Two Seeds on a Blog

OUR ALMOST TRIP TO EUROPE

2011-09-28T02:50:00.000-04:00

Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic

Yesterday we would have been

on the Danube River

Today, traveling the Glass Road

through Bavaria

Tomorrow, exploring Prague

Way back in January we signed up to go on this tour, organized by a Unitarian Universalist friend, a retired college professor, who leads a group every year. Tom's last trip to Europe, specifically Germany, was with the US Army, years ago and I spent a study summer in Europe my Senior year in college more than 50 years ago. Neither of us has been off the North American continent since, even on a cruise. We were excited, Tom less so because he thinks of a cookie cutter tourist-y trip as a trendy extravagance.

But he said yes, to please me, and we paid for the trip a little along till we had the whole thing paid for. It was truly inexpensive for that kind of trip, because Don takes no commission. Everybody just pools their money and he gets the best deals for everything--and after all these many years, he knows where they are.

So we got 449 emails from him. He updated the itinerary. He sent us the menu for our Mozart Concert Dinner. He presented us the option and we voted yes to adding a visit to Dachau to the original list of sites. We received travel tips on what to wear, what to carry, how to pack, what and where to eat. We were educated about the currency, cell phones, rest rooms, shopping, electric converters and walking shoes.

Then Tom's gout/stress fracture happened.(See posts about Differential Diagnosis) That was at the end of June and we had till mid September to deal with it--13 weeks--so we weren't worried. The foot would be well long before September 16th--our departure date. July came. July went. We attended the trip party and met our fellow travelers. The foot continued to swell and hurt. We purchased and began to read Rick Steve's travel guide to Europe. Things grew more peculiar as the foot stubbornly refused to get better. August came. We bought our euros, after much consultation concerning how many we might need. Then, on our fourth visit to the orthopedist, exactly three weeks before our plane was to leave for Munich, Dr. B. found the second fracture! And so our trip preparations came to an end. Top priority was to find out why two fractures and to get the foot well. Tom could not look forward to spending half the trip in a hotel room

while we hiked to Hitler's Eagles Nest

or walked through the Salt Mines, places where he would be unable to go.

We did recover some of our costs. On September 2nd, 14 days before the plane flew, we found a good friend who was willing to buy the trip and some of our euros. We gave him a good deal and he found a friend to go with him. She applied for a passport renewal and received it 4 days before the departure date. We lost the cost of the plane tickets to Munich (unless we want to go sometime this next year.) and they had to fly out a day early because so many flights were full by September 9th, the day they booked, it was the only one available. But they made it and promised to return with many pictures, as did the rest of our fellow travelers.

The group returns at the end of this week. I hope they bring me awesome I-feel-sorry-for-you presents. They all said they would, but I don't know how long before thoughts of those they left behind were crowded out by the new experiences they have been encountering.

Neal, Pat, Don, Carol, Jerry, Annie, David, John, do you hear me?

Differential Diagnosis II

2011-09-19T22:56:00.000-04:00

More Medical Adventures

This week brought some good news and some interesting twists regarding our health status.

Odd how, with age, this topic becomes more and more the subject of conversation. I remember how I used to dread asking certain members of our family how they were, lest the inquiry unleash a torrent of unwelcome detail about their various ailments. Ah, well, so here goes......

We returned to Doctor Burnworth's office for the results of the bone density test. The good doctor shall be referred to hereinafter as Dr. B, having so named himself in his comments to my first post on Differential Diagnosis. You might want to read those in his lively exchange with Tom below. The happy news was that Tom had passed the test. He is dense--from head to toe. This is actually no surprise to me. He eats well and has been an exercise fanatic as long as I have known him, so seemed an unlikely candidate for osteoporosis.

Dr. B's diagnosis, a differential one now, having eliminated the first possibility, is that Tom's second fracture was caused by his total inability to obey doctor's orders to stay off the foot as much as possible, to walk carefully whenever walking is necessary, to elevate it often, etc., etc. This too is no surprise to me. He doesn't ever follow my advice either. Tom marches to his own drummer. His x-ray showed the fractures healing well and he will be out of the boot in three weeks.

My own medical adventures began on Saturday, when I decided to take a nap, and was thunderbolted awake from a deep sleep by a whole-body jolt that threw me straight up, slap out of my chair. It was like I had been hit with a defibrillator! Well, since I've never been hit by one, I guess I need to say it felt like what I imagine it would be like. Before I could even begin to process what had happened, I had an asthma spasm and couldn't breath! For about 8 seconds I stood there, realizing that it would do me no good to find my inhaler--the attack was too severe to have been helped by such a puny rescue device. Suddenly it let up, thank God. I could breathe again! Just as I began to feel safe, another spasm grabbed me and lasted for an awful 10 seconds. Long enough to make me wish I had cleaned the house that morning, or at least straightened up and emptied the trash.

Way shaken up, I sat down in the chair and tried to decide if I should wake Tom up from his nap to ask him to take me to the hospital. While I was trying to decide, I thought I would test to see if I had had a stroke--possible cause of the body bolt, maybe. So, standing in front of the bathroom mirror I tried to remember the three- part test to identify a stroke. Smile. Is it crooked? Well, mine already kinda is anyway, but I looked to see if it was a lot more one sided. Stick your tongue out. (Was that one of the tests? What about your tongue? Was the test if you could move it in and out easy? Well, I could) Hold your arms up over your head I totally could not remember what about your arms you were supposed to look for. I resolved to review and really learn the tests, cause sorta knowing doesn't help. My diagnosis, maybe really my wishful thinking, was that I had not suffered a stroke. Nothing seemed amiss, except that I was weak and scared.

Not long after, I was recounting the events to Tom, now awake from his nap. To his insistent plea for me to go to the hospital, I said no. After all, nothing weird had happened since. And now I felt fine. Besides, what would I say when they asked me about my symptoms? I got hit with a thunderbolt? How foolish does that sound. I know that women's heart attack symptoms are unusual, but that's a little over the edge isn't it? It seemed just embarrassing to have had such a weird body experience--and I didn't want to have to try to explain it in case folks would think I was a crazy old lady. I just wonder how many women don't go to the hospital when they should because their symptoms are unusual or vague. Maybe they are afraid folks will think they are foolish or they are just complainers or that their symptoms are imaginary.

After a perfectly normal Sunday, on Monday I stopped at the drug store on the way to work and, while there, decided to let Jason, our pharmacist give me my flu shot. It briefly crossed my mind that it might be a bad idea, considering the unusual goings on from the day before, but, not really.... Jason did say he would call to check on me in a little while, to be sure there was no adverse reaction.

