such speculation.

Now I grant I am a great fan of X-Files kind of speculation. But during my decades of life I have witnessed what cannot be called other than lunacy prevailing throughout the world, lunatic leaders leading lunatics compounding the lunacy. The world faces nuclear annihilation because of such lunacy. Unlike ants, the human species seems more dedicated to its destruction and the destruction of our environment than preserving our species and building according to need rather than consuming with no thought of the future. In the face of this lunacy, should we accord ants more intelligence than human beings? Or, is it a matter of efficiency of size dictating lesser needs? To be sure, ants war on each other; and perhaps in this exhibit much of human traits.

To preserve our species some futurists are suggesting human DNA be shot into space with the hope it may find some suitable planet and begin the reproductive process, peopling another planet. This we know, there are too many "ants" capable of unleashing monstrous horrors of destruction far out of proportion to their diminutive size. There are too many human "ants" with egos far out of proportion to their size willing to visit nuclear annihilation upon planet earth. But perhaps "fairies" may yet come to our rescue. After all, if diminutive aliens do exist here it may be that it would be in their interest to preserve the earth.

While my "conservative" credentials are in tatters because of my advocating the legalization of prostitution, marijuana, euthanasia, my opposition to the death penalty but not opposing abortion, I am still a supporter of the Second Amendment and believe every law abiding American citizen of age should be able to own and carry a gun legally. I believe America must have secure borders, all illegal aliens should be expelled and English made our nation language by law; that the government ceases at once to print ballots in foreign tongues and do away with making instant citizens of the babies born to illegal aliens. I own America as a Christian nation and our debt to the Bible. And, I also believe in Intelligent Design. But as readers know it is not ID in the theological sense, but allowing of the kind of speculation such as that just offered.

One thing is certain; if I had to put my money on one or the other, between diminutive space aliens saving the earth and politicians my money would be on the little green men. Given the direction leaders are taking the world small wonder I incline to believe in fairies and things that go bump in the night.

(If anyone sees this post in italics, please let me know. One reader has told me it is coming up on their screen in italics).

While many people are afraid to seriously touch the subject of legalizing prostitution, least of all any consideration of the need for lady’s clubs as well as gentlemen’s clubs columnist Herb Benham’s idea of renting or leasing a husband hits pretty close. So close I have to wonder if Herb… But say Herb was being serious; the idea has a lot of merit. Take Mary Graber’s column for example: “51% of women want to be Playboy Bunnies. Much has been made of a recent New York Times article reporting that now a majority (51%) of women live alone. According to the Times, women are now living with their cats and lovin’ it!”

Now what Mary should have done is closet with Herb and me. In combination Mary would realize the merit of Herb’s and my suggestions; that the majority of women may not be satisfied as either Playboy Bunnies or living alone with a cat, but find these a better alternative than a husband. However, I believe many women would far rather have a lady’s club to relieve sexual frustration as an alternative to marriage, one that would have the additional benefit of incorporating Herb’s excellent suggestion of renting or leasing a “husband.” Some women like to have a man around the house. But if he turns out to be a loser or tiresome, if you simply want an upgrade trade him in. Or maybe you just want to be alone for a while; then simply take the “rental” back. The same would be equally true for gentlemen’s clubs; but in the case of the clubs I’m suggesting, civilized and friendly places where there is no commitment or recrimination you needn’t take the woman or the man home with you. Sounds good to me. And what is “serial monogamy” but a form of prostitution, and often a much more costly form.

In the Norman Rockwell America I knew as a boy marriage was all about commitment and fidelity; a life partner with whom you started a family and raised children, someone with whom you could grow old together, the two becoming one and staying together as one as per the Biblical injunction. No longer— that America no longer exists. All the fabled stories and films, all that had to do with love and romance in connection with love and marriage has given place to no-fault divorce, a nanny government, and breeding for a welfare check without any commitment or thought to the future for babies born into hopelessness.

Perhaps if arranged marriages had been a part of the American culture, marriages that could count on strong family ties, support and common values that might have been the better course. While aristocrats, the nobility in some cultures made sure marriage partners were suitable for each other, such arranged marriages have not been a part of American culture for the masses. And even here in America, among some groups the professional matchmaker had an honorable position, not that of the Internet where people lie as a matter of course.

But for a host of reasons, the lines defining the roles of men and women in America have become so blurred as to make the biological distinctions of no moment. Much of this has to do with women intruding into male domains like police and firefighters, into the military and political correctness together with the universities and their product politicians, judges, and media forbids any protest of such things. Women can now have babies without a man, abortion as a means of contraception is sanctioned by law, same sex “marriages” are being demanded by some groups, both men and women flaunt having babies without benefit of marriage and this has become so acceptable in America as to make any commitment to a marriage virtually passé. That millions of children now do not have the benefit of both a mother and father in the home seems of little or no consequence in America today; and most certainly does not carry the moral stigma that was once attached to such a thing. Men and women now cohabit without benefit of marriage, they have children out of wedlock, the lesbian daughter of our Vice-President can have a baby without the benefit of either marriage or a man, not offering anything like a stable home with both mother and father for the resulting baby and one would now be considered “prudish” if voicing any disagreement with such things.

And we may as well speak openly of the fact that children and their future are not relevant to American society. The truth of this is so blatantly obvious as to need no comment. For children to have the best prospects of growing up with a future and becoming good citizens, productive members of society with good moral standards requires a stable home with a mother and a father. Such homes are becoming increasingly scarce in America, and our whole society is suffering from this loss.

However, wishful thinking will not turn back the clock to the America of Norman Rockwell. So, to accept America for what it has become those “social clubs,” the legalizing of prostitution seems by far the most sensible and civilized alternative to marriage. And given the legal morass marriage and family has become, especially with no fault divorce which virtually never has the concern for the welfare of children in view who needs the grief?

Some may smile at elderly couples getting together without the benefit of marriage because they would be penalized financially if they should marry. So, “living in sin” becomes the alternative for some senior citizens. But this is no less the case for younger couples facing many of the same financial difficulties of marriage.

America has become such a social witch’s brew of laws, lawyers, and courts as to make marriage and children fraught with so many obstacles together with a nanny government aiding and abetting the lunacy of it all I don’t wonder many men and women have simply thrown in the towel. Who needs the grief?

But given the facts of the case, it is well known it takes a superior culture to support marriage and family, to limit births to only the number of children that can be provided for. And here is where America is facing a very real threat from Mexico. With millions of illegal aliens having babies in America and our nanny government supporting these illegal aliens and their babies with the money extorted from the legitimate citizens of America through taxation without representation there has to be a reckoning for such lunacy. We can look at the third world nations in Africa, at Mexico where the indiscriminate breeding resulting in multiplied millions of unproductive mouths demanding to be fed by the productive is threatening famine and disease of horrendous proportions.

Birth control is the prerogative of only the most civilized nations. This is why Mexico sends its citizens to America by the millions. Mexico will not teach birth control, will not provide for its own citizens. That corrupt nation will send its citizens to America to be supported. But just try to get Mexicans in America to practice birth control. Not when We the People are extorted to pay for the resulting babies, and at the expense of the future for our own children. That the wealthy in both America and Mexico profit from this slave labor makes any political solutions to the problem all but impossible. Kern County suffers mightily from supporting illegal aliens with eight children on welfare, these illegal aliens looking for a “better life” at the expense of legitimate American citizens thanks to a Federal Triune Dictatorship favoring the wealthy benefiting from slave labor.

An honest discussion of marriage and family, even of legalizing prostitution can only be had with civilized people. I don’t expect such an honest discussion with those that believe illegal aliens are good for America. Marriage and family are expensive propositions for the legitimate citizens of America. But when a nanny government steps in to support illegal aliens at the expense of legitimate American citizens, this has not a little to do with why so many are giving up on marriage.

I haven’t switched topics here; many of you will understand the connection between the suggested social clubs and things like Mexico invading America wholesale. The tearing of the fabric of American culture, the loss of the “glue” holding America together by a national identity based on a common heritage, culture, language and secure borders can only spell the end of an America honoring and supporting marriage and family with the needed values to keep America a nation offering hope of a future to our children.

Take a look around us today. Are we to be defined by “Press one for English,” or a nation with a genuine identity as a nation based on a common heritage, culture, language and secure borders? And if we have been betrayed of our identity as a nation, how in God’s name are we to have strong families, the foundation of America supporting American ideals? The very idea you can have a nation of “Press one for English” and support an American identity is preposterous! The chance of legalizing prostitution has far better odds. And, in my opinion, would serve America far better.

What with all the deserved cynicism on the part of We the Great Unwashed, with all the nuclear saber rattling going on worldwide just how do those of us in Kern County expect to get the attention of the powers that be to a local problem like the Isabella Dam? Compared to the threats America is facing because there is no accountability on the part of politicians, if the dam bursts it will be in the media euphemism of Thoreau’s day “a melancholy accident” with those responsible crying the usual crocodile tears while wringing their hands and calling for Pilate’s Laver. But we locals are assured by our leaders that by their naming the Isabella Dam the number one dam in the entire nation in danger of bursting attention is being paid; and here is the scene right out of the film “Dante’s Peak.” All the warnings are in place, but there is no urgency on the part of those in power to take the necessary immediate action. Don’t you wonder why? Could it be as in the film a matter of economics vs. lives?

Caesar Bush ignored everything he did not want to hear in order to get his wars. That such a course had no exit strategy came with the territory. In the broader scheme of things this may yet turn out well as some defenders of Caesar are saying, we can hope the Isabella Dam will not burst, but it remains a disquieting fact those holding power are not inclined to listen to criticism; and just so with the Isabella Dam in my opinion. Bush is being asked, quite understandably and legitimately, What is the fix and when? And, for those of us concerned about the Isabella Dam we have every right to ask, What is the fix and when?

As I have already written previously addressing the issue of the dam, I was living here in the Kern River Valley while the dam was under construction. I overheard some of the workers at the time saying “I sure wouldn’t want to be living below this thing.” But I was a boy at the time far more interested in girls, cars, hunting, and fishing than I was about any threats the dam might pose for “flatlanders,” and little did I appreciate at the time the threat this would pose to all those in both the Kern River Valley and Bakersfield, I had no idea of how this area would grow, how many people would eventually be in harm’s way should the dam fail.

In retrospect, I realize it may have been known to the experts the dam should not have been built; which would explain the remarks I overheard from those involved with the construction. I would be surprised if the dangers were not known at the time when the dam was first being contemplated and the original studies of the site made. So why, if these dangers were known was the dam built anyway? In a word: Money.

There was a lot of money to be made by the dam. To be sure there were the economic benefits; there were the genuine issues of flood control and so on. But the bottom line throughout, as to be expected, was the economic benefit to those profiting from the construction of the dam, the moving of the old town of Kernville, moving the old cemetery, those of us locals including me who made wages doing some of the work, a little something for everyone involved.

In his book “Night Flight,” French philosopher Antoine de Saint-Exupery writes about the building of a bridge. It is known that in order to build this bridge lives will be lost, but the decision to build the bridge goes forth. Why, Saint-Exupery wonders, since life is considered to be the most valuable of all, far above any material considerations, the decision to go forward with constructing this bridge? The simplest explanation in the case of the bridge, and all other such works, is economic benefit; and this trumps life. But it only trumps life on the basis of who profits. Follow the money. Virtually never do such decisions place the wealthy in harm’s way.

No one questions we have a dysfunctional government due largely to the fact politicians lie to get elected then lie to stay elected. This continued path of lies for the sake of power and wealth has to lead to destruction for America. Just the refusal to secure our borders for the sake of the wealthy profiting from the slave labor of illegal aliens thereby inviting nuclear and biological terrorism in America is lunacy based on greed and avarice.

The Katrina disaster and tragedy certainly proved how our government at all levels is a shambles. From 9/11 through Katrina there has been no accountability, no one in government held responsible and punished. Nagin continues to work for his “chocolate city” with every expectation of taxpayers supporting this and a politically correct media is emasculated from confronting his blatant racism, but the world recognizes it for what it is. Follow the money and you will find politicians irrespective of race including Nagin expecting to profit from any rebuilding of New Orleans.

Ok, so politicians despite 9/11 and Katrina continue doing business as usual expecting to profit from the misery being visited upon We the People, continue to extort us through taxation without representation to feather their own nests and those of their corporate bosses. In just such a manner it is my opinion was the Isabella Dam built. And like New Orleans, the fact it was a disaster just waiting to happen was of little consequence to politicians and their corporate bosses. But trying to hold any in government accountable, trying to get answers to why there were so many failures built not only into the levees of New Orleans but other construction projects like Isabella Dam is an exercise in futility. That lives are lost due to this lack of accountability whether of 9/11 or Katrina is a “melancholy accident,” one for which no one in a position of leadership is accountable.

There are many of us here in the Kern River Valley and in Bakersfield that are quite justifiably anxious about the potential failure of the dam; a potential that would appear an inevitability. I’ve talked with several people about this, but those in the real estate business most certainly do not want it talked about; nor do the politicians want to talk about it. For example, I received the following note recently from a friend of mine in Bakersfield:

Sam; I see a bit more information concerning the dam. Mostly as you know bad. For some reason, the lake is being filled rather than keeping it low. I spoke with Thomas Lewis yesterday who had written the article in the Wednesday local section (Bakersfield Californian). He was very interested in my ideas of prevention by blasting. He like yourself felt it to be something that could really work. He really liked my idea of blasting the Kern River gorge above the Johnsondale Bridge. I think we need some good old fashioned “town hall meetings “. Your contacts would be a good place to start... I’d like to see an “Isabella Dam” website with a chat room for a couple of thoughts. Another thing Sam, is why in the hell our planning department continues to issue permits within the flood zone? Rather than spend the money for land based sirens like in his article, why not just meet with the Bakersfield Police Dept, the Sheriffs Dept, Hall Ambulance, Fire Dept, and Highway Patrol. They would know about the dam if it breached and if properly organized could use their loudspeakers and sirens in the needed areas. Frankly I’m worried; our head in the sand approach is not making any headway. I stand to lose my home and 2 businesses in the event of the dam bursting. We need someone who has inroads to Congress and Arnie. I’ve called Bill Thomas’ office and Kevin McCarthy with no help.

I would say to my friend if the dam should burst catastrophically due to an earthquake there will be no time for sirens to be effectual; and there is no one in politics willing to acknowledge the truth of things. To do so, they would have to go back into the history of the dam, naming those that were making the decisions for it being built, what they knew and when they knew it, and who profited from its being built. Ah, then we would know why lives were being placed in danger for profits. But here are a few facts. No politician will be held accountable; none of those who profited from the building of the dam will be held to account should the dam burst.

There are hundreds of billions of dollars available for wars but none to secure our borders or repair the infrastructure of America, and despite all warnings there is no money or urgency for fixing Isabella Dam. And in respect to the latter, I do wonder how it would be “fixed” in any event? Could the foot-dragging have to do with this? Could this be the reason politicians are proving so reluctant to address this issue? I would not be surprised. And what would be gained by Townhall meetings if we are not told the truth? Certainly such meetings should be held if for no other reason than to discuss the options, but what is sorely needed is for politicians, not hired toadies or bureaucrats to tell us the facts of the matter.

The truth of the matter is that the business of America is business, and God help those that get in the way of business! The Godfather was a very pragmatic realist; there is little difference between government and organized crime, and “only the little people pay taxes,” only the little people died in Katrina, Nagin, the governor et al. were safe, only the little people will die if the dam fails and I submit all the dangers of building Isabella Dam were known before its construction and if it bursts it will only be a “melancholy accident” and as with 9/11 and Katrina none in Congress, our state legislature and local elected officials or their corporate bosses will be held accountable.

I don’t want women in the military where they are placed in harm’s way; I don’t want them as cops on patrol or as firefighters where they are ill-suited physically. But we men cannot be faulted for taking some degree of mild interest in the way women are handling themselves in the political arena. Forget the way men are pummeling each other, that’s old hat. Ah, but how the fair sex pummels each other using their most dangerous weapon, their verbal skills against each other; that’s a grabber. Men are used to this, having largely brought it upon themselves, but no-holds barred verbal beating of woman on woman is something to behold.