I was at the office by 10. In the middle of a busy day about 2:30 I was hit with a wave of nausea and dizziness. I felt myself fading away into a faint, so stood up and began walking around, announcing in a calm voice, that I did not feel at all well. I went into Tom's office to lie on his couch and call Jason, who found no such side effects mentioned in the flu literature. Lie down, drink water and call me back in 10 minutes, Jason had said. As I lay there, with the room spinning and sick as I could be, and with folk fluttering around trying to be helpful, I finally called my primary physician. When I recounted my worsening symptoms, and those from Saturday---she told me to go immediately to Providence Emergency Room to explore if I might be having a heart attack.

Finally convinced, I told Tom, who grabbed me and ran, as fast as a man in a boot with a cane can move.

If you want to avoid waiting in the emergency room, as we have done many times, go in bleeding heavily, or with asthma or any other condition which renders you unable to breath, or appear having heart attack symptoms. You will be rushed right in for examination and treatment, as I was Monday afternoon. The doctor administered an EKG while he took a medical history and listened to my thunderbolt/defibrillator story, with only an occasional Humph. First good news was that it was not a heart attack, or at least the kind revealed by an EKG (and I had already eliminated stroke right on my own!) Now began a series of tests--urine, 4 vials of blood, x-rays, another kind of heart monitor, and on and on--all this to eliminate other possibilities. The doctor came in to talk-- a different one, who told me that the clues did not add up to anything--especially the thunderbolt thing--perhaps a first in the annals of medicine. Maybe it was just the way I described it!

While we waited for some of the tests to come back (she was pursuing some educated guesses with specific assessments), she taught me the three tests for a stroke--important for everybody to know for the sake of yourself or a loved one. 1) The crooked smile was the only one I had remembered right. 2) The arms. Hold them straight out in front, not over your head. Watch to see if you can hold them steady. If one drifts down, that is a bad sign. 3) The say-a-sentence test. If you can say a slightly complex sentence without difficulty, then you are probably in the clear. For instance, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks" would be better than "See Spot run." If you slur, or can't form the words at all, then clearly, something is wrong.

About 7pm all the tests had run their course and the final differential diagnosis was in. The doctor pronounced that I was super deficient in potassium, cause unknown. The cure--replenish the body's potassium through a slow drip, drip, drip

into my arm for 4 1/2 hours. It was boring; It was painful--maybe because potassium is thick and doesn't want to go into the vein (I am guessing here). Tom stayed by my side, holding my hand almost the whole time, alert and sympathetic to my pain. When he could bear to see me suffer no more and had to take a break,he would slip out for a beer at the local bar. He could bear it no longer a lot. He had to take a break a lot. He drank some beer a lot. He did stay alert by my side a lot during that long 4 1/2 hours, and he did drive me home at 12:30 that night.

The doctor's further diagnosis was that it had been coming on for awhile. Part of the cause was dehydration, from not drinking enough liquids. She sent me home with directions to see my doctor for follow up. I feel great; obviously my recent tiredness was a symptom--as was dizziness, nausea, shortness of breath--everything I had had, except thunderbolts. My doctor found that my potassium level is holding fine. She did not put me on any medication, just ordered me to drink lots of water. I have had 37 other consultants, mostly friends, some folks I hardly know, prescribe the consumption of bananas on a regular basis. I am now eating 6 bananas and trying to drink 64 ozs of water every day.

I have had no recurrence of thunderbolts.

2011-09-13T15:30:00.029-04:00

Founding Fathers had many flaws

Tuesday's Letters to the Editors
Tuesday, Sept., 13, 2011

Worshippers of the Founding Fathers would return us to the “good-ol’ days” of 1787, when most African-Americans were slaves, many poor whites were indentured servants and women couldn’t vote. At the time the founders wrote the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, Native Americans were being slaughtered for their land, and Mexicans indigenous to parts of what became the United States were included in the genocide. No women, Jews, Muslims, poor people or non-land owners were numbered amongst the founders, who were rich white men.

Conservatives seek simple solutions to poverty, violence and war that make rich folks richer while poor people suffer and weapons makers and war profiteers make big bucks while killing and injuring innumerable innocent people.

The problems are caused by big-moneyed interests with the help of simple-minded sycophants wearing colonial-styled clothes and holding signs with right-wing slogans.

They look backward, believing the mythologized Founding Fathers are more intelligent and moral than anyone today except a Rick Perry or Michelle Bachman.

Tom Turnipseed
Columbia

For some interesting responses to this letter go here:

Read more: http://www.thestate.com/2011/09/13/1968692/tuesdays-letters-to-the-editor.html#disqus_thread#ixzz1XrXWU1DX

The cost of 9/11

2011-09-11T19:13:00.028-04:00

By NEAL R. JONES: Guest Columnist
THE STATE

On this 10th anniversary of 9/11, it would be a mistake to remember only what was done to America. We also should look back on what we have done to others and ourselves in response to that cruel day.

Whenever individuals or nations suffer great loss, their pain can be expressed as either grief or anger. Unfortunately, our political leadership chose to channel our pain into vengeance and retaliation by launching two wars — one against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and another that persists though we accomplished our goal of toppling a hostile government.

These wars have cost more than 6,000 American lives. Hardly ever counted is the so-called “collateral damage.” By some counts, more than a million Iraqis have died directly or indirectly because of our war, most of them children. Hardly ever mentioned are the more than 600,000 American troops who have been treated so far in veterans’ medical facilities, many of whom will be physically and psychologically disabled for the rest of their lives. Hardly ever mentioned is the tremendous number of divorces and family breakups and veteran suicides, which have topped 18 per day in recent years.

These wars have been costly financially. When Noble Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated the wars’ costs three years ago, his conservative tally was $3 trillion to $5 trillion. That doesn’t include future borrowing for war expenses, interest on the debt or the cost of replacing military equipment. Neither does it include the long-term disability and health-care costs of veterans, which Stiglitz projects will run $600 billion to $900 billion. We will be paying for these wars for a long time.

These wars have been costly to our national priorities. The tea party has tried to convince us that the reason for the deficit is that school teachers, policemen, firemen and other public workers are making too much. They conveniently forget the cost of these two wars over the past 10 years — the first wars in history paid for entirely on credit. In every other war, we raised taxes to help pay for it. President Bush inherited a budget surplus, which he erased with a tax cut mainly for the rich. Then, incredibly, when he declared war and with deficits already soaring from his first tax cut, he plunged ahead with yet another round of tax “relief” for the wealthy. You don’t have to be an economist or a mathematician to know that if you increase spending and cut revenue, you create a deficit. Let us be clear: Conservatives are now using the deficit they created to excuse their shredding of the social safety net and their slashing of programs to protect and empower our most vulnerable citizens.

These wars have been costly to our national soul. We have squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership in the world and sullied our global reputation. We have forsaken our precious civil liberties and violated our constitutional rights, authorizing the government to spy on its own citizens, wiretapping their phones and intercepting their emails without a warrant. We have rounded up thousands of civilians and sent them to prisons beyond the reach of the law, where they have been held indefinitely without formal charges, without legal counsel and without trial, and where they have been tortured. We have poisoned our national discourse with intolerance and fear and paralyzed our political process with distrust and acrimony.

We finally killed Osama bin Laden. But if his intent was to undermine the American economy and America’s moral authority, then he may have won.

The Rev. Dr. Jones is the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia, our preacherman. Contact him at nealjones@sc.rr.com

DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS

2011-09-09T17:01:00.000-04:00

Is It Or Isn't It? What The Heck Is It?

Tom woke me up moaning in pain. His foot was throbbing, swollen and slightly red.

I was pretty sure right away that I knew what it was. About 6 months ago the exact same thing had happened to me. I waited several days before going to the doctor and when I did, they x-rayed for a stress fracture but found nothing; took blood to test for uric acid level to diagnose gout and found it was not elevated, but decided to treat it as though it was anyway. They gave me medicine, put me in a boot so I would stay off it and predicted that the intense pain would immediately diminish. It did and I was soon well.

There were differences. Tom's hurt just below the last joint in his middle toes; mine had been in the last joint in my little toe; gout usually occurs in the big toe. His hurt more when he walked on it; mine hurt all the time. But then men are tougher than women, aren't they? And of course he walked on it all the time, against my strong advice, while I rested mine and elevated it. He believed that, whatever it was, exercise--at least moderate exercise--would be beneficial, as would loud complaining.

He limped around for more than several days (so like a man) and listened to the law office entertain guesses -- an insect bite causing Lyme disease was one ominous diagnosis. Stress fracture and gout got equal votes. Someone supposed that a scratch from one of our cats, called cat scratch fever, could be responsible. My consistent prediction, shored up by my google research, was always gout and I urged him to go to the doctor.

At the same time he was having some intestinal problems, which he had used otc medicine to deal with, diarrhea, to be specific. Suddenly it was the day before our trip to our annual family fourth of July week Edisto beach trip and he realized he couldn't head off to such an isolated place, with only one doctor--if she was still in practice--without checking things out. We spent the day going from doctor to doctor; first for the intestinal problem, then for the gout. The intestinal problem was taken care of quickly enough, but the foot problem required a long wait and then we had to be seen by a new doctor.

First an x-ray to eliminate the possibility of a stress fracture-same thing they had done with mine-then a blood test which revealed no elevated uric acid, then the diagnosis of gout-just like mine! (I was
right, wasn't I, Tom!) He got a shot, a prescription for a round of

steroids and an admonition to stay off it as much as possible while in Edisto, with the promise that the medicine would work its magic and he would soon feel better.

He did not!

Every night he went to bed with his foot swollen and throbbing, swearing he would stay off it the next day.

Every day he went crabbing, swam with the grandkids, rode out on the boat for hours (though at

least he didn't go tubing), danced on the porch during our talent shows and danceathons.

Jeff recommended some folk remedies which he had read about, on-line of course. Cherries were the ticket. Tom is a great believer in the old adage "in for a penny, in for a pound" and more is better, so he ate cherries, and ate cherries and ate cherries till every dish and trash can in the house was filled with cherry pits and he was doing midnight runs further and further off island to grocery stores, as the nearby ones sold out of cherries. Unfortunately Jeff also suggested celery. Soon the bunches of celery crowded out the eggs and milk and other essentials in the refrigerator and the continuous celery crunch assaulted our ears. Tom's foot got no better.

Several weeks after we returned home, we went to an orthopedist, who, pursuing the idea that it might not be gout, decided to do further testing.

Doctors really don't know. I used to think they did. They talk to you about your symptoms; they perform various tests; then they know--they diagnose; they treat, based on their diagnosis and then you get well. How could I have been so naive?
What they do is, they take an educated guess. Then if that isn't it, they eliminate that diagnosis and go to the next possibility, then the next, till they hit the right one--if they are lucky. It is called differential diagnosis. They are good at it and usually get it right the first time--or the second.

They got Tom's right the second time. Dr. Burnworth ordered an MRI which revealed what the xray had not--a stress fracture. Now the treatment of this many times is a boot--that big, heavy, removable, Velcro wraparound with straps that has a rocker bottom. It stabilizes your foot while it heals, yet you can walk on it--carefully. Tom was unwilling to wear such a thing--too unwieldy, too time consuming to put on each morning. The doctor agreed to let him wear his Birkenstocks, because they have a stiff sole which gives much support to the foot. We left armed with pain medicine, some topical pain reliever to apply to his foot and an admonition to stay off it.

He did not!

Tom really tried. We had many meetings to attend though--The Hispanic Leadership Conference, the Christian Action Council Racial Healing Workgroup, the Carolina Peace Resource Center, Food Not Bombs, Homeless Helping Homeless. Our turn to work at Transitions for supper, the HHH car wash, a worship service that we were the worship leader for were all on the calendar. Our garden was in full tending mode. And of course there is the law firm. No time to rest and put his foot up--even under doctor's orders. He did make some concessions. When we went to the grocery store, he used a wheel chair--and loved it. He didn't use the electric one, but the manual one, which he propelled down the aisles and across the parking lot with great abandon. After his knee on the other side started hurting because of the way he had to walk to favor the injured foot, he did use a cane. Sometimes, when he wasn't doing anything else, he did elevate it. He did let me do some things in the garden that he usually does--but sometimes I would catch him out there.

His foot continued to hurt, to swell, to be red. Our next adventure was with his friend, Tim, of Pedorthic Orthotics who fits orthopedic corrective devices, which Tom wears in his shoe because of an old football injury. Tim persuaded him to wear a short, simplified boot. Desperate to do something, he agreed to try it. He has been in it since. Tim said he would notice a difference right away.

He did not!

It got worse. In addition to continued pain, the swelling took on a whole new shape--which we agreed was quite odd. The next emergency visit to Dr. Burnworth on August 29th was quite a revelation, to him and to us. Another x-ray showed a new fracture in Tom's foot, next to the original one--this time large enough that it did not take an MRI to reveal it!