In “The Music Man” the mayor says “You watch your phraseology” when hearing anything he thinks bordering on blue speech. I wonder how he would respond to Ann Coulter’s column “I am woman, hear me bore: Speaking of which, the horny hick’s wife finally ended the breathless anticipation by announcing that she is running for president. I studied tapes of Hillary feigning surprise at hearing about Monica to help me look surprised upon learning that she’s running.”

Now, I know Bill and Hillary are white trash just putting on airs, I have written about them being in Mammy’s words “nothing but mules in horse’s harness” but without any of the redeeming virtues of Rhett and Scarlett; however, “horny hick’s wife?” Lordy! Ann; “watch your phraseology.” We all know Bill is a horny hick, but goodness gracious certain proprieties should be observed, and few things are so detrimental to making a point than to skewer yourself with improper phraseology in the public forum.

It is true a couple of years ago Ann sent me a brief note. She had been on the mailing list for The Weedpatch Gazette and the note very succinctly read: “Remove Immediately!” Well, rather than taking umbrage being the gentleman I am I did as requested, and I sure didn’t want to invite Ann’s verbal skills being practiced on me. But it did occur to me it must have been something I said, and being a gentleman I knew it couldn’t have been my phraseology. However, given Ann’s continued support of Caesar Bush and my outspoken criticism of him I don’t doubt she just didn’t want to hear it. But Ann’s rebuff has not prevented me continuing to read her column by which I find useful information about the thinking of right wing conservatism. And this is the way you not only keep informed, but you allow differing points of view to your own perspective of issues and people.

Some may take my speaking to the issue of the need of women in the decision making processes of world governments as taking the side of women. But it is not a matter of “taking sides,” it is not a matter of combativeness or competition, but a matter of what should be the compatibility of differences between men and women, something sorely needed in making decisions impacting upon a host of issues facing humankind.

Al Gore learned very quickly but too late from that “kiss of death” during the presidential campaign men forcing themselves upon women does not play well in Peoria. I’m a great fan of kissing women, always have been. But I also know the best kissing requires real sincerity on the part of the participants. The wooden Al just didn’t come across with the required sincerity, and his “performance” seemed totally out of character. Now why didn’t Al have the same unfeigned passion for his wife he came to show about global warming, a passion that may win him an Oscar? I’d give a pretty to be a fly on the wall as Al and Tipper have that discussion. And who could blame Al’s wife for upbraiding him to the effect “Why didn’t you give that kind of Oscar performance with me and while you were running for President?”

Sexual frustration takes many forms besides that of “Desperate Housewives.” But it is a tragedy for humankind it often takes the direction of violence against women, and in too many cases of men against men whether individually or in the wars men make. This has been one of the reasons for my advocating legalizing prostitution. However, my reasoning includes gentlemen’s clubs where men have opportunity to talk to women in an unfeigned atmosphere conducive to conversation without the competition and combativeness as well. It’s the old story of “My wife doesn’t understand me.” But women have the same trouble with their husbands. So there should be those lady’s clubs also. Just think of all the sexual frustration that could be relieved on the part of both men and women in an atmosphere where there is no recrimination, where both men and women get a chance to talk to each other in neutral territory. Now that to my mind is “civilized,” especially where sexual frustration can be legally relieved without either violence or recrimination.

There seems no end of books and talk shows, films all revolving around the frustration of men and women in relationships. But an honest discussion debating the merits of legalizing prostitution in America, of gentlemen’s and lady’s clubs seems anathema even among those that like to be considered “liberal.” But who doesn’t think it would be interesting, if not downright fun, to watch and listen to pundits in the MSM having an honest discussion on the subject.

I believe Ann should be able to avail herself of a lady’s club, a place where she could vent her own sexual frustration by talking to men in a non-judgmental atmosphere; it wouldn’t make Bill any less a horny hick, it wouldn’t make Al any less wooden with Tipper, but I believe Ann, Hillary, Nancy, and others would profit mightily from such a thing. Why, it could mean peace in our time!

“A certain awkward consciousness of inferiority in the men, may give rise to the new chivalry in behalf of Women’s Rights. Certainly, let her be as much better placed in the laws and in social forms, as the most zealous reformer can ask, but I confide so entirely in her inspiring and musical nature, that I believe only herself can show us how she shall be served.”

To read Emerson’s comments about women is to gain insight into why some including me accord him the place of the greatest intellect America has ever produced. To his immense credit concerning social commentary he recognized that while those like Scott and others had given women position in society, men could never do for women what they needed to do for themselves, nor would the majority of men ever give women the opportunity to show how they should be served, and not a little of this continued subjugation of women to lesser status has to do with “A certain awkward consciousness of inferiority in the men” that has not to this day fulfilled Emerson’s hope it “may give rise to the new chivalry in behalf of Women’s Rights.”

The best of men like Emerson have always recognized the need for a “new chivalry in behalf of Women’s Rights,” knowing such a thing was needed on the historical basis of the fact men make wars while women attempt to make homes. It is this civilizing influence of girls and women the best of thinkers have recognized as essential to the progress of civilization. But the best of thinkers like Emerson also knew so long as women were subjugated to the status of anything less than equal value to men there was no hope for even the most civilized nations escaping the history of humankind being one of continual wars.

We have women in America today who are well placed in politics, there is even the thought a woman for President may become an actuality. But just as trade curses everything it touches though it be dealing in messages from heaven, so with politics. And while the softer and gentler part of that distaff half of humankind is sorely needed in all leadership positions, especially those in which the decisions are made about war, what is lost of virtue in attaining political power is no less for women than for men. It isn’t power over men that will best serve women; it is that new chivalry on the part of men in behalf of Women’s Rights, a new chivalry that only women in their best estate can possibly encourage showing how they shall be served, not in the shrill voice of harpies nor abusing the power of their sex, but in their distinctive “inspiring and musical nature.”

“Donnie and Jean, an angel’s story” is an unabashed romantic novel. The story revolves around two twelve year old children in Bakersfield during WWII and shortly thereafter who are discovering love for the first time. Fortunately for Donnie, he has a great-grandmother who was quite knowledgeable and well-educated, capable of leading him through the morass of so many misconceptions he had about girls, misconceptions he was being forced to reconsider because of his meeting this angel, Jean, who was unlike any other girl he had ever known.

For the first time in his life Donnie recognizes girls and women make music simply by their speaking, kind of like the birds singing, that “inspiring and musical nature” of which Emerson takes note begins to become intelligible to Donnie; and as a consequence he begins the civilizing process of paying close attention to matters of dress and personal hygiene, paying closer attention to his manner of speech and behavior; all this transformation in his life because he met a very special girl; Jean.

But Jean has her own problems; she had never met a boy like Donnie. And now she had to confront the things she used to resent about being a girl, and start getting used to the very confusing elements that went into what was going to be required of her eventually becoming a woman. That all of this is so very confusing to both children as well as the adults in their lives is the reason it took me four years to write the book. However, it wasn’t until some people remarked on the profound intellectual struggles to be found in the book I realized it was indeed far more than a story about two children, it was about the whole confusing society into which the children were born and how this confused society was in so many ways contradictory to what the children believed should actually be the state of things, it was Thoreau wishing he had the wisdom of childhood, a wisdom that adults forsake for the sake of “reality;” it is Harper Lee’s pointing out only children weep over injustice, but when they get a little older they won’t cry about it anymore. Which is why Atticus expresses the whimsical thought a police force of children might not be that bad an idea.

Alas for humankind the ideals and wisdom of childhood are betrayed as we grow up into the “real world” and the “realities of life.” But Jesus said unless we become as little children we cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. I don’t doubt Jesus had in mind children like Donnie and Jean.

Jean’s father is a Baptist minister. But as a father and single parent having to confront his little girl growing up, her meeting this boy Donnie and what is obviously taking place between the two children plays a role in his coming to question his religious beliefs ever as much as Donnie is having to deal with his misconceptions, actually his prejudices about the “proper” role of girls in society. As his great-grandmother points out to him, there is nothing wrong with a girl enjoying shooting and fishing, even building model airplanes. These had been foreign to Donnie’s thinking about girls before he met Jean and “grandma” began to help him overcome his prejudices.

There seem too few adults capable of counseling children, too few like Donnie’s great-grandmother to lend needed guidance when the issues of life begin to make demands on children. But while Emerson recognized the need for women to take their needed and rightful place of equal value in society, I felt these 160 odd years later something further needed to be said on behalf of children, and especially for girls like Jean that can have such a profound influence on boys like Donnie, as well as the surrounding adults in the children’s lives.

While we read so much of “girls gone wild” where is the society that would encourage girls to be ladies and boys to be gentlemen? Conspicuous by its absence. It has come to the point where I have said America seems to have degenerated into a society that hates children. It is certainly not a society that cherishes children.

At one point in the book Donnie asks himself how anyone could consider Jean to be of any less value than a boy? But Donnie had been raised in a society that taught girls were of lesser value than boys, women were of lesser value than men. It was just the “way of things.” But as he encroaches upon mature thinking because of Jean, he has to deal with the same issue in regard to race. Why should the color of one’s skin make someone inferior to others? But in Little Oklahoma, in Bakersfield this was the “way of things.” It would take a girl like Jean; it would take good people like her father, Donnie’s great-grandmother and grandparents to help him sort it all out.

It takes good parents to have good children. It takes good leaders to have a good society encouraging good families. There has to be good men and women to encourage others to be good men and women. But we seek in vain today to find proper role models, good people of proven virtue to encourage children and families.

Yes, I continue to believe there is a “spirit of wickedness” pervading throughout history and throughout the world today. Seeming lunatic decisions being made by lunatic leaders. But nowhere is such seeming lunacy as prevalent as in the way children are abused in so many different ways.

I recall a time, the time of Donnie and Jean when families could plan a future for their children, when the children of good families would lead and instruct them, help them to determine their prospects in life. It should have been a time when Emerson’s thoughts on the subject of the proper chivalry arising from women taking their proper place in the scheme of things would at last come to fruition. But it is a mistake to confuse “rights” with “value” whether of race or gender. And it took Jean; it took good people in his life for Donnie to finally understand Emerson’s conclusion about women: “but I confide so entirely in her inspiring and musical nature, that I believe only herself can show us how she shall be served.”

In George Babbitt of Zenith, Sinclair Lewis showed the power of conformity often leading to the vacuity to be found in American life. In both Main Street and Babbitt, Lewis skewered the axiom “The business of America is business,” an oftentimes poignant satire on the meanness of lives of “quiet desperation” recognized by Thoreau and so many before Lewis put pen to paper. But the genius of Lewis in portraying such lives of quiet desperation led to his being the first American to win a Nobel for literature.

A Community Voice column in the Bakersfield Californian titled “City mustn’t forsake literary heritage” by Gerald Haslam would lead one to think poets are the only writers of note by which a “literary heritage” should be acknowledged. This is the typically elitist thinking that denies the actual literary heritage of America, which is not in its poets but the great writers like Lewis by which America earned its place as a literary nation. A far better measure of Kern County’s literary heritage is to be found in the Weedpatch Memorial Library, to which I have made a modest contribution from some of my own writing.

I am justifiably proud of my literary award from The Writers of Kern. As a “home boy” such an award proves someone from Weedpatch can actually be literate and write well. And I am only one among many in Kern County that are literate and can write well, but when it comes to what is too often only sophistry attempting to pass as “poetry” I have little patience for such pretense; which, of course, brings me to the point for my addressing the issue of a high class whorehouse in Bakersfield. And in the words of JFK I say “why not?” Come to think of it, there have been times when the White House has been host to… but I digress.

No one who knows me well would accuse me of naiveté, least of all when it comes to sex, made unashamedly and indelibly clear in my non-fiction book “Birds With Broken Wings,” some of the stories having to do with “working girls” I have known. And while I believe legalizing prostitution would be the right thing for America, I have no illusions about the prospect for such a thing happening. Still, in that fantasy world where writers often dwell in their heads the images of such a thing happening and what this could mean to American culture conjure up all sorts of fascinating and tantalizing possibilities.

While many writers, Lewis among them, wrote about whorehouses and the prominent role these have always played in American cities since before the Revolution and continuing on to this day, most writers of any stature have been of necessity somewhat circumspect in doing so, knowing well how they might call down the wrath of civic and church leaders were they to be absolutely truthful and candid about the subject. At that, while “gentlemen’s clubs” flourished the very idea that women should be entitled to the equivalent “lady’s clubs” would be anathema. But in all fairness, when it comes to the issue of equality in the best sense of the word there should be no double standards of race, religion, or sex.

Now if Lewis was able to write today on the subject of a high class whorehouse in Bakersfield, a contemporary Zenith peopled by Babbitt’s, I cannot but believe he would find a wealth of material for satire and parody just on the basis of the objections made to such a thing. Btown abounds in pretentiousness, so many attempts to make it a toney town all the while suffering the small town strictures of conformity leading to the vacuity of lives of quiet desperation. In all my years of experience with Kern County in general and Bakersfield in particular there is no escaping the kind of conformity that is much more like Babbitt and Zenith; and this is certainly accentuated here in the Kern River Valley where I now dwell, which is one of the reasons I live in near reclusive isolation from society. Someone of note replying to my first article about a whorehouse in Bakersfield asked, “Why don’t you put that in the Kern Valley Sun?” To which I replied with the words from the song “Oh, that’ll be the day…”

Bakersfield has an image problem. Imagine someone like Haslam expressing any consternation over why Bakersfield “poets” are not taken seriously in the literary world. The first thought that came to my mind when I read the piece was “You have just got to be kidding!” It reminded me of Sam Clemens remarking on the young man claiming to be a poet. “The trouble,” Sam said, “was his trying to get other people to believe he was a poet.” The literary doomsday name Bakersfield aside, one only has to do a search of the status of so-called “poetry” in America today to get the point. There is too much truth to the saying, “I may not know much about art, but I know what I like.” There are scams galore in the field of poetry, so-called “contests” of every kind, but just try to find a literary agent for anyone believing they are a poet or legitimate publishing houses looking for poets.

Now I have had book signings at Russo’s Books at the Marketplace. And talk about being surrounded by culture; this is where it is, where the literary folks of Kern County are in their proper environment. But whether Russo’s or any other upscale bookstore in Bakersfield, here you will find the proper environment for lovers of literature; the real cultural elite of Kern County. And one can only be thankful Bakersfield is not being judged and further demeaned on the basis of its “poets.” But one thing I miss is being able to have a cigarette, pipe or cigar with my cup of coffee while discussing literature with others. And I don’t doubt posters of famous literary figures will eventually for the sake of political correctness have their cigarettes, pipes and cigars air-brushed out of existence, much in the same way many famous figures of history and their association with whorehouses is often ignored.

Ah, but if prostitution were legalized and a truly grand Pleasure Palace were to open in Downtown complete with smoking rooms; now that, folks, would be the stuff of dreams. I would then say to literary pretenders in the most politically incorrect language; “Put that in your pipe and smoke it.” And it boggles the mind to consider what Sinclair Lewis would write about Bakersfield then. No Zenith of small minded Babbitt’s, but a city with a real claim to grandeur, sophisticated beyond the pretensions of San Francisco.

Granted such a high class whorehouse would be available only to the wealthy, but if prostitution were legal in no time at all other places would be made available to those of modest means. And so long as they were properly legalized with all the protections in place both men and women would be safer than the present system that encourages so much crime and disease.

Few knowledgeable people would disagree with the sentiment and oft expressed opinion that Kern County is a cultural wasteland. It isn’t that my native county has ever suffered a lack of talented and artistic people, some of this wasteland has to do with geography as much as anything else. Then too, our county suffers from a preponderance of low wage earners, too many people on the dole, abysmally low education due in no small part to the county playing host to so many non-English speaking illegal aliens, a host of problems plaguing the county accentuating the difficulties to be overcome; all of these things detrimental to the image of Kern County and the city of Bakersfield.