Now what? Tom is really trying to take it easy. He is iceing the foot every hour, staying off it more and worrying. He is scheduled for a bone density test on Monday. The doctor didn't call it Osteoporosis, but I believe that will be his differential diagnosis.

He mentioned Boniva.

You know--Sally Fields--on television. Pharmaceutical advertizing.

We'll see.

SNORTBUCKET

2011-06-19T17:04:00.000-04:00

Poetry From My Youth

Mother died several years ago at 93 after a life full of joy and wonder. I have several boxes of her belongings, which I have been slowly going through, a little at a time. Last week I hit a treasure trove. The bottom of the box was filled with all the things of mine that a mother would keep—report cards, homemade Mother’s Day cards, objets d’art from Scout camp, term papers, poetry. I spent all the rest of the day reading the contents of the red file folder there—my writings from second grade on. I had forgotten lots of them. Some are pretty bad; some are pretty good; some are hilarious. Here’s a poem from the eighth grade. The theme for our journal writing for the week was imagination.

Snortbucket

She got away with anything.

She got away with it all.

She was Sneaky;

She was Bold.

She tore across the back porch with no clothes on at all!

“Do this, do that,” my Momma said.”

“You must clean up your room.”

But Snortbucket did nothing.

No tasks did she assume.

She got away with anything.

She got away with it all.

She was Sneaky;

She was Bold.

She tore across the back porch with no clothes on at all!

She laughed when grown-ups scolded.

She said smart-alec stuff.

She never got switched for nothing;

No eye was fast enough.

She got away with anything.

She got away with it all.

She was Sneaky:

She was Bold.

She tore across the back porch with no clothes on at all!

At dinner time she had her way.

“Artichokes make me regurgitate”

Ice cream, cookies, popcorn, cake--

Whatever she wanted, that’s what she ate.

She got away with anything.

She got away with it all.

She was Sneaky;

She was Bold.

She tore across the back porch with no clothes on at all!

Snortbucket bullied the cats and the dogs.

She tore up the neighbor’s yard.

All of us got the blame for her tricks.

She would laugh at us really hard.

She got away with anything.

She got away with it all.

She was Sneaky;

She was Bold.

She tore across the back porch with no clothes on at all!

Snortbucket was my nemesis.

I wished that she was dead!

And when I grew up--

She went away.

See, Snortbucket lived in my head.

SC OBSERVES THE CIVIL WAR SESQUICENTENNIAL

2011-06-07T00:57:00.000-04:00

And Tom and I Read a Book

This year marks the 150^th Anniversary of the start of the bloody Civil War that took the lives of over 650,000 Americans. Civil War anniversary celebrations are being held throughout the South and across the nation. A Grand Secession Ball was staged in Charleston.

In this sesquicentennial year, April 12, 2011 was a particularly significant day here in South Carolina. Ft. Sumter was fired upon to signal the beginning of the Civil War one hundred fifty years ago. On that day one hundred years later, on April 12, 1962, the Confederate flag first went up on the Statehouse dome during the centennial observances of the Civil War and in defiance of the growing civil rights movement. The date was observed across the state in many different ways. School children toured historic sites. Academicians pontificated about the significance of various aspects of the War of Northern Aggression. Civil War re-enactors reveled in the glory of the goriest war in history with battle reenactments and camaraderie around their campfires. Some people fired cannons. Some lit fireworks. Tom and I read a book!

Fraternities and sororities, social justice groups, politicians, theater people, high school and college English classes, churches, Girl Scout troops and Tom and I were asked to get involved in an Uncle Tom's Cabin Reading Marathon.We gathered all through the day at the Historic Modjeska Monteith Simkins House to take 10 minute shifts reading the anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

The organizing of the event was pretty complicated. Almost 200 people with busy weekday schedules had to be coordinated. The S.C. Progressive Network, local Quakers and the Harriet Tubman Freedom House Project were sponsors and kept the line moving, thanking each of us with a big smile as we finished.

The setting was just the right place. The modest white wooden house in downtown Columbia, now a museum, was once the home of the fiery Modjeska Monteith Simkins, known as the “matriarch of civil rights activists” in South Carolina. For over sixty years she fought to alleviate the pain and hardships of our state's sick and poor, the underrepresented and underprivileged. She challenged the white political leadership of the state to do what was fair and equitable among all people and she challenged black citizens to stand up and demand their rightful place in the state and the nation. It was around her kitchen table that much of the work was done to develop the lawsuit seeking equality for black schools filed in Clarendon County under the name Briggs v Elliot. This case, consolidated on appeal with others around the country, challenged the “separate but equal” doctrine in our nation’s schools. In 1954 the United States Supreme Court issued their opinion known as Brown v. Board of Education.

For his Irmo High School history class project some years ago, our son Jeff taped interviews with several South Carolinians from the civil rights era. They included his father, Tom, who helped set up private schools to avoid integration, and US District Court Judge Matthew Perry, a former civil rights lawyer and colleague of Thurgood Marshall. The best interview was with Modjeska, 82 years old by then, as they sat rocking on the front porch of this house, chatting. Jeff said she told a million stories—some irrelevant, but still absorbing--sipped a lot of something from the mason jar—he thought maybe it was not the same as the sweet tea she brought him—and she was the most fascinating person he had ever met

Community activist and writer, Kevin Gray organized the daylong reading of the iconic slavery-era novel as a way for community members to participate in history--to pause for just 10 minutes in the rush of our busy day to read a passage from the most relevant book the group could have picked on the day the Civil War started. Some South Carolinians tout states’ rights as the major cause of the war and deny that slavery was the primary reason for secession and the war. Kevin and many of us felt that it was important to set the record straight in a historically connected and low key counterpoint way. Published in 1852 and written by white abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, the 650 page book depicts life for African-American slaves. It tells the story of the slave Tom who refused to betray his fellow slaves, at the cost of his life. The book is credited with having a huge impact on the abolitionist movement. It’s the book that convinced white folks around the country and around the world that slavery was a cruel institution. Legend has it that, upon meeting her, Abraham Lincoln greeted Ms. Stowe by saying, "so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war."

All day long on April 12^th, women in heels and sandals, men in suits and jeans, kids in scout uniforms and soccer shorts came and went. Inside we sat in folding chairs, straddling camera cables, as we followed along in the books scattered around the room. When it was our turn at the mike, we stepped up to face the cameras, and began. I was nervous. A room full of people listened. ETV was recording the event for a documentary. WIS was filming for the evening news. Our words were being streamed live on line. I am a good reader, but the language in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is somewhat dated, and I was afraid the dialect would trip me up. I wanted to read with some expression, so nobody would miss the meaning of the story. All that was running through my head as I began to read, and my voice was shaky at first. But when I started reading, I forgot everything except the compelling words of Harriet Beecher Stowe. I had forgotten what a powerful book Uncle Tom’s Cabin is.

When I came to the podium at 10am, we were in Chapter VII. The evil slave trader Haley is crashing through the woods, searching for Eliza, the runaway slave. Even though he feels bad about it, Eliza’s “good” slave master has sold her child, Harry, to cover his debts and she has fled the plantation, her home since her birth, so that her family will not be ripped apart. The tension is fierce. Eliza, alone and desperate, is tortured by fears of what will happen to her child as she makes her way through the thicket toward what she hopes is freedom. Haley, wild-eyed and enraged, tears around in the undergrowth along the path in mad pursuit. The slaves assigned to guide him, playing dumb, lead Haley down the wrong route, giving Eliza a good head start. My time ends on that very satisfactory note.

For readers in the North, who had no idea what slavery really meant, this part of the story would be their introduction to one of the horrors of the institution of slavery. Slave holders sell their people as property; Families are torn apart; mothers watch their children sold, knowing they will probably never see them again. Even a relatively kind slaveholder makes no difference in the system. I’m glad I got to read that section of the story.

We read late into the night, from 8am till 4:15 a.m. We finished in just over 20 hours. It was a good day.

Does Our President Fear the War Complex?

2011-04-13T21:12:00.017-04:00

Would Obama Die for His Country?

Obama won the Presidency campaigning as a peacemaker but has approved $40 billion for arms sales to other countries in his first year in the White House compared to the $34.5 billion President G.W. Bush approved in his last year in office according to the US State Department. Bush, who blustered his way into war has been replaced by Obama, a smooth salesman for the US war complex, aka the military, industrial complex or defense industry. Obama has surged the number of troops in Afghanistan; deployed planes, cruise missiles and electronic attacks against Libya; and provided increasing amounts of arms to most of the countries in the Middle East, South Asia and most any other country that wants them.

The war complex relies on war and the threat of war to create their markets. Members of Congress, with defense plants and military bases in their states and districts and war complex contributions in their pockets, put defense spending cuts off-the-table while education, health care and other quality of life programs are cut to the bone. A Commander-in Chief that goes to war, okay sales and gifts of killing tools to almost any country that wants them and takes campaign contributions from the war complex is their kind of President. According to national security analyst Lawrence Korb, the baseline defense budget has grown for 13 straight years. Between fisca
l 1998 and 2011, the budget rose from $271 billion to $580 billion This doesn’t include war costs and the Afghanistan War alone costs us roughly $2 billion per week. The U.S. share of global military spending has jumped from one-third to one-half. If big money is made killing people is anyone exempt from being killed?

A lawyer friend was a White House Fellow assigned as an intern to top officials of the CIA in the late 1970s. A badge wielding agent came to my office and questioned me about his credibility for a top secret security clearance. My friend was in a position among the spooks to hear some inside stuff. Years later after a few drinks one evening he told me what he had heard about intelligence and military officials giving ominous messages to newly sworn in Presidents when they meet their Commander in Chief and explain to him their duty to provide him personal security and intelligence about national security.

Nowadays, national security bigwigs are from the United States Intelligence Community(IC) led by the Director of National Intelligence and includes top officers in military intelligence, the CIA and Secret Service. The IC collects and produces foreign and domestic intelligence, contributes to military planning, performs espionage and provides for the President’s personal security. They gather at the White House to brief the President on matters of national security like how he can authorize a nuclear attack with the black box brief case they present him. Finally, their spokesman lowers his voice in a sinister tone and says something like:

“Mr. President you are our new Commander-Chief and you have a very dangerous job. Four of your predecessors have been assassinated and six more survived assassination attempts. We will protect you but you must listen to us about matters of national security and cooperate with us for your personal safety. This video is about the safety issue.”

The new President is shown a video of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

I learned that war is a killer and money maker as a young soldier in basic training at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina in 1955. I enjoyed the running and calisthenics but bayonet and machine gun training made me realize what the military is all about. In bayonet training we attached our bayonets to our rifles and ran and stuck a dummy that was “the enemy”. Our trainers had experienced close up killing in Korea and they made us scream “kill, kill, kill” as loud as we could and stick the dummy as hard as we could. If we didn’t holler loud enough or stick the dummy hard enough we had to do all over again. A trainer shouted, “young soldiers this is what the Army is all about, kill or be killed!” I realized then the Army was not for me because I did not want to kill anyone and damn sure didn’t want to be killed.

Later we practiced shooting 30 and 50 caliber machine guns. When we finished the trainers shot up and wasted several boxes of ammunition. I asked my sergeant why they were wasting the expensive ammunition and he muttered, “Shut up young soldier, it’s the Army way.” Is this Obama’s way?

He has awarded 3 Medals of Honor to families of military personnel killed in
combat and said each “fallen hero…gave his life…his last full measure of devotion for our country.” Obama would be a global hero who risked his life for our country and people everywhere by saying “No” to war and the war complex.

OL' TIME RELIGION

2011-03-10T01:11:00.079-05:00

Mother Made It New

My Mother loved her family and she loved Jesus. One of her favorite songs was Jesus Loves the Little Children and she followed a Southern tradition of picking a cute little nickname to be called by her grandchildren. She chose Sugar, perhaps hinting at “give me some sugar”, a down-home metaphor for giving or receiving a kiss from a child. A cherished early memory of Mother was her asking me to give her some sugar, which she often did. Sugar’s maiden name was Ruby May Bell which became Ruby Bell Turnipseed when she married my Daddy, George Turnipseed. She died at 83 in1993 from congestive heart failure and was a proactive, caring Christian all her life. She required my brother Sam and me to kneel by our bed-side and say a prayer every night before she tucked us in when we were little children.

Our regular nightly prayer was: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray to God my soul to keep. God bless my Mother and Daddy dear and Heavenly Father draw me near. God bless me now and help me make a good little boy for Jesus sake. Amen.”

When I was a naughty boy my mother didn’t hesitate to whip my little behind. Mother’s favorite weapon for punishing us was a switch she made from a small branch cut out of a bush that would sting my bare legs below my little boy’s shorts. The switching I remember the most was when I was about 7 years old and repeated the f---word in front of her. I heard it from an older boy and had no earthly idea what it meant. Mother said I had used a dirty word and must be punished, without ever explaining to me what was dirty about the f---word. I was confused and had no idea why saying the f---word required punishment and was a bad word like taking God’s name in vain. I understood that God D---and even damn were no-nos. It was okay to say darn-it, durn-it or dog-gone-it but not damn-it. My reaction from the misunderstood switching is my excuse for my life-long fondness for cursing. My wife Judy doesn’t like me using such four letter words either and wouldn’t watch South Park with me because Eric Cartman and his fourth grade classmates were “potty mouths” who used the s---word incessantly and other four letter dirty words. The f---word is dirty, lowbrow and illicit but if you use hifalutin words like sexual intercourse it is socially acceptable even though they mean the same thing. George Carlin was my hero for ridiculing the hypocrisy about seven dirty cuss words being socially unacceptable and even illegal when multi-syllable words with Latin roots were both socially acceptable and legal for radio and television.