Ok, so I’m a humorist and I’m having fun pulling a few legs, but faced with such seemingly insurmountable problems to putting Btown on the cultural map, as someone who would like to have justifiable cultural pride in my native county and hometown, when I cast about in my mind what could be done to change our image a world class brothel, fitted and appointed with great art and décor, seemed more plausible than attempting anything else. The nattering nabobs of negativism are quickly circling the wagons, opposing such a thing. Preachers will take to pulpits denouncing the very idea of such a thing; civic leaders will expound on how preposterous the whole idea is, how it would be a shame and disgrace all the while ignoring the fact politicians avail themselves of illicit sex and drugs often at taxpayer expense. But wouldn’t it be fun to see editorials discussing the merits or lack thereof of such a thing. That alone would be sure to draw attention to Btown from the rest of the country. Ah, the hypocrisy of it all. It is the stuff of great literature like that of Sinclair Lewis, denouncing such hypocrisy and small minds.

No, I am not going to call those who understandably disagree with me “small-minded.” Those who thoughtfully disagree in a civilized manner have every right to do so and I welcome their input. But removed from fantasy to reality, since I do not oppose abortion I understand how abortion on demand as a means of contraception devalues life. But I also believe women have every right to the decisions about abortion, and I also believe they have every right to protect themselves from “back alley” abortions, not to mention the men that rut like animals then take no responsibility for the resulting babies but expect women to take responsibility and taxpayers to foot the bill. In just this same way I believe women have every right to make the decisions about prostitution without penalty of law. After all, men have historically made this claim for themselves, and I say: A pox on this hypocritical double standard!

Since I am known as a writer of humor, it was gratifying to receive so many notes from people who got a laugh out of my suggesting I would like to see a “gentlemen’s club” in downtown Bakersfield. While many people commenting understood the significance of my support for legalizing prostitution and treated it with the seriousness such a thing deserves, it was the name “Bakersfield” being associated with a fancy, legal whorehouse that tickled not a few funny bones. And by golly, I’m tired of Bakersfield being the butt of derisive jokes having this image problem and propose doing something about it!

While I was born in Weedpatch, I have always considered Bakersfield my hometown. And I have fond memories of the Dust Bowl folks among whom I was raised, many fond memories of our little church and grocery store on the corner of Cottonwood and Padre, and I know first hand the kind of nobility associated with the best of those Okies and Arkies with their polite southern manners and speech so characteristic of long held traditions of such things.

But let’s face it folks, when anyone says “Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Malibu, San Francisco” these names conjure up a certain image. And, when anyone says “Bakersfield” this conjures up a certain image; and it certainly is quite distinct from that of the other cities mentioned. And people are not going to confuse CSUB with Stanford or Berkeley. However, perhaps because of my being born in Weedpatch I may be a tad more conscious of and sensitive to the name of one’s birthplace, and maybe that has something to do with my sticking up for Bakersfield. That said I do understand the importance of perception. And I want to do my bit in changing the perception of Bakersfield.

The progress of civilization owes much to those like Charles Dickens, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck and others, gifted writers who could make the plight of children and working people so touchingly clear it forced politicians to take notice and act. But unlike Karl Marx, the writers in the English and American traditions never lost sight of the need for Emerson’s “strong natures,” those rare people who by brute force overcame enormous obstacles of nature and lesser men, seized power, and once having done so founded dynasties that would eventually lead to the betterment of humankind with civilized families giving rise to the arts, to the true Lady and Gentleman, those without affectation that would lead by virtue instead of the physical force required of their brutish ancestors.

Having graduated from Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, my having lived and loved much of my young adult life among the Lotus Eaters of that Camelot of my youth now only seen in films like “Gidget” I am well qualified to speak knowledgeably about the subject of a whorehouse in Bakersfield.

No one is going to dispute the fact Bakersfield has an image problem, and I’m not going to belabor the many reasons this is the case. But it is time the city fathers, and mothers, came to grips with what is required to change this image of Btown being a harbor of brutish people of brutish ancestors and begin to think seriously about making it a toney town of refined, civilized people with civilized manners and an appreciation for real culture. A “squiggle” isn’t going to do the job, and while I recall the Bakersfield Arch with fondness since it was first constructed so many years ago over Union Avenue, the move to its new location only enhanced the poor image of my hometown. While I love good C&W and have played and sung in some real honky tonks the Arch and Buck Owens, a Crystal Palace only emphasizes the word “Hick.”

But a whorehouse, a real gentleman’s club with all the embellishments of the old Ambassador Hotel with its Coconut Grove, something rivaling Grauman’s Chinese Theater and having its own Walk of Fame, the stars to be named for the most talented of the ladies, a virtual palace gilded inside and out, garishly shouting “Whorehouse!”- Absolutely that would enhance the image of Bakersfield! And when anyone would mention “Downtown” the term would have real significance. And once some minor scruples against the idea have been overcome, I’m certain not a few church leaders would see the wisdom of my suggestion; that is the leaders not of the mindset women should be subservient to men, the kind of “barefoot and pregnant” thinking already associated with the denizens of Bakersfield.

Now I grant you such a world class brothel would generate real interest far beyond the confines of downtown Bakersfield. The city boasts its annual Business Conference but just think of how many more worldwide would attend if they knew they had a world class Pleasure Palace to which they could resort following the conference. The world leaders of corporations would be falling all over each other to attend! If you can relate to the profound philosophy in “Paint Your Wagon” you readily understand my point. Why should local folks have to travel to the Getty for some refinements of civilized culture?

Let’s say some really far-sighted civic leaders in Bakersfield should see the wisdom of my suggestion. Granted it would take real courage to speak out on this and support the idea; but the one thing that more than any other standing in the way of our leaders, whether local, state, or federal taking up for the working girl and acting on my suggestion is the fact politicians do not want the competition in a field they consider their own turf, especially since their idea of “servicing” the public makes a mockery of the legitimate working girl and prostitution as an honorable occupation by comparison.

One of the things I would like to see here in the Kern River Valley and in downtown Bakersfield is a “gentleman’s club,” you know, a brothel. But not just a whorehouse, an upscale nicely appointed palace of vice right out of a Hollywood production. Ideally these places would also provide marijuana legally. Such establishments properly regulated and taxed would be a real boon to local economies.

For that very small minority that might object to such a thing, consider the fact Walt Kelly made so clear in Pogo when discussing the presidential elections a “Vice Party” was suggested and Churchy asks Owl, “Deep down, wouldn’t you be for vice too … given the chance?” My dear brothers and sisters, no matter how you slice it a Vice Party is exactly what both Republicans and Democrats represent. Were these honest vice parties I would find no fault in that. But one of the problems I have with this is politicians of every stripe allow of every kind of vice among themselves including prostitution and illegal drugs, often at taxpayer expense, but hypocritically deny these vices to We the People! And quite frankly this makes me mad as hell! Why should the very vices politicians treat as their personal domain coming with elected office be made illegal and denied ordinary American citizens?

While historians and behavioral scientists have not made it much of an issue, sexual frustration may account for many of the wars of men as well as many of the more noble achievements. After all, for many men and women a cold shower just does not suffice; and much of our history as a species may well be understood in the light of sexual frustration on the part of both men and women.

Now I am all for traditional marriage and families as the foundation of all civilized societies. I am a staunch supporter of the sanctity of marriage, the sacredness of the marriage bed. But I am at least equally opposed to the kind of hypocrisy that denies sex is a normal function of the human species and makes it a crime for relieving one’s sexual frustration by simple mechanism of economics. There is all this foofaraw over abortion, so many women claiming they have the right to determine what to do with their own bodies while at the same time denying the “working girl” the same right. And what of the men in Congress and elsewhere that legislate and pass laws self-righteously denying women this right to their own bodies? Hypocrites!

The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness should have included prostitution. After all, this was thriving at the time of the Founding Fathers, it was quite acceptable in most of the civilized societies at the time and throughout history, and it is doubtful the early years of our government could have been successful without a plentiful supply of bordellos. If our early legislators did not see these establishments as threatening to home and hearth, what happened to change their minds? All the other biological functions of the body are carefully attended, enormous amounts being spent on bathrooms for example, why the normal function of sex is suppressed is the stuff of history and books by the thousands.

Of course, in societies where women are made dependent on men, where “poor Jenny, bright as a penny” in the song decides “getting herself a husband is the thing to do” the historical disparaging of prostitution is in full force, and in a world dominated by men it is in their interest to continue subjugating women, refusing the “working girl” equal status with the honorable occupations, which may have something to do with women never achieving the status of equal value to men. Boys will be boys and men will be men, but girls and women dare not be girls and women in the same way. Solomon spouted off about the lack of virtuous women, but apparently didn’t think this standard of virtue should apply to men, an infamous double standard that has held sway throughout the history of humankind.

But in all honesty, why should there be a different standard of “virtue” applied to women than applies to men? Where is the logic in men are expected to be and accepted as “experienced” while women are supposed to be chaste? The purity of womanhood exalted while the man is often held in contempt should he cleave to this same standard.

No one is a stronger adherent to the ideal of romance, to the art that flourishes around the sexual purity of the chaste girl and woman. After all, without this where would most of the great poets and writers find inspiration? Much of my book Birds With Broken Wings has to do with this kind of inspiration of romance. But this does not blind me to the pragmatic facts of the case that the working girl should not be an object of shame and derision because she believes she should have the human right to decide the issue for herself just as any man, that there should be no disparaging of the “fallen woman” while the man escapes any such designation.

However, the historical male dominance that makes whores of women while men have escaped any such pejorative appellation, at the same time denying the same right to women hiring themselves a man to satisfy their normal sexual desire, does make for the steamy novels, plays and films that take full advantage of this dichotomy in most cultures. And the refusal of men to accept women on the same basis they excuse themselves makes for an industry where women pander to the lust of men, making fools of men in the process. But men seem to excuse their foolishness in this regard while penalizing women and holding them in contempt. Consider the man playing the fool exclaiming “I never had to pay for it!” as though that was a proclamation of his “manhood.”

During the Civil Rights marches I watched some Negro men carrying placards declaring “I Am A Man!” But there were no Negro women marching with placards declaring “I Am A Woman!” Well of course not, those men were trying to call attention to the fact they should not be treated as lesser human beings on the basis of the accident of birth giving them the color of their skin. But it did occur to me that such placards just might be appropriate to all women within the same context having to do with equal value on the basis of gender.

Because sex is such a powerful thing, much of religion and politics can only be understood within this context. George Will: “Barney Frank, the 14-term Massachusetts congressman who chairs the Financial Services Committee, says it might be useful to ‘make it a misdemeanor to use metaphors in the discussion of public policy,’ such as ‘a rising tide lifts all boats.’ “

Frank shows his real intelligence in making such a statement. Now if a discussion of all the really important issues of life could be addressed in plain language, if politicians and pundits were forced to say what they mean in plain English without metaphor how much better off America would be. Suppose Caesar Bush were made to say in plain language what he means by “stay the course” for example. Well, in his case he would probably be, in fact, at a loss for words. He apparently doesn’t have much of a vocabulary. But you get my meaning.

How about discussing the issue of sex and prostitution in plain language without any metaphors? I’m willing to bet this article will prompt many to resort to metaphors rather than using plain language addressing the issue. Granted metaphors are safer than plain speech; but some issues are too important to be left to metaphorical language. And no matter what your opinion, sex is definitely too important a subject to be left to pornography and metaphors.

“Booze has its place, but its place is in hell!” Dear old Billy Sunday sure was instrumental in bringing about Prohibition, along with the side product, the unintended consequence of organized crime in America. At that, Prohibition did not make saints of sinners, and the booze continued to flow. And who is so naïve as to believe the wealthy and well-connected became teetotalers because of a silly law? It is silly, when not downright dangerous, to legislate human nature attempting to frustrate the normal desires of human beings. And too often “follow the money” is the only way to interpret such legislation.

Well, the suffragettes marched until women got the vote. Women marched for abortion until they won that battle. But where are the women marching for the rights of women to be prostitutes? Taken within the context of religion and politics, it is admittedly a tad touchy of a subject and I don’t expect many to be jumping on the bandwagon. Nevertheless, wherever men gather they talk about women, and wherever women gather they talk about men; and the topic is sex. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could talk about the subject of prostitution in a civilized manner devoid of all the religion and politics? “Deep down, wouldn’t you be for vice too … given the chance?”

It isn’t just the suffering of a child that causes us to cry out to God; it is the natural and normal anguished cry of most people brought to the extremes of life and death. But quite understandably most people do not want to come across to others as kooks. While there seems no end of attention getting devices and some seem to go to extraordinary lengths to embarrass themselves in the process, nevertheless most of us want to appear temperate and not given to extremes. And if you have spent much time in bars you quickly learn not to discuss politics, religion, or the Civil War.

And, among those considering themselves “literary,” you do not want to appear a kook or to be looking for a fight by picking on great writers; you simply do not cross swords with the literati that have pronounced ex cathedra from the Halls of Ivy their interpretations of the writers of the “holy books” of academia. Sinclair Lewis is a case in point; a Nobel winning writer and author with unimpeachable credentials, held in near veneration by many. But all this did not remove Lewis from a need to believe.

It was an amusing literary device by Sinclair Lewis, having Elmer Gantry champion the “old time religion.” And Burt Lancaster certainly played the role well in the film. But to have Elmer, a very large intimidating man with booming voice, ready fists and always looking for a scrap and confronting those that would disparage Jesus and the Bible, ready to knock their block off, this was where Lewis intended to get in his innings against the hypocrites he so very much despised.

Though Elmer was made the foil of Lewis, a fighting, drinking, cussing, womanizing preacher of the Gospel, the troubling thing in the novel was Lewis’ own struggle to find something to believe in, much as we find in all great writers like Hawthorne and others. There is just something about the whole subject of good vs. evil the great thinkers and writers seek to find answers to, and in the process often attempt to exorcise their own demons of unbelief. Moby Dick is a good example, an exercise in Melville’s futile often repetitious and obfuscatory attempt to put a face to the very evil he was trying to describe. But in the end the demon remained, and remained unnamed, undiscovered, unexposed, and un-exorcised. And in Hawthorne’s own view, Melville was struggling for something to believe in.

Oftentimes some of us find ourselves drawn to reading between the lines of a book like Elmer Gantry, and recall that father in the New Testament crying out to Jesus “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” In the case of Lewis, he cannot seem to help making Elmer something less than the thoroughgoing scoundrel and hypocrite he intended as his foil to confront hypocrisy. There is too much good about Elmer despite his hypocrisy that just barely removes him from what Lewis evidently wanted him to be, though Lewis did point out Elmer would have made a good senator.

But Lewis also evidently wanted to believe there was something good, something worthy of believing about Jesus and the Bible, even about Elmer and Sharon while at the same time in his own struggle with intellectual schizophrenia attempting to confront the hypocrisy in religion. The result of this struggle is what I consider the weakest part of the novel when Lewis has one character confronting Elmer with the words “Mr. Gantry; why don’t you believe in God?” while it is quite evident Elmer does in fact believe in God by Lewis’s own description of Elmer. That Lewis attempts to make Elmer’s belief in God a twisted and distorted one; it just doesn’t quite come off as either atheism or agnosticism, but rather a kind of childish belief much in the manner of a deeply held superstition. But there are many superstitions associated with religion which do not necessarily disqualify an actual belief in God.

Lewis tries to make Frank Shallard a saint, and much like the Scopes’ Trial standing up for scientific integrity only to be nearly horsewhipped to death by rednecks that might not be “very good Christians” but by god they were going to defend the old time religion! But not even Frank escapes the struggle Lewis is having trying to find something good, something to believe in the very thing he is trying to attack. The result is that Frank comes off a relatively minor and hollow figure compared with Elmer. Frank is not quite human, but Elmer is very much so with all the weakness and failures common to most of us.

Even when Lewis has the wife of the minister silently questioning to herself the virgin birth, this does not come across realistically. And for a master like Lewis to fail in this as in other parts of the novel speaks volumes about the struggle Lewis was having himself in matters of belief.