Mother’s strong religious beliefs ran in the family. Mother’s Dad was the Reverend Frank O. Bell, known in our family as Poppa Bell. Poppa was a full-time carpenter and part-time preacher in the Church of the Nazarene who left the poverty of rural Mississippi and came to Mobile, Alabama to make a living. We lived in a western suburb of Mobile and Mother took us to Sunday School and Church every Sunday at the First Church of the Nazarene in Mobile. In those days the Nazarenes were mostly working class white folks who believed in salvation and sanctification and would wail, shout and moan when the Holy Ghost took hold of them.

At least once a year a big revival meeting was staged every night for a week with visiting evangelists and a gospel band putting on a big show for Jesus in a huge tent with sawdust on the floor that was set up next to the small brick church. The preachers shouted that you must be saved by Jesus or burn in hell. Either get right with Jesus or suffer everlasting damnation! When I was about 6 years old an evangelist gave the altar call for salvation as everyone sang Just As I Am Without One Plea, O' Lamb of God I Come To Thee. The preacher stood at the altar and waited for the sinners to come down, crying and moaning to be saved. But if you didn't come on down, he came out into the congregation after you.

The preacher, whose slick shiny hair glistened under the tent lights, came down to me sitting next to Mother who was saved and was waving her hand and singing along with her eyes closed. The preacher grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me and shouted, "Son, Are you saved, Are you saved?" I didn't really know, because I couldn't get the feeling it appeared the others had, as they mournfully wailed things like, "Oh, Yes, Sweet Jesus." Then the evangelist said, "Son, if a drunken driver crashes into your Momma's car on the way home and you and your Momma get killed, she will go to Jesus in Heaven where the streets are paved with gold, because she is saved--but you will burn in Hell forever!" By then I was afraid and crying, but still refused to feign the feeling of salvation. I had seen articles in the National Geographic Magazine with nice looking young children who were Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists and I did not think they were going to burn in Hell because they weren’t saved by Jesus. Even at that young age I sensed that something was wrong with religion that uses our greatest fear of the unknown -- the fear of death -- to frighten folks into salvation. I now understand that some religions use the fear of our mortality to prosper.

In Sunday School we studied Joshua and the battle of Jericho. God told his prophet Joshua to totally destroy the enemy. Joshua 6: 21 says, "...they (the forces of God led by Joshua) utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, ox, sheep and donkey, with the edge of a sword." Then God's forces burned the city and took the silver, gold, bronze and iron and put it in the "treasury of the house of the Lord". I couldn’t understand why God would tell his prophet to kill every living thing including little children. The teacher said it was to teach us obedience to God.

I told Mother that I was afraid and did not want to go to church anymore. Not long after that, we started attending the Methodist Church, where Jesus' salvation was still the only way to Heaven, but at least the Methodists didn't scare you so much with Hell and the Devil as the Nazarenes had. Daddy’s family was mostly Methodist and his cousin became a prominent Methodist minister and Bishop. I liked Jesus' instruction to “do unto other as you would have them do unto you.” I didn’t want to hurt anyone and did not want anyone to hurt me. But many of the Old Testament teachings were about killing people in the name of God. The Methodist church was more open, less narrow minded and saw good in other denominations and faith traditions. Mother became even more spiritual and faithful as a Methodist. She sang in the choir and never missed being there every Sunday. She believed in her faith and became an advocate and activist for peace and social justice who not only talked the talk but walked the walk.

Mother was a leader of the United Methodist Women of the Western North Carolina Methodist Conference and attended so many meetings at the Lake Junaluska Methodist Conference Center and Retreat in the Smoky Mountains that we teased her about the lake being holy water for her. Working with another church program she became an avid supporter of the United Nations and its efforts for world peace and went to New York to attend its sessions. She was much less nationalistic and provincial than most of her friends and neighbors and saw the importance of the United States working with other nations to find peaceful solutions to world problems.

Mother enjoyed visiting religious sites and events in the United States and elsewhere. My two brothers and I gave her a 60^th birthday trip to attend the Oberammergau Passion Play in Bavaria, Germany which is staged every 10 years.

Mother’s spirituality inspired my religious journey away from narrow fundamentalism to a belief in the inherent worth and dignity of all people, everywhere. My wife Judy and I attended United Methodist and then Presbyterian churches almost every Sunday (like Mother taught me) for several years until we became Unitarian-Universalists in 1983. I was a State Senator and a progressive candidate for Congress in 1980 when I was asked to speak at the Unitarian Church in Columbia, South Carolina and discovered that several of their members were volunteers in my campaign who shared my beliefs in social activism. We began attending, agreed with its non-sectarian agenda of “deeds not creeds” and became members. I’ve visited many churches and religious gatherings throughout South Carolina to promote progressive politics and social action. Some worship services try to frighten folks to Jesus, and some are boring, but many others are interesting and inspirational with charismatic preachers and happy gospel singers who fill you with joy. Their diverse ritual and entertainment styles remind me of my own evolving religious experiences.

Mother’s example created awareness in me of the importance of spirituality in our lives. Jesus might not be the only way to the truth, but he had the courage of his convictions to give his life in his non-violent struggle for peace and justice. The stories of Jesus in the New Testament portray him as a fearless martyr for social justice and he is probably the most worshipped religious icon in human history. Along with such great prophets as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesus lived an exemplary life and died for the cause of peace and justice. I never thought of Jesus as my personal savior who would get me into Heaven when I die. But Mother did, and she started me on my journey toward understanding what life is about.

I am thankful for my family and friends who have helped me along the way, but most of all for my Mother who brought me into the world. Through the years her ol’ time religion grew into a new and stronger belief in the power of love and the inherent worth and dignity of all people.