But Mark Schorer, as with Lewis’ friend Mencken understood Lewis was fighting demons, among them the demon of alcoholism. And some weaknesses found in Elmer Gantry as with some of Lewis’ other works are to be understood in this context. What many commentators have failed to address adequately is the demon of unbelief with which Lewis was struggling, a demon that comes through clearly in this particular novel, one reminiscent not only of that father in the New Testament but the cry of Joshua to the people  “choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. And the people answered and said, God forbid that we should forsake the LORD, to serve other gods;”

It may be that there are simply good people and bad people; but there may be children of God and children of the Devil as the Scripture has it, not a difference in degree but a difference in kind. Whichever, good people struggle with a conscience, they struggle with their beliefs; and the best of these good people struggle to separate what they know from what they believe.

Good people will not only question the beliefs of others, they will question their own. Some are gifted, even tormented in pursuing their own doubts, struggling to find something in which to believe, something to which they can in good conscience own allegiance and like Luther say “Here I stand!” But for many good people it remains an ongoing struggle, and the great writers like Lewis give a voice to this struggle. That in many cases even good people can come off like Elmer is not surprising. What would be surprising is if those like Elmer Gantry should not find a place in either the churches or politics. The ultimate genius of Lewis was in finding a place for those like Elmer in both, and acknowledging this as a very real part of the human condition, not so much as to be condemned in many cases but to be understood as a part of dealing with reality.

It is when beliefs become dogma, and taught as such, forced upon others that we get to the crux of the matter separating people according to ideologies whether religious or political. Most of us like Lewis struggle with our beliefs and unbelief’s, trying to find something to hold on to in the midst of the oftentimes seeming lunacy of life, some anchor of the soul, something that will give us comfort and hope. To which I say, by all means believe what you will so long as you do not try to force your belief on me. Give a voice to both your beliefs and unbelief’s by all means, but be civilized about it and at least be honest enough to admit to their being only beliefs and unbelief’s.

Lewis was not sure whether Elmer was the character to be admired or despised. The result was a kind of dichotomy, very much like the condition most of us find ourselves facing. Sinner or Saint? To be one to the exclusion of the other simply isn’t human; and this was something Lewis both understood and attempted to portray in the novel. That it comes across confused in many places is no ill reflection on a master writer like Lewis, but quite the contrary.

Life is confusing at best, and even among the best of people, the best of writers attempting to bring order out of the confusion is the ongoing process of living. The best of writers recognize “the human heart in conflict with itself” is not only the thing that drives those like Faulkner, Steinbeck, Lewis and others, but is itself the reason the best of good people try so hard to separate what they believe from what they know. That this often results in confusion, the kind of confusion we find so well illustrated in Elmer Gantry, comes, as they say, “with the territory.” And we should be grateful to those like Lewis who are gifted in sharing their own confusion of exploration into the search for meaning, for something to believe in and trying to make sense of the resulting confusion.

Many of you know of the Doomsday Clock. It has just been moved to five minutes before midnight, the projected end of civilization due to nuclear arms threat and climate change. Long the stuff of science fiction, the present threats are real enough now to warrant the closest attention of world leaders. But when you consider it is world leaders that have led to these threats because of their lust for power and wealth there isn’t much room for optimism.

With the resident cat in my lap purring away while warming her paws and pelt, as I watched the quail and a particularly frisky large beautiful gray tree squirrel in my yard this morning, it was difficult for me to turn my attention away from this kind of serenity to the issues plaguing America and the rest of the world. However, I write by compulsion whether of the muses or other and seem to have no particular will of my own when I sit down to this keyboard each morning; and whether of angel or demon the things that have my attention demand being addressed.

Pragmatically, it seems actions by world leaders provoking the end of civilization is the work of lunatics, not rational human beings. But history is replete with mad leaders and this cannot be discounted, especially when mad tyrants and despots, including individual Muslim fanatics dedicated to the destruction of civilization for their “holy purpose,” have nuclear weapons at their disposal.

However, America would seem to be led of mad men and women, an instance being the refusal to secure our borders for the sole purpose of further enriching the wealthy. What is this but inviting nuclear terrorism upon America, an obvious act of lunacy encouraged by the lust for power and profits on the part of our leaders? And here are organizations like the ACLU and La Raza lending themselves to this madness. But even the most well-intended organizations too often find themselves doing the Devil’s work while believing they serve God, too often a small drop of poison turning the whole deadly because even the Devil may do good when it suits his ultimate purpose of the greater resulting evil.

Yes, I do believe there is such a thing as a “spirit of wickedness” pervading throughout history, that the earth is Satan’s domain. Though metaphysical in the extreme, it is one thing that makes sense of the otherwise lunatic actions of so many throughout the history of humankind and continuing even now in the face of that Doomsday Clock ticking away.

“If I can’t have you, no one else will!” Then the mad man murders the object of his grotesquely twisted desire. This from Scripture would seem to be the thinking of Satan leading the world in the path of destruction. But whether the result of consummate malevolent evil embodied in a creature like Satan or not, neither can this be discounted among those whose madness is the result of their greed and avarice, their lust for power and profits. No amount of science, no psychiatrists can explain the kind of madness that often results from the seed of power being planted in some people, nor the kind of evil that some do in efforts to gain power.

Good people do not want power and authority over others. But this is the Devil’s offer, and he has many willing takers. Consider the purpose of those wanting power and authority over others; it may insinuate itself with the most altruistic of motives, the person convincing themselves and others the only reason for seeking political office is to do good. But since it takes money to get elected and stay elected the Devil, by whatever definition, has the eventual say in the matter, the power of the purse to evil ends. And who looking at those in our government can with a good conscience say these are representatives of the good?

We read the story of Luther casting his inkwell at the Devil. Apocryphal or not I suppose if anyone qualified for the Devil’s personal attention it would be someone like Luther. And the many representations of angels and demons among all cultures from the most ancient of times lends credence to there having to be a legitimate and real source of such things beyond simply the imagination of ancient peoples. The making of various representations of the gods and goddesses, the idols of Scripture and other accounts must, I believe, have some substance in facts, ever as much as believing there must be some degree of facts supporting the various mythologies of the various cultures and civilizations of antiquity and even continuing to this present time.

The various beliefs of people of whatever cultures having to do with the supernatural are not always amenable to simple dismissal by those considering themselves too “scientific” in their thinking. Take the following from the New Testament which many Christians believe:

2 Thessalonians.2: [1] Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, [2] That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. [3] Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; [4] Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. [5] Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? [6] And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. [7] For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. [8] And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: [9] Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, [10] And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. [11] And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: [12] That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Whether you believe in the Rapture and the ultimate judgment of God visited upon the wicked or not, the fact remains that Doomsday Clock is ticking due to the seeming lunacy of world leaders, the kind of lunacy that might be explained by a creature like Satan and his servants. I am not burning candles or saying prayers, I do not take part in séances or have a Ouija Board or crystal ball, I do not hear things going bump in the night, and though I talk to God and departed loved ones and friends I hear no audible response, I see no apparitions. But neither do I discount out of hand the accounts of others including the accounts of the ancients that such things might well be real in some instances. There is simply too much unknown to science, to me, to not give some heed to such things. “That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” is something I want to believe. Somehow, someway there must be some means of ultimate justice prevailing, otherwise eat, drink, and be merry would be the most sensible thing for all of us.

Few would deny there is in fact a “mystery of iniquity,” a “something” driving world leaders on a path of destruction accounting for that Doomsday Clock existing. And I offer for your consideration a creature like Satan explaining what would otherwise be nothing but lunatics in charge throughout the world.

Certainly charlatans abound, those jumping on what I have long called the “prophecy bandwagon.” They appear silly in pulpits and on TV and we rightly dismiss these kinds of people, and most certainly Jesus cautioned against the pretenders “wearing soft clothing and living in kings’ palaces.” Nevertheless, even the most sober-minded cannot dismiss the threats abounding worldwide that appear to give legitimacy to those cautionary words in Thessalonians. And when I am forced to consider, as I am, whether humankind is set on a path to its own destruction of accident or design, as with the universe and life itself I choose to believe there is design to the whole. And I am not willing to dismiss the stories of antiquity, that there may be some basis in fact to the various myths and fables resulting from certain knowledge long lost to us “moderns.”

It has become a too familiar and ugly story. Two punks using a shotgun shoot and kill a man and woman here in Kern County because the couple “disrespected” the two punks. Given the environment where such barbaric murders occur, where punks like these are gang members and on this basis alone believe it should command respect from others reminds me of the evil Bob Ewell in To Kill A Mockingbird. He was an ignorant drunkard, a parasite living on the dole and using the money for booze instead of taking care of his children, but he had one thing going for him that he believed gave him the right to respect: He was a Caucasian! No matter what his shortcomings, no matter the dreadful living conditions and his sloth and ignorant, profane drunkenness, by god he was white! And by god he demanded respect for that!

Ewell was white trash, and he knew he was white trash. He could never hold his head up among decent Caucasian citizens like Atticus Finch. He could threaten and bully, but he knew he was white trash. Ah, but by god he was white! And because of this accident of birth he believed this made him superior to Negroes, and by god they at least had better show him his “due” deference and respect because by god he was white and they had damned well better show him deference and respect on this basis alone or else!

The civilized mind cringes and recoils at this kind of attitude of the evil Ewell; but it is the same attitude of those like the two punks that gunned down that couple, and wherever gangs of hoodlums, punks have no other claim to “respect” but on this basis alone they will use their guns to exact vengeance on those that do not bow and scrape to them.

It seems all my life I have been witness to the kind of bullying that demands deference on the basis of things like that of the ignorant Bob Ewell’s bigotry and the equally ignorant and bigoted punks with guns. I’ve experienced having my own life threatened by those like Ewell and the punks with guns whatever their ethnicity. There have been times when I have had to meet such threatening punks with my own gun in hand, so I understand full well the mentality of those like Ewell and the punks that have no other claim to “respect” than the color of their skin or their being able to gun down those that do not show them “respect.”

But gentle reader, so it has been throughout all of human history; and even now we live with bullies in the White House, Congress, and Supreme Court that cannot but remind me of Michael Corleone telling Kay she was being naïve not to realize politicians were no different than those like his father, that the “business” of politicians was akin to the “business” his father and he were in. As Hyman Roth was to tell Michael, “This is the business we chose, this is the business we are in.” And so it has been with politics throughout human history where politicians choose the “business” they are in.

There is no real difference between organized crime and a government given to organized tyranny and robbery through taxation without representation, stealing and extorting money from We the People, taking away people’s homes when they cannot pay taxes, condemning private property to give it to others for profit, encouraging the invasion of illegal aliens for slave labor, passing laws that punish the poor and further enrich the wealthy and so much more; the difference is only a matter of degree at best, but not a difference of kind as Michael Corleone realized and tried to point out to Kay.

Ah, but politicians demand “respect,” they demand what they believe to be their due deference by we the Great Unwashed or by god they will make us pay for this lack of respect! It is enough to make honest people vomit, this use of the term “honorable” used by politicians of each other! What is the basis of such “honor” but that of the same kind we see in the film among the Mafioso’s. And when one of these self-righteously proclaims dealing drugs must be kept away from the schools and kept among the “coloreds” because “they are only animals anyway” don’t you hear the echo of the same sentiment from those in our government refusing to secure our borders, that are dedicated to making criminals of all Americans, treating We the People as nothing but animals, the sheep to be sheared to benefit only the wealthy and those in power?

What I have personally witnessed and experienced of gangs from childhood on, my adult tenure in Watts, East San Jose and elsewhere is that a gang gives barbarians a sense of superiority through power, not on the basis of any self worth. To be able to disdain all laws of a civilized society, to bully the poor and defenseless by using guns against the innocent and those unable or unprepared to defend themselves is the ignoble “badge” of the bully. But what is this but a description of bullying politicians that use elected office as a license to steal from and plunder law abiding citizens? And We the People seem every bit as defenseless in the face of such bullies as we would be facing any gang members guns in hand.

As a lifelong supporter of our Second Amendment and the NRA I know from experience the importance of the armed, law abiding citizen. And not being naïve like Kay I know We the People have more to fear from the organized tyranny and robbery of those with the power to tax and destroy, the power to pass punitive legislation against ordinary American citizens than from organized crime. And while entire cities are being held prisoner to street gangs demanding “respect” our entire nation is being held prisoner to a government that is no less corrupt demanding “respect.”

Certainly those in government are educated, they wear the apparel of civilized persons and speak correct English, and unlike the ignorant, bigoted Ewell and his kin of whatever color know and observe the proprieties at dinner and cocktail parties. But these savages, as barbaric in their own way as any illiterate and ignorant gang member differ only in ignoring the laws with impunity, without any accountability by not taking a gun in their hands demanding our money and respect. They let others like lawyers and various police agencies do the dirty work for them.

Neither Los Angeles, Miami, nor Bakersfield can survive the tyranny of gangs taking over entire neighborhoods and cities. But a civilized America cannot long endure being bullied by tyrants of whatever stripe, whether the gangs in our cities or the gangs in our government. Nor can a world long endure such tyrannical bullies.

“They should have stopped Hitler at Munich.” That is the hindsight refrain. Certainly the world is held hostage to the “musket worshippers” whether those of Iran, North Korea or elsewhere. And it is going to take force to face down the bullies, the musket worshippers. But here in America we are going to have to do better than the present Caesar and his legions if there is to be any hope for a satisfactory solution, a leadership that puts the interests of America and Americans before their own or any others. And it is going to take a leadership that does not mimic The Godfather and his Mafia. Otherwise, we can expect an increase in the barbarians with guns in their hands demanding “respect” because like Michael Corleone they realize there is no difference between his father’s “business” and that of our government.

Just to consider the human and material costs of the present ongoing wars and be told there is no money for the problems here in America, the problems of infrastructure, health, securing our borders, jobs and housing is the voice of lunatics! But to allow greed and avarice to do their usual dirty work in our government is not only bad for “business,” but with America facing so many threats from so many quarters it is sheer lunacy threatening our very existence as a nation!

Late in his life grandad became a writer. He lacked formal education, having left off schooling after the third grade in order to help support the needs of family and couldn’t spell his way through a book of cigarette papers, but during the last few years of his life he bent his efforts to putting some of his thoughts of a long life into written expression. Using an old manual typewriter and the two-finger method, he laboriously wrote out letters to me that I still have and treasure. He also made a few audio tapes, and these are a treasury of him continuing to speak to me.

Most of us who write do so for the same reason as that of my grandfather, we not only want to give our thoughts expression we want to keep something of us alive that will continue after we depart this life. Much of such writing is to loved ones and friends, but some of this like that of the writing of books has much to do with both conveying a message and seeking a kind of immortality. I am presently in the process of publishing a nine volume set of my own writing; not with the thought of any financial gain but my own attempt at the kind of immortality such a legacy represents; the very same motive that drove grandad to get that old typewriter and start writing those letters.

We all want something of ourselves to remain when we die, and for those driven to written expression of their thoughts this is our personal working out of “Intimations of Immortality.” While these letters by grandad were an expression of his love and concern for me personally, there was also the desire they would provide me with the wisdom of his lifetime, an expression of his thoughts he wanted to be much more than just letters to his grandson, but also a kind of legacy that would keep him alive and be of value to me long after he passed away.

Much of hammered stone monuments is a seeking for immortality, stone being representative of such a thing to the ancients, to those like Michelangelo and others and continuing to this very day. The purpose of the pyramids and the Sphinx, ancient monoliths of various kinds continues to be debated, but the expression “chiseled in stone” still has relevance to persons wanting to preserve a kind of immortality ever as much as the ancient Egyptians and others. And for many a “headstone” is essential to their grave.

Beyond stone monuments for some a simple “Letter to the Editor” where we see our thoughts and name in print is of a kind with this longing for recognition, to say to others “Hey! Here I am! I’m alive and want you to know I’m alive, I am somebody!” all of this a kind of seeking for purpose beyond our mere mortal presence on earth, a kind of seeking for immortality, that after we die our words will somehow still remain “graved in stone” declaring “I still live!”

Whoever or whatever accounts for the universe and life on earth we are all born into metaphysical isolation, the kind of isolation that no amount of society can overcome. It may for a time be held in abeyance, but invariably we are left alone with our thoughts, those things that define what we are when no one else is around and not a one of us can see things through the eyes of another. And because of this metaphysical isolation the building of monuments, the arts or the writing that is done all such things the attempts to give expression to the longings and seeking for immortality, to say “I am alive, and I will continue to live after I depart this mortal body!”