SOPHIA STEPS UP

2011-02-22T08:29:00.000-05:00

A SOCIAL ACTIVIST IN THE MAKING

The circus was coming to Columbia, South Carolina, with all its clowns, trapeze artists, tumblers, stilt walkers, and fire eating acts. Bears, elephants and ferocious lions would soon be riding bicycles, standing on their heads, balancing on balls and jumping through rings of fire. What fun! Lots of Sophia's friends were planning to go with their families and several had asked her about it. But Sophia had been talking
to her Mom and reading about how animals are treated in the circus. Newspapers, websites,and animal rights organizations have been reporting the many ways animals are suffering at the hands of their circus trainers in the most well known circuses, large and small, all over the country. Living in inhumane conditions, housed in tiny cages and often in chains, the animals are tortured as a training method. Sophia had read about them all. Her Mom wouldn't allow her on the websites with graphic videos or pictures--she is only 12--but she read the descriptions.

Sophia and her family don't go to the circus. They don't want to support a form of entertainment that provides amusement for humans created out of the misery of the animals who perform. But Sophia wanted to do more than boycott the circus; she wanted to make a bigger difference. She wanted to inform other people about why animal circuses shouldn't continue and why people should attend only circuses that don't involve animal acts--like Cirque Du Soleil.

Sophia decided to get involved, to stand up for what she believes in, to act on her values. On Sunday she asked the minister if she could speak to the whole Unitarian Universalist congregation during the worship hour about her concerns. Reverend Neal granted her request with great respect and so Sophia stood before us that Sunday morning and spoke from her heart. She and her brothers, Nohl and Drew, and several friends, held up their homemade signs as she stepped to the mic and talked to us in words that could be heard to the far reaches of the sanctuary. Sophia asked us to stand with her in front of the Carolina Coliseum holding our own homemade signs that next weekend and bring awareness to the community about circus cruelty. She made a special appeal to the children of the congregation.

Tom and I vowed to go to honor Sophia's commitment. I learned volumes in the intervening week. Here's some of it.

Living Conditions The animals used by the circus once roamed free in the wild, living in family units by their natural instincts. Once they join the circus, they are separated from their families--baby elephants torn from their mothers--and live the rest of their lives isolated, often in chains or ropes, and intensely confined in close quarters where they are forced to eat, sleep, defecate and urinate in the same place, usually on concrete. Diets are not what they would eat naturally; no thought is given to climate control so that they are exposed to extreme heat and cold and they rarely receive decent medical care from veterinarians qualified to treat exotic animals.

Travel Ringling Bros. brags that its units travel more than 25,000 miles as they tour for 11 months of the year. Their own documents reveal that on average, elephants are chained for more than 26 hours straight and sometimes are continually chained for as many as 60 to 100 hours. Tigers and lions usually live and travel in cages that provide barely enough room for the animals to turn around, often with two big cats crammed into a single cage.


bullhook

Training Animals don't willingly perform the kinds of unnnatural acts you see in the circus. They are painful, damaging to their bodies and make no sense to them. Trainers use brutal techniques to break the animals' spirits and traumatize them into obeying their human trainers. The fear-induced performances are a result of using sleep deprivation, hunger, thirst, routine beating and other extreme methods. Bull hooks are driven into tender areas of an elephant's body, Electric shock, whips, baseball bats, blowtorches, pitchforks, and pipes are among the tools used to force the animals to cooperate. Some animals are kept muzzled to subdue them and prevent them from defending themselves. Some are drugged to make them manageble and some have their teeth removed. Some bears have had their paws burned to force them to stand on their hind legs.

Circuses have been known to keep topsoil ready, to camouflage the wounds and the blood on the elephants. Some actually employ someone to apply a powder to conceal the wounds and stop the bleeding of elephants that have been hooked too hard so that the injuries are not visible during the show. This is called "spot work."

The plight of elephants is the saddest, I think. Elephants are majestic creatures who are intelligent and self-aware. They are among the most socially-bonded animals on the planet and display a complex array of emotions, including grief and compassion. They use tools, mourn their dead, and communicate with each other over vast distances through sound. They are genetically designed to browse, constantly on the move for up to 18 hours out of the day, even when the food is readily available.One of the most common causes of elephant circus deaths is due to osteoporosis, a condition they suffer from simply because they do not have wide spaces to move around in. For anyone who knows about elephants, seeing these complex, family-centered animals, chained and broken, performing demeaning tricks is simply heartbreaking.

Demostrating On the corner close to the fountain, we demonstrators respectfully stood, careful not to block their path, holding up our signs as the circus goers entered the Coliseum. There were enough of us to make an impact. We had our homemade signs; others had printed signs, brochures, PETA CDs, coloring books and I'm An Ele-Friend stickers. Many of the rest of the folks assembled for three shows, but Tom and I were only able to make the Saturday morning one. A lot of the families passed us by without a glance, but a good many read our signs, took the literature and some even asked for the CD--including the policeman on duty. Nobody was ugly to us.

Sophia's family had awesome signs and great big smiles and her brother Nohl wore a chain in solidarity with the elephants.

What other people are doing Circuses are licensed by the USDA and they make unannounced inspections and investigate complaints of violations of the minimal standards of care of the Animal Welfare Act, leading to fines and even license revocations. Standards cover housing, handling, transportation, sanitation, nutrition, water, veterinary care, and protection from extreme weather and temperatures. All major circuses have many citations on record--including convictions, with fines and revocations. However listings on their website are only through 2008, so it is hard to judge what improvements have been made.

Several animal rights organizations, PETA, The Fund for Animals, Born Free USA and the Animal Welfare Institute have sued in federal court against circuses, offering as evidence eye witness accounts of former circus employees and undercover films of training sessions showing the cruel methods. Mostly they have been dismissed because of lack of standing of the plaintiffs. Many of them have ideas posted on their websites of ways you can help. Check out Steps To Take When the Circus Comes To Town.

Because of concerns about animal mistreatment and public safety, a growing number of communities and even states are considering banning or restricting the use of animals in circuses. Sacramento, California passed a new ordinance in 2010 which allowed the city officials to inspect and closely monitor the care of circus animals when the Ringling Bros.most recently came to town.

Meanwhile, countries around the world--Israel, Bolivia, Sweden, Costa Rica, Austria, Finland and India--have come forward to ban or severely restrict the use of animals in circuses.

Maybe, with courageous young social activists like our own Sophia Johnson to lead the way, our city will be the next to take action.