However, not even the wealthiest can prevent the inevitable end, and though their artifacts like that of Citizen Kane may remain, who going through all the bric-a-brac of a lifetime will be able to appreciate the significance of some treasured “Rosebud” once held dear to the departed? And today we still wonder at the purpose of the pyramids and the Sphinx, the purpose of Stonehenge and so much more. But whatever the purpose of the ancients in their efforts, even in an age of so much scientific achievement there remains the need of the individual for expression that will remove somewhat the metaphysical isolation we all suffer and for long time written expression has served that purpose.

The tragic loss of that library in Alexandria; what books it might have contained that would explain the pyramids and the Sphinx, what stories of lost cities like Atlantis, of scientific achievements now lost to us. But notwithstanding this tragic loss, where now the hopes and dreams of ancient architects and builders, where is their purpose now to be proclaimed in the land of the living? All lost; but a book may have preserved these things; a book may have been the answer to their struggles for immortality.

Certainly the hopes of many have been tied to their offspring, that the family will continue and the family name not be lost, this a kind of immortality. But the well written expression of the soul, the finely crafted thoughts into words, this has become the most sought after immortality of the individual. And while such a seeking for this kind of immortality may be corrupted into a Mein Kampf, there are those books like Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird to balance it out, the kinds of books by which Thoreau believed humankind might scale heaven at last, his own idea of immortality even as he gave vent to this hope and longing by his own written expression.

Few would deny that writing is the highest achievement of humankind, that by this the knowledge of one generation could finally be passed on to succeeding generations thereby enabling our species to overcome the obstacles of previous ancient people, enabling the advance of civilization and the flowering of the arts and sciences. And despite all the efforts to elevate trash to the status of “literature,” great writing remains the signature and domain of the truly literate.

It is all too true that eloquence before an audience too often becomes mere rhetoric in the study. The written word will invariably betray pretenders. I have written about the importance of love letters for example, a seemingly lost art to this generation that is no longer taught how to write, a generation that has not been taught due reverence for our rich heritage of literature that once taught previous generations the great ideas of great writers, of how to express their own ideas in such a fashion as to communicate both comprehensibly and memorably to others.

But for some of us so well favored by those like my grandfather, we have a treasure in those written thoughts, no matter the lack of the mechanical skills of spelling and grammar, to convey the very immortality of loved ones and friends now departed. No amount of scientific achievement, no amount of computer skills or whatever will take the place of those words on paper or chiseled in stone by the ancients. And whether of accident or design written expression once made available this became the means of our species seeking and giving voice to our thoughts and longings for immortality.

In many cases a picture is worth a thousand words. But the ancients left many “pictures” about which we can only now guess. They left many monuments about which we can only now guess as to their purpose. But the written word still reigns supreme.

While I am as appreciative as any others of the great art by masters, I want to know the person responsible for such masterpieces. It isn’t enough for me to admire Rembrandt’s work; I want to know Rembrandt. I want to read his book; I want to know his own thoughts. The pretentious may tell me the master can be known by his work, but unless I can know the person through his letters, through his written expression I don’t really know him at all. Such has been, and still is the “power of the pen.” A commemorative statue, to have only heard about those like Socrates and Jesus is not enough; I want to know the men, and though transcribed by others, though an amanuensis is the intermediary it is through the written word they still live and have influence, that their own claims to immortality continue even as in my grandfather’s letters to me.

America is declining into a barbarism of the lack of education for many millions. While as a nation we lay claim to many marvels of scientific achievement, the lack of literary knowledge and the lack of writing skills declare the lowering level of our civilization. I treasure these letters by grandad, but he would be among the first to tell you how fervently he wished he could have mastered the skills by which his letters would have been much more than letters to his grandson, but would have been monuments to the hard earned wisdom of a long life, monuments to his own immortality.

A love letter, a personal note from a friend, these are treasures no matter what the lack of writing skills. But great books and great essays expressing the noblest thoughts of the noblest persons these are the monuments of civilization, the monuments to our immortality as a species far surpassing any monuments of stone or other. While reaching for the stars pictures, diagrams and the language of mathematics are essential; but to communicate what we are as a species, to communicate our very best and most honorable attributes it will be our books that will declare this and make us intelligible to others.

One thing I have come to depend upon is Turner Classic Movies, and I subscribe to the monthly guide rather than going online for the programming. I like to show my support this way and receive that booklet each month so I can hold it in my hands and go through all the tidbits of information like Robert Osborne’s column as well as anticipating what is going to be offered for the month.

While often taking Hollywood to task for its manifold failures, even disservice to America in too many instances I am ever mindful of the genuine contribution films have made in serving the public. The films of the early 30s offered relief from the desperation following the depression, they were of enormous benefit to us during WWII, and the great musicals were the finest work of America’s poets. But it defies imagination to consider the enormous debt we owe Shakespeare and all he meant to the stage as well as literature.

If the theater is in the blood of some this was certainly true of my grandparents and mother. My maternal grandparents performed in a traveling Vaudevillian circus, grandad did a brief stint in silent film, and mom broke her leg, literally, falling off a stage while dancing in a chorus line. When it came to theatrical it occurred to me years ago that my grandparents’ small church in Little Oklahoma allowed them an outlet for this need to continue performing for an audience; and while there was never any doubt my grandparents loved the Lord and were serving him the best way they knew how neither was there ever any doubt that the pulpit allowed grandad especially to find expression for his many gifts as a story-teller and performer.

No doubt it was in my genes to follow in the family tradition, not just in playing music and singing for audiences, but in the years I spent as a classroom teacher. The most successful teachers have the gift of being able to perform as you would expect on any stage.

Beyond the proper emphasis of preaching the Gospel, our small church was the means of satisfying the social needs as well of our small community of Dust Bowl folks. The spirited singing of those great old Pentecostal hymns to the accompaniment of my grandmother’s piano, the dynamic preaching of grandad, testimony time, prayer requests, the altar call at the end of the service, all these things were in a very real sense “theater.”

But throughout the Bible, both Old and New Testaments you will find just such theater, you will find the gifted performers like the prophets and evangelists holding forth before their audiences. Jesus captivated audiences by his gift of story-telling, and like the best of teachers he could hold the attention of his “pupils” while teaching the lesson.

The great prophets and preachers have been consummate actors, not in the pejorative sense of “hypocrite,” but in the best sense of the earliest poets, much like the holy men of my Cherokee ancestors who knew how to tell a story so the lesson would not be forgotten. Such was the work of the earliest poets, our earliest “historians.”

With the age of film story-telling took on a more memorable form, now the actors could reach audiences in numbers not possible in earlier times, and in a media format that had the advantage of moving pictures emphasizing the gifts and skills of the performers, the story-tellers of modern times, in many cases making books come alive in a way not possible with only the written words.

However, the Great White Way of Damon Runyon and others has not been threatened, and Broadway continues to beckon and pronounce between what is good theater and what is not, who is a gifted performer and who is not. As to the churches, what would they be without performers, those preachers able to captivate their audiences, their congregations? What are the great cathedrals with all their artistic appointments but invitations to the imagination conveying the aura of great theater? “The Godfather” holds a rightfully high place in the best of films made, but the hypocrisy notwithstanding what would it be without the theater of the Roman Church to give its imprimatur of authenticity and emphasis to the film?

Even in Protestantism there are found in some all the appointments of a Broadway play, of theater complete with actors in flowing robes and others costumed accordingly. But few are the Richard Burtons filling pulpits; and in too many cases all the trappings of the theater are there without the soul. Too often do those seen on TV especially seem more dedicated to the theatrical than the message, and lacking gifted actors with a soul for the story in too many cases such come off as poor theater as a consequence.

As I have pointed out in some other of my writing the real soul of America is to be found in its rural churches scattered throughout our nation, in those small congregations of simple folks of simple beliefs led of faithful shepherds not seeking the limelight. But even among the most humble of shepherds the requirement of “theater” remains a prerequisite of their holy office even as it was of my grandfather. And as some of you know, the best of performers easily overcome the deficiencies of lacking the “sets” of Broadway or Hollywood productions. Our small church in Little Oklahoma lacked many of the things like “proper” pews for the congregation. In the beginning the structure had a dirt floor and was wrapped in tarpaper, but with grandad’s preaching and my grandmother’s piano playing we had all that was required of good theater, theater with a soul.

But as with all theater, as with all story-telling worthy of being called such the storyline is that of good vs. evil. Now, if you are given a choice of watching The Godfather and Silence of the Lambs, or Gigi and My Fair Lady which would you choose? Well, it depends, doesn’t it. To be sure, there is this thing of what you are in the mood for, but there is no denying people find an attraction to evil, and we will always slow down to see a wreck on the highway.

However, given so much violence filling the world, with so many dangers threatening our nation and the rest of the world, don’t you kind of wish we could simply leave off all the dark messages, real as they are, and choose those things that lift our spirits and give us hope. This is where the best of theater found in the rural churches of America comes into its own.

This is not an attempt to minimize the importance of the great cathedrals where the best of the arts at one time flourished and gave such impetus to Western Civilization, to the inspiring influence of these grand palaces, these grand theaters. But even though I have experienced some of the great cathedrals of both Romanism and Protestantism, and some of the mega-churches, though some of you probably attend such places of worship there remains with me the memories of those small “theaters” like that of my grandparents. Here was community in the best sense of the word, here was theater in the best sense of the word. And it is something so far off Broadway it gets little in the way of reviews. But I feel compelled to continue giving it the reviews it both needs and deserves, though it hardly needs saying that it takes good people to make good churches, to make them good theater, the kind where all are included in fulfilling Shakespeare’s “The play’s the thing” where it is the sincerity of the players that catch the attention of the King, and that kind of sincerity cannot be “acted.”

The head of one of Hollywood’s largest theatrical agencies is reported to have told someone once he needed have a person only say the lines “I believe in God” and “I love you” to determine if they had real talent. It continues to perplex me so many seem to believe God is any easier taken in by those without talent than this man, that so many seem to believe anything less than a sincere heart can make the play the real thing.

Seeing the Bakersfield Californian is asking for some stories from us local folks here is one I am going to borrow from my novel “Donnie and Jean, an angel’s story” written about two children growing up in Bakersfield during the WWII era.

When I was a boy, there was no TV with so-called “children’s programming” where so much of sex and violence is drummed into the minds of children on a daily basis. Children didn’t live under the threat of a nuclear holocaust, we trusted our leaders and children had heroes back then to depend upon to save the day, those like the Lone Ranger, the Phantom, Superman, and we had our churches where faith in God and America were a part of childhood instruction and growing up. In those days gone by many were the simple pleasures of childhood, things like shooting marbles, building balsa and tissue model airplanes, exchanging comic books with friends, boys played shoot ‘em up games with cap guns and girls played with dolls. It was a simple order of things, the way things were supposed to be.

But in the process of childhood, the distinguishing physical characteristics defining the roles of girls and boys is also the way things are supposed to be just as Sam Clemens and Harper Lee so well described them. And no matter the era or the passing of time girls and boys eventually have to confront the things that make them what they are in respect to the opposite sex.

This most fascinating of subjects reminds me of a neighbor girl, Becky Williams. I remember meeting her when I was only about seven and she must have been about the same age. What happened with Becky came about because of comic books. While I enjoyed comic books, I loved reading the National Geographic. Our grandparents had a wonderful collection of them, many quite old. They had beautifully engraved covers, always with a striking picture on the front. They were in neat rows in display bookcases, their bright and colorful yellow spines showing proudly. The cases were those beautiful ones that had glass doors you lifted up and slid back into the case to get to the books.

I would lie on the floor of the parlor and pour over the articles, the pictures, and even some of the advertisements. The Parker Fountain Pen and Packard ads with gold highlights were especially attractive, reflecting in the soft glow of coal oil lamps or dim electric lights. And grandma was always there in her rocking chair with a book to keep me company.

There were wonderful worlds of adventure in the Geographic’s and I never tired of traveling to them in imagination. And there were fascinating things in science and astronomy to further fire my imagination and curiosity about so many things. Strange animals, reptiles, fish, and insects of all manners were pictured and described, and fascinating black men and women in Africa that wore hardly any clothes and lived where the adventures of Tarzan, and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle took place. I would become absorbed in the stories of safaris going into unexplored jungles; discovering wonders of that Dark Continent and I wished I could go with these intrepid and brave adventurers.

And there was the magnificent set of the World Encyclopedia to which I had constant resource. I never tired of reading in this set of large, handsomely bound books; so much to answer questions and excite my curiosity and imagination. My readings in science were greatly enhanced by having a microscope, magnifying glass, and chemistry set. These were birthday and Christmas presents and I made full use of them. I spent hours collecting various specimens, insects and vegetation, preparing slides and peering through magnifying glass or microscope at the wonders of God’s intricate creation.

There was an abundance of insects around our place. The iridescent bottle flies with their beautiful colors of green, yellow, and red, the black and white striped beetles and horseflies; spiders of all kinds were fascinating. The small, armored, gray rolypolies (some people called them sow bugs. But I liked that name rolypoly) were abundant as well. Ronnie and I enjoyed the way the little creatures would roll themselves into a tight, protected ball like miniature armadillos when touched. Then a slight flick of the finger would send them scooting like a tiny, gray marble.

And there was a natural fascination as well with black widows identified by their shining black and bulbous bodies and their iridescent red hourglass designed to strike terror in both children and adults. We were warned repeatedly of these and the violin, or brown recluse, spider. Before grandad installed indoor plumbing, Ronnie and I learned early on to lift the hinged seat of the privy and take a stick to discomfit and clear any resident arachnids and cobwebs, and then slam it down as an extra measure of precaution. And there was the bag of powdered lye inside as well. When you did your business, you had to throw in a scoop of this to discourage flies, keep down the maggot population and disinfect.

If anything could explode, had a venomous bite or was dangerous in any way, it had an automatic attraction and fascination to young minds. I inadvertently discovered that if you had a sheet of single shot caps in the back pocket of your overalls and slid on the floor, the caps would ignite from friction. Lost a good pair of overalls that way.

A small, fresh leaf would disclose movement of liquid through its veins under my microscope. Plants were, indeed, living things. Since we had an abundance of birds and fowl, feathers of all kinds went under the microscope as well. I imagined myself exploring jungles and collecting wonderful and exotic creatures, insects and plants, just like those men and women in the Geographic articles.

When the war was on, I would dream of discovering miraculous properties of materials with my chemistry set, things that I just knew would help win the war. Explosives held a particular fascination for me. I had very quickly progressed beyond juvenile things like fingerprint powder, invisible ink, and material that would slowly burn when applied to toilet paper and ignited. Or in a flash like gunpowder; like cologne, or cigarette lighter fluid.

Of course, some of this knowledge and experimentation had to be gained and done rather surreptitiously. I was usually aware of what would have been approved or not if I asked questions or for help about certain things. So I usually tried to avoid incriminating questions or asking for help that was bound to provoke a negative response by the surrounding adults. And such questions I already knew the answer to I didn’t have to ask.

But back to Becky.

One evening while I was lying on the floor in the parlor reading there was a knock at the door, and when I went to see who it was it was Becky. I had loaned her a couple of my comic books earlier that day. She handed me the comics and said, “Thank you, Donnie.” Then she had kissed me quickly on the cheek and ran off into the night.

I stood there dumbfounded, not knowing what to make of such bizarre behavior! But I tried to avoid Becky from then on. Girls. Huh. Strange creatures. It didn’t occur to me to resort to my microscope and chemistry set to find an answer to such incomprehensible workings of the female mind.

It took some time before that world of intrigue distinguishing between girls and boys began to make its demands on my attention. There were still things before me like playing Post Office and Spin the bottle, and like Tom Sawyer to begin the time honored ritual of trying to impress girls. But you know folks, way back then there was the mystery and intrigue of romance to the process, something in far too many cases being denied to girls and boys today.

It isn’t likely any of you here in my native Kern County had to get up this morning, kindle and light your woodstove, heat a kettle of water, go outside and use the hot water to free the frozen hand pump on your well so as to be sure you would have fresh water throughout the rest of the day. However, this was the routine during this kind of freezing cold weather when I was a boy living on the mining claim here in the Kern River Valley.

A good backlog in the fireplace to keep a fire going through the night was necessary to keep the temps from falling below freezing inside the cabin; otherwise the water we kept for morning use would be frozen. But despite the precaution there were times when this would happen.

Having lived the “pioneer” lifestyle I have no illusions about the hardships and I am very grateful I can now turn on a tap inside my little cottage for water, but how very fragile our lives become when dependent on the modern amenities like electricity; and unlike that shallow hand-dug well on the mining claim should I lose power here there would be no water from this deep well requiring an electric pump. But at that, location would spare me the catastrophe such a thing would be to entire cities like Los Angeles. Los Angeles without power and water! Doesn’t take much imagination to consider the kind of nightmare that would be.

The Katrina disaster should have alerted our government to the dimensions of suffering when such things occur. But I fear all it did was alert us ordinary Americans to how ill-prepared our leadership is to react to any disaster occurring where unlike New York there isn’t the potential loss of political power among the elite. It would be bitterly trite as some have already done to compare what the response would have been had Katrina hit San Francisco.

So many are suffering now in various parts of the country because of ice storms and having to make do to sustain their lives without power. But unless you are well prepared for such an eventuality it can be deadly. And multiplied millions of Americans are simply not prepared for such a thing. I believe our enemies know this, and the money already spent on Caesar Bush’s wars, the money going into the pockets of the wealthy thorough the wars ongoing and the slave labor of illegal aliens subsidized by taxpayers should be spent on America’s infrastructure and preparing for the disasters which are assuredly to come.

Given the dimensions of potential disasters facing America, one can only wonder at the seeming lunacy of a White House and a Congress behaving like the sky will never fall. But it has before, and it will again whether by the design of men or nature.

Many times I have written about the WWII era within the context of “you had to be there.” It is understandable that young people would watch the Hollywood films of the 30s and 40s, even the 50s and think America could never have been a nation like that portrayed in these old films. Were there really Americans living back then so seemingly altruistic and naïve as they seem to be in many of these films? Having lived it the answer for me is a simple yes; and in many ways Hollywood preserved a far more accurate history of those times than textbooks used in the schools today.

As a classroom teacher and even in the colleges and universities I would find myself correcting someone’s false ideas about things like the Dust Bowl migration, what led to those internment camps and the dropping of those atomic bombs on Japan and the legitimate justification for these things, about things such as proper manners, speech, and dress being enforced in the schools, it is a long list of historical misperceptions younger people today have about the “old days” that I continue to confront as the America I once knew recedes ever further from the historical memory of America. And when my generation has finally died off, there will no longer be any to tell the story of that America, and because of the collective revisionist “history” being taught in the universities and their product schools only the old books and films will remain, and in most cases will be read and viewed as too simplistic, altruistic and naïve to have ever been true of Americans living at the time.

Many people today may realize education has failed in America without really knowing why. But educated people of my generation can tell you why; just as those like me that lived the events of WWII can tell you why Americans pulled together and did the things essential to winning that war. But “armchair historians” that were not called upon to make the sacrifices to win that war cannot be trusted to tell the actual story.

No one knows better than I do how cold-blooded it sounded when I wrote that Caesar Bush betrayed America by not sending those cruise missiles on Kabul and Baghdad the very evening of 9/11. I didn’t include Tehran because I knew if Caesar had done what he should have and left America telling the rest of the world “You want some of this too?” there would not now be a Tehran to worry about nor would there be American troops dieing in Baghdad fighting an unwinnable war against Muslim fanatics. Certainly it is now beyond debate our government is led of people that have not learned from history, and are on path of destroying America because they have not learned from history, the kind of history those like me still carry as living memory.

It was bad, living an era of having to put a face to our enemies, of living daily with the necessary propaganda demonizing the enemies of America, living with the daily sacrifices essential to winning WWII, the daily reports of battles and casualties, of personally losing loved ones fighting the “Japs and Knocksies” for the sake of a world free from the threat of those like Tojo and Hitler. But we won because we were a nation pulling together, and those old Hollywood films are an accurate portrayal of the kind of Americans we were at the time fighting that war.

But we know also how many of those in politics and business betrayed us, how so many of these profited from the war and went on to create a different kind of America that would never again pull together as a nation. All the while the films of the 50s, especially the great musicals and films like “Gidget” were showing America as a land benefiting so many with hopes and dreams of a bright future We the People were being lied to, sold out and betrayed wholesale for the unholy lust for profits, the refusal to secure our borders for the sake of slave labor, trade agreements betraying the entire working class of honest Americans that kept dutifully paying taxes but losing all representation.

So I could easily relate to “Bed reading,” by William F. Buckley, Tuesday, January 9, 2007. “The sickbed serves to distract attention, but it is unsafe to assume as a corollary that such distraction is enjoyable or even productive. It may have lessened, for a few days, preoccupation with street warfare in Baghdad, but beware the seductions of innocent diversion.”

Buckley had chosen to read “The American” by Henry James, saying “It is 488 pages long, and it may be the single most boring book ever published. It is at least the single most venerated bad book ever published. The Internet will give you not only reviews of the book, but also the entire novel, chapter after chapter, word for word. Now Henry James (1843-1916), novelist, essayist, critic, is captivating when describing people and situations. I wrote about his travel books, a dozen years ago, that ‘you can close your eyes and open either volume at any page and find yourself reading prose so resplendent it will sweep you off your feet. Yet after a while, after a long while, you will recognize that you do, really, have to come down to earth because there are so many other things to do. And besides, if you stay with him for too long, in that engrossing, scented, colored, brilliant, absorbing world, you feel strung out, feel something like hanging moss.’ “

Readers might understand why after fighting this battle for so long I sympathize with Buckley, feeling myself “something like hanging moss.” Not from staying “too long, in an engrossing, scented, colored, brilliant, absorbing world” but of staying in this real down and dirty world in which the wicked continue to prosper. While I continue to spend time profitably with my friends Emerson and Thoreau, I no longer spend time with the “seductions of innocent diversion.” Even the old films serve only as reminders of the battle for the soul of America ongoing.

And while a politically correct war is unwinnable, so is a war without an America having a national identity. An America without a heritage, culture, common language and secure borders is not a nation, but rather a conflicted federacy of petty states unable to find common ground.

To have known an America in which you took justifiable pride, to have stood and pledged allegiance to the flag with a stirring in your soul and trust in your leaders, an America with a heritage, culture, language and identity as a nation in which hope of a brighter future for your children flourished and one paycheck took care of a family, if you felt the gorge rising threatening to make you vomit while watching and listening to that “speech” by Caesar Bush, if you watch and listen to the charlatans “representing” America in Congress now causing you to cringe in your very soul you understand what has been betrayed and lost.

“It is a mistake to suppose that, in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very large body of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages.” Thoreau may as well have been writing for the present conditions in America as he was about those over one hundred and fifty years ago. And when government becomes nothing but organized robbery and tyranny reducing so many millions to live degraded lives in the face of the usual evidences of civilization We the People have the right and the duty to rebel!

Our Federal Triune Dictatorship, the members of which live lives of luxury insulated from reality are treading a dangerous path by ignoring the growing number of those being forced into lives of degradation, being forced by circumstances to abandon any pretense of “honesty is the best policy” while living paycheck to paycheck, when they have a job at all; and it is no wonder so many are making the conscious choice of crime when our very leadership is preaching a doctrine of “honesty is for chumps.”

Few in Watts are shedding any tears about multi-million dollar mansions burning in Malibu while such ostentatious displays of the growing disparity between rich and poor in America are accelerating at a dangerous pace. Those wealthy ruling the MSM may be wringing their hands, deploring the loss of mansions, but they do so to the dangerous chant of “burn baby burn” a spectral reality of the many millions living lives of degraded savages throughout America where to try to live decently and honestly is only a paycheck away from disaster and there is no insurance to replace a “mansion.”

Since our government at every level, local, state, federal is hell-bent on making criminals of everyone who is not a dog feeding at Caesar’s table, who is not receiving a government paycheck at taxpayer expense exemplified by taxation without representation why don’t we all simply join the criminal class and have done with it? We already know for example that illegal drugs fund many world economies, that our own government opposes legalizing marijuana because of so much money going into the pockets of elected officials from this source. How else explain our open borders and Mexicans maintaining huge marijuana plantations right here in America?

It would be naïve to believe law enforcement officers at every level are not cooperating with the drug trade and human trafficking. After all, if the elected officials from the lowest to the highest and their cronies are living high on the hog and never held to account when caught breaking the law, sometimes pocketing millions of illegal dollars why be law-abiding yourself when honesty is the best policy is playing out everywhere a policy for chumps? And our own elected officials do not lack for “working girls” even at taxpayer expense while deploring prostitution. Hypocrisy abounds.

Pat Buchanan writes concerning Iran “If we are going to war, let us do it constitutionally, for once, and not leave it up solely to George W. Bush and Brother Cheney.”

Now I have always liked Pat, and even voted for him. I respect him as a man who speaks his mind and does not mince words. Agree or disagree you always know where he stands on the issues. For example I don’t believe he would approve the check I make out for The Israel Project, the money I send as a token of support for Israel’s right to defend itself. But his disapproval would be based on his pragmatism, not anti-Semitism. And it is Pat’s broad streak of pragmatism with which most take issue.

Pragmatically, if enough politicians and their corporate bosses are profiting from wars constitutionally or not then wars there will be. If enough people are being forced to live in America as degraded savages and crime is the only alternative then crime there will be. From childhood on I have known those environments where the poor suffer as politicians enriched themselves offering nothing but lip service to concerns about the poor, lying to get elected and lying to stay elected. While serving in Watts during the 60s I learned how the political game is played, a game intended to “keep those people in their place” while politicians pocketed the money from federal programs with no accountability. Then teachers like me were to tell our pupils “honesty is the best policy” all the while the evidence to the contrary abounded on every side.

One result of this hypocrisy of government is making jails and prisons growth industries while supplying full employment to lawyers of every description. One needn’t be a Bible thumper believing in End Times scenarios to understand where all this is headed. What I call “the circumstances of the immutable” is taking us there, and Pat Buchanan is one of the “prophets” preaching this doctrine.

But neither Pat nor I needed the gift of prophecy to understand once Bush had cast the gauntlet before Islam it would have to be a war fought to win, or it would mean defeat. What America, what the civilized world is facing now is the prospect of defeat unless an accommodation can be found that is satisfactory to our Muslim enemies. But it will also have to be an accommodation satisfactory to the economic masters that control the purse strings. Whether illegal aliens, drugs, prostitution, wars; follow the money.

Tragically for America the growing numbers of “savages” being forced into degraded living conditions to benefit the wealthy that do not suffer the constraints of either law or conscience are being forced to accept becoming criminals in order to survive. “Neither too rich nor too poor lest the righteous put forth his hand to steal” is a Biblical injunction that must be heeded by all leaders.

Even as I write I know too well that I only “own” my little cottage here so long as I can pay the property taxes. Even at that, there is the constant threat some lawyer can take away my place and give it to another. The most frivolous of lawsuits can ruin anyone without the insurance or deep pockets to fight litigation of whatever nature, and I have already faced one of those “professional litigants” that make a living of such lawsuits. It ought to be a crime for such creatures to do things like this, but since it is not those that try to live honestly pay the price for being “chumps.”

Well, our political “leadership” seems dedicated to making honest Americans a bunch of chumps. And if I were being forced by our leadership into a choice between abject poverty, of being on the street without a roof over my head I would soon be dealing drugs myself. My little cottage sits on nearly an acre, ideal for marijuana cultivation. It would also be ideal for supplying the valley with homegrown “produce.” And at my age, if I should be arrested a prison would at least guarantee a roof and being fed. And the way our leadership is operating such a choice looms before many millions of otherwise honest and law-abiding Americans.

Perhaps I’m just too old a dog to learn new tricks, but I’m still of the mind that to live honestly before God and men is the best policy. But this does not make me immune to recognizing realities of life; even when the realities are so ugly it forces the “righteous” to put forth their hands to steal (or grow marijuana).

It has long since lost any humor, the idea of renouncing American citizenship and becoming an illegal alien in order to receive welfare and medical services. And like dealing drugs, when such a thing is no longer humorous it becomes dangerous. If I had the ear of our elected officials this would be my warning to them: When government becomes nothing but organized robbery and tyranny We the People have the right and the duty to rebel!

The Bakersfield Californian gives much space to women, and as a media source this is to the credit of the paper. Many women have a voice in the media and elsewhere; but when it comes to the actual power governing my native state and America, making the decisions that effect our lives the paucity of women in decision making government roles is patently and painfully obvious. The fact remains it is a man’s world and women continue to be treated of less value than men. And suppose a woman should become President of the United States? What real power would she have in confronting the rest of the world, a world that men dominate?

Bull Run Creek is a beautiful trout stream here where I live. And though I often fished the stream alone I used to take my children fishing there on occasion. But it is in a wilderness environment and it pained my heart to realize very early on that my beautiful daughter Karen would never be able to safely go there on her own. Why not? Here would be a beautiful girl all alone in this marvelous, pristine wilderness environment; then suddenly she sees three strange men approaching… Men have no idea the things denied women, the things men take for granted because they do not know the constant world women live in as prey.

It is hardly to my credit it took so many years for me to realize women had been excluded from philosophy and how this has impacted history, or to notice there were no women included in that first edition of The Great Books. It is the King of Disciplines: Philosophy! that guides the course of history and nations. But where is wisdom to be found in excluding a full half of humankind, women, in the philosophies of men?

But it was in finally noticing the philosophies of men that have guided the course of nations virtually excluded women throughout recorded history that I began to ask some really hard questions of myself, the churches and scholars. Since the history of humankind has been a history of warfare, since women don’t have babies to sacrifice them on the altar of wars men make or the state ruled by men, why should it be so?

Sam Clemens said men and women are natural born enemies. Much of history would seem to support Sam’s claim. But why? The obvious that men are bigger and stronger and will always win by force and bullying if nothing else, that it is a man’s world, men lead and women are forced to follow, these are biological facts that withstand all attempts at any kind of ephemeral equality by fiat of laws that can never accomplish the real need which is that of equal value.

But where is the compatibility of differences, why competition and combativeness as the rule? Where the necessary melding and amalgam of the hardness of men and the softness of women resulting in a useful toughness with the resiliency to meet the needs of family, rather than the brittleness that fractures and breaks so easily? The battle between good and evil that we face as human beings has its roots in the things that led to the allegory of the Garden with Adam and Eve. But even here Adam blamed both God and Eve for his failure as a man.

At this point I could go browsing in any number of my dictionaries, like that of Behavioral Science Terms, and find a convenient dementia attempting to make sense of the insensible. I could, delightedly, use my philological encyclopedia to grab hold of archaisms to expound, profoundly, on the root of the words good and evil. I could exhaust my inventory of philosophies of every description and, finally, say: To Hell with It! and go fishing. Undoubtedly much the better, and safer, course.

There is a pronounced lack on the part of both men and women to be honest and candid concerning the nature of either. It is, as I say repeatedly, a problem of immense complexity and proportion. The solution to the problem of a lack of romance in a relationship, for example, is most often thought to be: Get someone else!

It cannot be legitimately denied that women have far fewer options than men. They know this and retaliate the best they can, often using their sex and verbal skills as weapons. And, historically, they have always lost the war. Understandable resentment is the norm. The obvious answer would be virtuous men and women, men and women whose characters were ruled by the principles of love rather than lust and selfishness. However, it takes an entire society to move together in cooperation of the emphasis on the supreme importance and sanctity of marriage and family to bring such a thing to pass.

A nanny government assuming the role of mother and father to babies born out of wedlock, a government and its courts that encourages babies born with no family or future, laws that encourage men to rut like animals taking no responsibility for the babies they father makes abortion a “convenience” rather than a moral issue.

I’m asked if I know of any successful marriages. Yes. But very few. For example the longevity of a marriage is not necessarily the criteria; a couple may celebrate a fiftieth wedding anniversary and not really care much about each other. A successful relationship must have a basis of mutual love and esteem. On this basis, I know of very few successful marriages.

Since love is an art, since it demands the self-discipline of learning any art in order to do it well, it fails when we lack artists. And a large part of such failure is the loss of romance. The great majority of married men and women quickly lose the romance of the relationship. There are a host of factors involved that contribute to such a loss.

Most lose those things which first attracted them to each other. That is the result of not practicing the art of love. And it takes both to make it work. This loss breeds resentment. The resentment grows worse with the growing realization in many cases that the thrill of romance is no longer possible. And this frequently happens. And the resentment frequently results in growing hostility and outright warfare. However, when real romance is missing, when only books, TV and Hollywood supply a vicarious substitute to enliven that missing dimension in a relationship if only in imagination you have a problem of huge proportions in a society. In attempting an understanding of the problem, it has to be accepted that the real equality of the sexes is in the compatibility of differences that should result in mutual love and esteem. However, this is seldom the actual case between men and women.

The Apostle Paul who often is in an adversarial position to women as with most of the Bible writers makes the point succinctly in the New Testament (I Corinthians 11:11) that a man and a woman are co-dependent, that while the woman was created for the man both were created with the capacity to become One on the basis of that mutual love and esteem and that compatibility of differences. The too often despotic and tyrannical rule of men over women is inexcusable. But as a point of understanding, women should consider the fact that men face a very difficult role. It is a hard, often cruel world out there. In facing the difficulties of making it in this world men have, historically, as the stronger, more aggressive sex to contend with other men and the forces of nature in order to provide and protect. That this results in a distinctive character trait of hardness on the part of men is necessary, reasonable and normal. But this should never result in a “battle of the sexes.” And it hardly needs to be said that men warring against each other cannot possibly contribute to peace in any event.

I have to confess to that hardness which is a part of me as a man. While I would like to devote my life to writing of the softer and gentler things of the relationships between men and women, of love and romance, that part of me as a man which contends against evil and the dangers of the world must be operative as well. Here is a point where the compatibility of differences should come into play. While women should represent the softer and gentler elements of humankind distinctive to them, they must accept men for their strength; the necessary harder element.

The utility of steel is based on the alloying of materials that results in a metal that is useful for many purposes. Iron, by itself, is very limited; it is hard, brittle and breaks easily. But with the addition of other things like tungsten, the resulting product, steel, has many diverse uses. The alloying of the softness of the woman and the hardness of the man amalgamating is the steel of the family which can withstand much more of the difficult forces of life, is far more useful to society than either one alone.

To carry the analogy a little further, steel is made through a process of fire. The fires of life should give a relationship the necessary tempering and melding of a man and a woman in a marriage that makes the two, One. It is in the art of steel making to bring the diverse elements together as One. In the art of love there must be the essential elements in the two that would produce that One. The arts of steel making and lovemaking require things to be in proper balance and proportion. If there is too much of one material, if there is too much emphasis on a point of difference, the result is a useless material or a failed relationship.

This is not a subject to be solved in brief articles; and my two books in print, the novel Donnie and Jean and the non-fiction Birds With Broken Wings go into the subjects of love and romance in great depth. I am presently working on the update of Hey God! What went wrong and when are you going to fix it? This book is the academic response to the subject, not that this is lacking in the other two books.

But if there is a conclusion to the matter it is this: So long as women are not accepted and treated as of equal value to men so long will wisdom be orphaned from knowledge. And to repeat, at a time when the world possesses the knowledge to destroy itself and the wisdom is absent to prevent this the world continues on a course of self-destruction.

From the very beginning one of the things that quickly endeared Charles Schulz to me was the simple and straightforward way he handled his Christian beliefs in his strip “Peanuts.” There was Linus of course, but when it came to the vexing questions of life there was Lucy as the psychiatrist handling Charlie Brown’s perplexities. But then we all know gifted cartoonists like Schulz are the real intellectuals and prophets, which is why from childhood on I would first turn to the funny papers before looking at anything else.

In my opinion I would rather have the advice of Charles Schulz about the issues of life than that of the most venerated of theologians in the church. The accusation is not without substance that theology has degenerated at times into questions of the type how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, an accusation from which the best of theological scholars have not always successfully extricated themselves; and any study of Systematic Theology will determine it is anything but; systems of belief to be sure, but too often rather properly belonging to Dogmatic Theology.

For example, most would agree with James that faith without works is dead, being alone; and would agree with James’ statement “show me your faith without your works and I will show you my faith by my works.” However, Christian theology teaches people are saved by grace, not by works, that the best we can do cannot stand the test of “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” The “Roman Road” is the precept of personal evangelism and evangelical Christianity stands by this.

But the thousands of books dedicated to theology do not solve the riddle of many questions arising from matters of faith, or faith vs. works, election vs. predestination, what happens to dead babies, modes of baptism, Lord’s Supper, and so on seemingly ad infinitum. It is here where I would seek counsel of Charles Schulz rather than the professional theologians, as he so wisely portrayed by Lucy. Charlie Brown had the deep questions of life, but life is very real and pragmatic and seldom amenable to either altruistic or comfortable theologies or philosophies. Inevitably Charlie Brown has to confront Lucy and the real world in which we all live for better or for worse. For my part, it seems the best I have been able to do is muddle through. And perhaps this is my greatest skill; just muddling through.

However, there are times when the “unthinkable” becomes thinkable by force of circumstances and there is no muddling through. For those of us who lived that era of WWII and went on to study the history of the war at length it is impossible to miss some very disturbing parallels to what is happening with our present government and that of Germany leading to the Nuremberg Tribunal.

That our present White House has become so ultra-secretive is a case in point. One cannot but help wondering what the President and his administration have to hide? Once secrecy for whatever reason is invoked, especially on the seemingly too oft specious argument “national security” all becomes suspect. None of us question the need of secrecy where actual national security may be at risk, there are valid cases of “need to know,” but there is Sandy Berger. And we know there are many Berger’s in the present administration.

But there is little in the Congress to give us hope corruption in government will be ended, or even contained. When it comes to politics it is business as usual and we would be hard pressed to point to any one politician and say we have faith in that person to act with virtue. Some say they have faith, but let’s see them prove that faith by their works. So, I worry. To repeat something I recently wrote:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In an emotional speech on the Senate floor Thursday night, Sen. Gordon Smith, a moderate Republican from Oregon who has been a supporter of the war in Iraq, said the U.S. military’s “tactics have failed” and he “cannot support that anymore.” Smith said he is at, “the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs, day after day… That is absurd,” he said. “It may even be criminal.”

While Smith’s use of the word “criminal” has caused him to do some furious back-peddling the word has been used, and there is no going back from it. He may have fallen under the spell of his own rhetoric, a typical cause of politicians putting their foot in their mouth, but many understood the enormity of such a word being used. I certainly understand it and had already written about it back in April before Smith uttered the word, knowing as I do the lessons of history and human nature teach there is nothing too fantastic to imagine happening in a world seemingly lunatic because of being dominated by religious and political hatreds.

Many of you know the joke about the guy advertising for a woman, but one that owned a boat and motor for fishing, the closing words of the ad “Send picture of boat and motor.” Most of us men laugh at the joke with a greater or lesser degree of understanding. But when it comes to the decision making processes of world leaders the lack of women in such roles may be the undoing of our human species.

Though not attending or belonging to any church one local Bakersfield broadcast I try to catch each week is that of St. John Missionary Baptist Church. Tyree Toliver is the pastor, epitomizing simple honesty and sincerity in his preaching with a congregation that obviously loves this man as he loves them and responds accordingly. At a time when I find myself searching in vain for honesty and sincerity in the leadership of America, pastor Toliver and his flock offers continued hope there are some that have not sold their souls to the Devil, and it comforts me to listen to his simple, honest words to his congregation and their heartfelt response. So long as there exists in America people like pastor Toliver and his flock so long do we have some cause for hope that not all is lost.

The simple beliefs of good and honest people by whom and among whom I was raised creates its own longing in me for such things that is far from being mere nostalgia. There was a solid foundation to these simple people of simple beliefs, simple verities, their faith and trust in the Bible and America that helped guide us through WWII successfully and without which it is doubtful the war could have been won. And while I have moved far from the religious teachings of childhood and evangelical Christianity, I have never forgotten my debt to those people who loved me and were so transparent in their love for me. In the same way I never forget the debt Americans owe the Bible and Christianity.

As to religious beliefs, during a friendly conversation with a college biology instructor the topic of religion came up. Knowing I believed in Intelligent Design he told me with tears in his eyes, “If only I could believe the things I once believed.” He went on to explain his Roman Catholic affiliation, his being born and raised into the RC Church, baptized and catechized, first communion and so much more. But like the poor tortured soul in Elmer Gantry, he wanted to believe in the mysticism, the candles and incense, the prayers, to find once more the comfort he once had in the church environment and among true believers he had once known. But he had come to rely on the facts of science that contradicted so much of what he had once believed. However, he came to realize he had also traded his religious beliefs, beliefs that had brought him comfort and hope for scientific beliefs that had become tyrannical despots unable to offer the same kind of comfort and hope he once had, unable to explain or define life, unable to determine what animates at birth and departs at death.

Stubborn facts often get in the way of cherished beliefs, but if those beliefs bring us comfort and hope here is where it is sometimes folly to be wise. After all, when it comes to matters of belief in things supernatural, metaphysical, who is to say what is and what is not? Many an honest person has sought for the answers to the mysteries of life and death, and if in their honesty they come to rely on beliefs that bring them comfort and hope why should anyone take it upon themselves to disabuse people of such beliefs? “For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow” and “Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” The Preacher obviously was able to distinguish between those things that offer comfort and hope as opposed to the kinds of knowledge that offers nothing of solace to the soul, no hope of “new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.”

No one can rightly accuse me of a slavish adherence to “When ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.” But there are many things that legitimately fall into the category of “I don’t want to know,” many of which some might be far better off not knowing. Gore Vidal has Lincoln telling Grant toward the end of the war “Now we know too much.” And when one knows too much, such knowledge coming at the cost of many lives there is no room in such a thing for “wise as serpents but harmless as doves.”

In conversation with a TV producer who had taken an interest in my writing he bluntly asked me: “How did you lose your faith?” I was taken quite aback by his question, but realizing he did not know me personally well at all I went on to answer that I did not believe I had lost my faith, but I had come to accept the legitimate questions that arise from an honest questioning and honest study of many things that might well be taken for a loss of faith as I attempted to work these things out in my writing.

For example, pragmatically we face the very real prospect of nuclear terrorism being visited upon America by religious fanatics, the result of Islamic religious and political fanaticism, the refusal of our leaders to secure our borders because of their greed for slave labor and profits aiding the terrorists. But it will not be terrorism born of the Bible and Christianity. However, there are those like Bush claiming as many like him have done to believe in the Bible and Jesus while at the same time denying by their very actions any such beliefs. And such hypocrisy cannot but make its contribution to the very real dangers America is facing, as well as giving our enemies a propaganda advantage.

It comes down to good people will do good, and while religious beliefs may encourage things like charity, living honestly, doing good for others, such things must come from a good and honest heart or according to the Bible they profit nothing. Certainly this is only a belief, but it is a belief that makes good sense.

No, I do not believe I have lost my faith. But cruelty and murder in the name of some deity will never be a part of my faith though I have many questions yet unanswered that will doubtless remain unanswered. This much I know; while knowledge has increased to the point where nuclear Armageddon looms there seems not the wisdom to prevent it. And perhaps this may be the result of a full half of humankind, women, being excluded from The Great Conversation.

The King of Disciplines remains a “boys club,” and while philosophers have waxed eloquent on the need for our species to abjure war, offering much advice on how to avoid wars and get along with one another, without the other half of humankind having a voice on the basis of equal value in the decision making processes of world leaders wisdom will remain orphaned from knowledge. And there are no Nancy Pelosi’s to be found in the nations of Islam; they are scarce in China and Russia, and they are conspicuous by their absence in the UN. And let’s not forget the absence of women in that first edition of The Great Books of the Western World, and given only passing notice in the second edition.

While beliefs vary throughout the world, the truth of the history of our species is that women attempt to make homes while men make wars. And the truth that women are not accepted as having equal value to men to my mind is the basis of our history being one of constant conflict explained to a large degree by “Send picture of boat and motor.”

Sane thoughts about an insane world. By Burt Prelutsky, Friday, January 5, 2007. “When I was a youngster, I had this odd notion that Earth served as a loony bin for the entire galaxy—the place where Martians and Venusians sent their crazies. Now that I’m an oldster, I’m convinced I was right.”

While I freely, even recklessly admit to many religious and political heresies, regarded as such by Christians and both political liberals and conservatives, there is the matter C. S. Lewis made a point of mentioning I recall in my defense. He described the elderly Christian woman who led an exemplary life; but demanded her toast always be “just right.” And if not just right, she would go into a perfect snit about this. Try as we may there is simply no pleasing people all the time, and whether our idols prove to have feet of clay or the chink in shining armor only be that of insisting their toast be just right it all amounts to the same. I’m not perfect and neither are you.

But We the People do have the right and the duty to expect more of our elected leadership than they are delivering. And there needs to be an accounting for things like a Muslim being sworn into elected office using the Koran for the ceremony. Despite the protestations surrounding politicians being sworn in with hands on the Bible evidencing hypocrisy Americans do not have a problem with the ceremonial use of the Bible under such circumstances. However, there is nevertheless an inherent danger in countenancing a Muslim with his Koran doing so, and it is foolish in the extreme to ignore the danger to America such a thing poses. We accept that politicians being sworn into office with hand on Bible is ceremonial only; but it is dangerous in the extreme to believe any Muslim treats the Koran as “simply ceremonial.”

In Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye asks God just how far he can bend from adhering to traditions that keep Jews distinct from others without breaking entirely? It was a legitimate question, and it is a question Americans are going to have to answer.

My own metaphysical view that the Bible may well be correct in calling the earth Satan’s domain; that the Evil One has power over the earth and its inhabitants leading to the prevailing history of evil ever in the ascendancy at least lends itself to a modicum of sensibility. The monsters in human guise such as those preying on women and children being the Devil’s spawn as Jesus describes in opposition to the children of God at least has the merit of making some sense of otherwise seeming lunacy throughout. Whether or not, the fact remains good people do not want or seek power and authority over others, which puts politicians in the Devil’s camp.

In respect to a world in the grip of seeming lunacy Burt went on to say, “I wish John McCain, who uses his own heroic stature as a model P.O.W. to influence America’s policy towards Islamic terrorists, would just shut up on the subject. To suggest that combatants who fight without a flag or a uniform; who wipe their feet on the Geneva Convention; who disguise themselves as women; who hide in mosques and marketplaces; who slice off the heads of their prisoners; and who use children as shields; are entitled to the same safeguards as soldiers is sheer lunacy. In the old days, when the Cold War was at its most frigid, I honestly thought the one thing that could unite the so-called civilized world would be the threat of invasion by evil aliens from outer space. I now realize how naïve I was. One merely has to see how accommodating most nations are towards the very worst elements of Islam to recognize that Neville Chamberlain was simply a man 70 years ahead of his time. These days, when most of Europe and half of America is only too happy to appease the neo-Nazis who heil Allah instead of Hitler, Chamberlain would be in his glory, and, regrettably, without a Churchill anywhere in sight…”

Burt is correct, but neither is there any Churchill here in America that speaks out about Mexicans marching in our streets while flying their flag like Hitler’s Brown Shirts demanding allegiance to Mexico. Sieg Heil Mexico and Mexicans! Then there is the agenda of Sieg Heil ACLU! Something that accommodates everything destructive of standards of morality and America having an identity based on heritage, culture, language, and secure borders. Lunacy!

Another area of seeming lunacy in America has to do with prescription drugs. A dear friend of mine has for a very long time been attempting to call attention to the dangers posed by pharmaceutical industries making essential drugs prohibitively expensive to ordinary working Americans. She wrote me saying, “Ever since I started looking into drug prices, that study has taken me into labyrinthine twists and turns that have nearly made me crazy. I’ve read books, followed up on informative Web sites, written letters to Congress and to the editor, etc., etc. I started looking into drug prices when I knew that at age 65 I would lose my attractive prescription drug insurance that went along with my awfully expensive (but also good) health insurance. What I learned was appalling, and it made Canada very attractive. Now, with the Medicare Prescription Drug Plans, Big Pharma and insurance companies are dying laughing all the way to the bank. And the Democrats, of course, want Medicare to be able to negotiate drug prices for Medicare PDP participants; however, if that happens, dominoes will begin falling. Everything will fall except the prices of drugs. I believe Medicare attempting to negotiate drug prices is like having a three-year-old do it. I guarantee I can do a better job of it. Under that scenario, competition and free trade will be restricted. Also, interestingly, since Wal-Mart and others have gotten so aggressively into the generic drug-selling business, some of the VA-negotiated prices are higher than Wal-Mart’s. I have proof of that. Only free trade and good retail competition can keep the price of drugs down.”

The dictum of “Follow the money” explains much of the seeming lunacy gripping America, of the seeming paralysis of our corrupt government ever doing what is in the best interest of America and Americans. But such seeming lunacy leading to the destruction of America leaves me with the metaphysical conclusion: The Devil has very deep pockets. But like Burt I wouldn’t entirely discount the threat from Mars and Venus; that the earth is the dumping ground for the crazies from elsewhere in the universe and our human species does appear to be taken over by the crazies.

You know, there may be the risk of space aliens invading and our having a President like Jack Nicholson in Mars Attacks! Some uncharitable souls would say we already have such a President. Still, who knows but what Mars and Venus may yet show us some compassion. Seems as likely as our own government doing so. And I’d rather take my chances with Mars and Venus rather than Sieg Heil Allah!

“Tell a woman and the news will get around.” Before you ladies get in an uproar this is the title of a song. “Don’t telephone, don’t telegraph, tell a woman and the news will get around” is the chorus from the song I heard on a Bakersfield radio station sometime in the late 40s. You can well imagine the high dudgeon this would find women in today if the song was still being played, though women are cast in a far worse light by some of the so-called “music” of today.

Just how did this reputation for gossip become peculiar to women when men are just as guilty? This reminds me of the Victorian attitude that held women were not to enjoy sex as men did. And, the double standards regarding much of human behavior cuts both ways, and both men and women suffer from such double standards. One of long standing was girls should be chaste and boys “experienced.” But the basic premise was sound in that girls and women should be a civilizing influence on boys and men.

Still, when it comes to gossip even Henry Thoreau noted it is good when taken in “homeopathic doses” and he did not discriminate between men and women on the subject. As to women being singled out, when one considers how women have had to struggle to have any voice or rights comparable to men it is no wonder all they had was conversation among each other throughout much of our history. That such conversation would often degenerate into gossip as a pejorative term is not to be wondered at.

My copy of American Spirit- Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine dated March/April 2003 has a lead article detailing the typical “Woman’s Day” in 1770. The magazine notes Family-Community-Country being essential to our welfare as a nation. But to consider the extreme hardships endured by women especially attempting to make a home, to bear and rear children those centuries ago is to come face to face with wonderment that women and children managed to survive.

I experienced much of this while living on the mining claim here in the Sequoia National Forest. No electricity or indoor plumbing, nothing but a woodstove and fireplace for cooking and heating, coal oil lamps for lighting at night. And I continue to marvel at the way my great-grandmother and grandparents endured such hardship without complaint.

However, before moving to the forest while living in Little Oklahoma in Southeast Bakersfield during WWII the next-door neighbor had a cow, and what a treat it was to visit at milking time. Occasionally, my brother Ronnie and I would get a fresh, warm cup of the milk. We would blow off the hair and foam from the top of the cup; just like we saw W. C. Fields and some others do in movies with a mug of beer, and drink it like a milkshake.

Sometimes when grandad took us to downtown Bakersfield we would stop at the Orange Julius. It was built like a huge orange and the structure fascinated Ronnie and me. We loved the orange-milk drink and grandad would always ask the attendant to put a raw egg in his. Never knew why and never asked for raw egg in mine. This was kind of strange since I usually tried to copy grandad in everything he did.

Ronnie and I were not overly conscious of the absence of a father. Grandad was still a fairly young man, and not having a son I suppose he took us on as the sons he always wanted and treated us accordingly; though the distinction of being our grandfather was never blurred and he was always grandad, never dad. Our mother contributed a lot to keeping this distinction clear because of the seemingly constant friction between her and our grandparents; this together with the flow of stepfathers that were to filter through our lives.

There were so many activities at our grandparents’ place that Ronnie and I were seldom at a loss for things to do or for interesting things to observe and listen to. Like the quilting parties.

Our grandparents had a quilting frame that hung from the ceiling of the spacious living room. At times the neighbor ladies, mostly members of grandad’s little congregation, would get together and make quilts. It was something Ronnie and I always enjoyed when we were small. What made the quilting parties so much fun as the ladies all gathered around the apparatus, Ronnie and I could crawl under the contraption and, in the coolness of our shadowed sanctuary, listen to the genteel gossip of the lulling, matronly voices. We were far too young to understand much of what the ladies said, but it was pleasant to hear them and enter into the enjoyment they obviously were having as they sewed the various pieces of fabric into fascinating mosaics of a quilt. They would often have the radio on and we could hear the soap operas as well, the ladies commenting on them at intervals.

Quilting was a communal thing. It made Ronnie and I feel good whenever all the neighbor ladies got together and were so obviously enjoying themselves. It gave us a happy, warm, secure feeling. Maybe this was so special to us because of our father leaving us and the world was at war. Like crawling into our private preserve of the cannas in the yard; there was some kind of magic in the warmth and security of just having good, loving people around us or being in a shaded place during the hot, summer days that made us feel more alive and made us feel like laughing.

Women were responsible for the home and little ones, and when they gathered in community, like on quilting or wash day they shared the work, they talked, and we children felt safe and secure. The work the women usually did was hard work. However, by working and sharing together, the work didn’t seem as hard. Men, women, and children had clearly defined roles it seemed. But as hard as the work was for the ladies, washdays were real fun for us children.

Large galvanized washtubs would be set up on bricks over wood fires. The ladies would put soap and lye in the water and boil the clothes in the tubs while stirring them with a stick, usually a used broom or hoe handle. After boiling and stirring, the clothes went into another tub for scrubbing on washboards. After scrubbing, they went into a tub for rinsing and then wrung out to be hung on the lines. Of course, there were different tubs for colored and white things. Bleach, starch, and Mrs. Worth’s Bluing were fascinating ingredients to us children. It was a wonder to us how the ladies knew such intricacies of chemistry. Washday always smelled wonderful; the aroma of clean wash was marvelous. And like the quilting parties, the gossip and lulling voices of the ladies moved over and around us children like a refreshing breeze in the heat of a summer day.

Our mother and grandmother loved to crochet and knit. Ronnie and I were taught these arts as well; and we also learned to embroider. Looking back, I’ve thought this was the result of having three mothers and only one man in the house; grandad. And we learned to use the Singer sewing machine. This was a truly marvelous device. Ronnie and I would take turns working the treadle and stitching since our legs couldn’t reach the treadle while seated at the machine.

So it was no wonder that as I grew older some things thought “fittin’” only for girls were suspect to me. And as my great-grandmother was to point out to me one time there were very few things boys did that girls couldn’t do as well, and why shouldn’t girls enjoy shooting, fishing, even building model airplanes? While such a thing seemed foreign to me at the time, as I grew older the wisdom of my great-grandmother’s words was inescapable.

Many things have changed in America since I was a boy, and women have made much progress. But when it comes to Equal Rights vs. Equal Value the gap seems as wide as history. That old song “Tell a woman and the news will get around” is a haunting reminder that when it comes to the equal value of women to men this distinction still has a long way to go. While the extreme hardships for women have been ameliorated since 1770 here in America, they remain in many other nations where women are still considered no better than “chattel.”

Unlike many conservatives Nancy Pelosi does not get me all a’ dither with the vapors. While she is no better than any other corrupt politician and will likely do what is in her best interest rather than in the interest of America like all politicians the fact that a woman has become Speaker of the House does at least offer me some comfort. Deep down I remain like Rhett Butler hopeful that Scarlett may develop a real woman’s heart, that civilizing heart that understands women attempt to make homes while men make wars.

One thing about which most Americans agree; our government is in a shambles and there is little to give us hope our government will put the interests of America ahead of that of whoever is in power.

There are times when I feel like Nick Charles in the Thin Man because of my knowing so many unsavory characters, not all of which are relatively benign or Runyonesque. Because of this and having just received a call from an inmate in the Kern County Jail begging me to say something about the overcrowded conditions it is no secret illegal aliens make their contribution to the problem. Be that as it may it should be obvious that most of the overcrowding of our jails and prisons throughout California and other states is due to what are often referred to as “victimless crimes” like drug use and prostitution. And please spare me the moralizing about the term “victimless” when so many books are already written on both sides, talks shows, columnists holding forth ad infinitum and one may choose their own “experts.”

People who know me also know my “conservative” credentials are in considerable disarray because of my position on legalizing marijuana, prostitution, euthanasia, what some call my “soft” attitude toward abortion, and my opposition to the death penalty because of the capriciousness with which as with child molestation it is handled from state-to-state. But I continue to say a pox on both houses of Congress for refusing to secure our borders and printing ballots in foreign tongues, refusing to make English our national language by law, refusing to deal with the issue of “anchor babies” and so much more.

While the media has paid some attention to the overcrowding in California jails and prisons it is obvious the problem is one of drugs and prostitution for the greater part. But even some judge’s years ago began to call for legalizing these in order to unclog the courts; and few are in a better position than judges to speak knowledgeably to the issue.

But following the money it is relatively easy to see why drugs especially are profitable to world leaders including those here in America. And it would be utterly naïve to say our leaders do not profit from refusing to legalize marijuana in particular. And it would be naïve to say politicians do not avail themselves of prostitutes, often at taxpayer expense, not to mention the drug habits of many politicians. So, the double standard exists between politicians and we the Great Unwashed. Our leaders do not obey the laws they pass against ordinary Americans, and it remains “How much justice can you afford?” when it comes to the ordinary citizen.

I spent many years as a gun enthusiast, a handloader, gunsmith and shooter; I have been a lifetime supporter of our Second Amendment and the NRA. But I do not want people owning guns that are not law abiding citizens, I do not want even law abiding citizens to be able to simply go into a gun store and buy a gun without a thorough background check, and I most certainly do not want anyone to simply plunk down the money and walk out with a machine gun. And even the staunchest supporter of our Second Amendment would cringe at being able to legally buy hand grenades or any such explosive devices. There must be an accommodation to reason when debating such issues.

Many superfluous so-called “gun control” laws are passed due to politicians being fearful of an armed citizenry because of the organized robbery and tyranny our Federal Triune Dictatorship represents as our Founding Fathers wisely foresaw could happen. But trying to get politicians to deal effectively with the overcrowding of jails and prisons comes down to their refusal to give up the drug money lining their own pockets and the profits they make from the slave labor pouring into America along with the drugs from Mexico.

Largely because of emasculating political correctness the media is unable to deal effectively with the problem of overcrowding in our jails and prisons, not even daring to address the issue of the impact of illegal aliens, but then advocating for the legalizing of marijuana would at least be sensible. I am not so naïve as to expect the same thing done for prostitution, but no one can fail to realize there is a vacuum of leadership in America to deal effectively with the issues that are tearing our nation apart, not the least of which is the double standard of politicians denying accountability for their own use of drugs and prostitutes while demanding ordinary citizens that do not enjoy the privileges of power obey the laws such politicians pass.

Henry Thoreau pointed out his generation laughed about the modes of dress of previous generations, but seemed oblivious of the “head monkey” in Paris dictating fashion and so many following slavishly, oblivious to how their own ideas of “fashion” might be ridiculed by a following generation. But people have ever been judged by appearance and there is nothing for it despite the oftentimes impractical. For example having to wear a tie has never been high on my list of needed appointments in attire, the practical bowing to fashion, though there is no discounting the importance of such a thing deemed proper dress in many cases; and slovenly dress as disrespect for the time, place, and other people is unacceptable.

Manner of speech will overcome manner of dress, provided the speaker has a chance to prove themselves before being judged entirely by fashion, and good manners in both speech and behavior has made princes and princesses of those unable to dress the part. And as to speech, vocabulary remains a prime indicator of the degree of intelligence; but not vocabulary as ostentatious display which is quickly understood as the lack of good manners such as condescension or patronizing.

Grace Metalious’ 1956 novel Peyton Place was called a “blockbuster” being the second such so named, the first being Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind in 1936. In just a relatively short period of time between the two blockbuster books how very much of private and public mores and fashions changed, WWII certainly making an enormously profound contribution to these changes. What has not changed is perception based on how one dresses and speaks; how one is judged by courteous manners toward others evidencing proper respect for civilized proprieties in society.

So many are now calling attention to the lack of good manners in society, to the increasing lack of civility and courtesy in our society you need only read Peyton Place or watch the film to gain some appreciation of the change in America over the last fifty years. To watch the film now especially tugs at your heart with poignancy if you are anywhere near my age, or the young might find it ridiculous people could ever have actually lived the seemingly simplistic time portrayed; could young people have ever been so naïve about sex or an entire town so sensitive to gossip?

Just to watch the scenes involving that high school in the fifties and the behavior in high schools today makes those my age cringe at what has been lost, but is laughable to those younger. Could high schools have ever been like that portrayed in the film? Could such a small town America have ever existed in reality? Could there really be such noble people like the doctor, and a doctor rebuking a girl for asking for an abortion, then performing the abortion risking his license to practice medicine in order to save not the physical life of the girl, but her right to live free of the results of being raped by a stepfather? But for those of us who have lived that time in such places like Peyton Place, we know people like the doctor did exist and we mourn the loss of such people with their “simplistic morality.”

Good people like the doctor and high school principal, the other good people in Peyton Place would now be sued for following the dictates of their consciences, they would be sued and lose their jobs or even go to prison for their “simplistic morality.” When I was a boy in Old Kernville Elementary School a boy was rebuked by our principal Mr. Wallace for wearing his Levis too low. The boy and his family today would have the ACLU hauling Mr. Wallace into court. Mr. Wallace would be at the least made to apologize to the boy and his family, the school district would be sued for “damage to the boy’s psyche,” and Mr. Wallace would probably be looking for work elsewhere.

But “way back then” those like Mr. Wallace were genuinely concerned about the larger issues impacting on children, things like a boy attempting to wear his pants too low. Mr. Wallace knew the social implications of such a seemingly minor thing; he knew the inherent dangers of the age old story about the camel being permitted to get its nose in the tent.

In just such a relatively short period of time American society has degenerated into one in matters of speech, dress, and behavior rivaling that of nations considered “barbaric.” But like dear Harper Lee, I point to the failure of our universities and their product schools no longer being in the business of real education, no longer seeming to be concerned about boys wearing their Levis too low or girls wearing their skirts too short. And to attempt now to confront such things is to wind up in court.

It is too easy for those today to point to my generation as quaint and anachronistic because we believed boys and girls should be encouraged in matters of modesty and civilized good manners and speech, in observing the proprieties of a civilized society. But those my age know the realties of what has been lost by not encouraging these things in children, we know the importance of heritage, culture, language, and secure borders; we know America has been betrayed by greedy politicians and their corporate bosses. And we recognize the depth of the ignorance of those who would have us believe there was no harm being done by a boy trying to get away with wearing his Levis too low.

Jesus confronted his accusers and detractors saying “Wisdom is justified of her children.” America’s heritage, culture, even our English language and our borders are being betrayed, our very identity and sovereignty as a nation being threatened. Wisdom is indeed justified of her children. Yes, hypocrisy was confronted in Peyton Place, but prurient interests and motives aside Mr. Wallace was correct in confronting that boy. And while those of us like dear Mr. Wallace attempt to confront those in America demanding the “right” to wear their Levis too low, it seems that we are losing the battle to the minority that have the lawyers, politicians, and media on their side. And throughout wisdom is conspicuous by its absence, the wisdom of Mr. Wallace has lost out to boys wanting to wear their Levis too low.