TOO FAT TO FIGHT

2011-02-03T16:08:00.042-05:00

The Battle Against Obesity

Michelle Obama broadened the battle-front when she brought her war against childhood obesity to the largest U. S. Army training center at Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina. Fort Jackson’s official mission is to provide the Army with trained, disciplined, motivated and physically fit warriors who espouse the Army's core values. Obama told Army personnel at the Fort that our recruits are too obese and “it’s affecting our ability to protect our freedom.” The first lady’s too-fat-to-fight remarks at Fort Jackson reflect her passion for waging war against childhood obesity in America. “Let’s Move” is the battle-cry of her project that targets America’s obese children who rank number one in the world in fattiness. She asked the military officials to support the program to combat America’s obesity epidemic and told them, “You have to get the whole country behind this.” Ms. Obama’s purpose for coming to Fort Jackson was to determine how the military is dealing with the problem and how solutions might be transferred to the general population. 40 percent of the 129,000 recruits each year are overweight, and only one-quarter of would-be recruits between the ages of 18 and 24 could even get into the military, mostly due to their weight.

To cope with the increasingly corpulent corps the Army has installed a “Go for Green” program, featuring things like switching from soft drinks to a hydration station--whatever that is--and posting nutritional information about cafeteria choices. Kim Milano is the wife of the Fort’s commanding officer and a nutritionist who works to improve the soldiers’ diets and exercise programs. Milan said “A lot of this could be transferred to schools across the country,” as she and Obama visited one of the soldiers’ dining facilities. Lt. General. Mark Hertling, who is the Army’s deputy commander for recruits, said the problem begins when the recruits are kids and spend too much time watching television, using computers and eating fast food. He said today’s youth might be smarter, but they don’t engage in enough physical activities, like playing outside. “ It’s a generational thing,” he said, “and it’s going to be hard to change a whole generation.”

A spoofy solution might be for the First Lady to host a kids’ “Biggest Loser” show with General Hertling and Kim Milano featured as trainers for the fat children. It would get great exposure for her pet project of ending children’s and soldiers’ obesity and could contribute to her husband’s efforts to win a second term. General Hertling would be training the fat kids into shape so they won’t be too fat to fight when they grow up (rather than blow up) and will have the ability to fight to protect our freedom from lean and hungry Al-Qaeda and Taliban warriors.

But Americans have a bigger threat from the fast food industry than the Taliban. According to an in depth report on CBS Evening News in November, the fast food killers spent $30 billion dollars last year on advertising which claimed their products are healthy, with mouth watering visuals of giant Big Macs and Whoppers. Two-thirds of Americans, or more than 190 million, are overweight or obese. Obesity-related diseases are a $147 billion dollar medical burden every year and childhood obesity has tripled over the past thirty years. Nutrition experts predict this could be the first generation in America in over 150 years to have a shortened life expectancy.

The US obesity rate is the highest of any country, while nearly 2 billion people in the world are undernourished according to the UK Government Office for Science.

We not only lead the world in consuming fast foods and obesity rates, we also have a bloated military budget. US defense spending surpasses the next closest country by more than eight times. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports that the U.S. military budget accounts for 43 percent of the world’s total military spending. US taxpayers pay for weapons supplied to countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, Iraq, Israel, and South Korea among others. Our defense budget is $720 billion, including the Pentagon base budget, nuclear weapons activities and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Too fat to fight. Bloated bodies—bloated budget. Shape up our soldiers and our children. Reduce the size of the military. “Let’s Move.”

NAME THAT KITTY - Part 2 on Thursday

2011-01-28T02:13:00.000-05:00

The Cat Who Came In Through The Window

Tom says I ramble and get off track, which is true and I did, and Jeff says my posts are too long, and they are -- so I ended my last post when it got impossibly long--even though I hadn't even ever gotten to the point. So this is part 2 and really is about the cat. Or, at least, after a while it is.

But first, let me explain: 1) Cats who come in and 2) The window

The first ever cat who came in uninvited did so through some door or other -- we're not sure which or when. This feral cat, once in, did not like the inside of our house, nor the people in it, and especially the loud screams they made and he tried desperately to get out. The people did not like the feral cat inside the house, especially the loud shrieks he made and they tried desperately to get him out. We were all unsuccessful. The cat tore around the house screeching and shredding things and we sprinted after him. When he holed up in the small back bathroom, 15 year old Jeff, who thought it was all much ado about nothing, volunteered to go into the room with a pillow case and capture the cat. He proceeded to carry out his plan--without a plan. Jeff is like that. Shirtless, gloveless, clueless, in shorts, he entered the bathroom armed with a pillow case. We listened, fascinated, to the uproar coming through the door. Screaming and ouching and spitting and hissing and things knocking into others things went on for a very long time. At last the door opened. Jeff silently emerged with a lumpy, vocal pillow case which he carried outside and threw over the fence as far as it would go. Jeff, who never spoke of it again, was ordered by his Grandmother to go for a tetanus shot on account of the cat bites and scratches that covered his body. The cat never came back.

But there is another cat........

And there is a window.....

We got the window because of Puck and Muck. Puck is our animal shelter kitty that Jeff and Cyndy gave us for our wedding anniversary about 11 years ago. Elfin and mischievous when she was tiny, like the character from Shakespeare, her name fit. Now she is grown, and lazy and sleeps in the sun most of the time--but still is an important part of the family. She loves to pose on the deck rail, the front window sill, the bookcase, the top of Tom's recliner, or anywhere that shows off her beauty.

Please Take Me Home

Muck is one of those unplanned-for kitties thrust upon us by happenstance, because we are known to be a soft touch. A work friend called about the poor abandoned kitty who had been living in the field across from their office for some weeks. They brought it inside, but no one would take it home, so it was going to the pound, unless.......

Muck is a tortoise shell kitty, whose fur looks like it is all mucked up. She looks exactly like Sideways Kitty, same fur, same half pint size, except that her head is sitting straight on her neck, so no one stares. She was not feral, so it was clear that someone had thrown her out into the field. She and Puck, after a few testy weeks, settled down and became friends.

I was not happy about some things though. Since the children were grown up and gone, we had pared down our menagerie to the two cats and had no more ancillary animals, such as gerbils, etc. I was ready to be less intense about animal care and less tied down to home. Most especially, I hated, hated, hated, the mess of the litter box. When we traveled for the weekend we could put the cat food and water outside in a bowl and that worked pretty well. Unlike dogs, they don't eat it all up at once and it lasts the whole weekend. Because they are easier to maintain is why we have mostly stuck to cats anyway. Except for the blasted litter box. However, the food became a problem because of the raccoons and possums, who ate it all in whatever quantities we put out and who became bolder and bolder in their pursuit of it. And they became bigger and bigger.

So, what to do? I began to contemplate a cat door. I never wanted one, because I think they are way ugly and I always thought about the next person in. How would a not-cat person new-owner handle our cat door. What to do? I'll tell you the answer! Google it.

The google answer is a cat window, which fits in the window like a window air conditioning unit. That is, you push up the lower part of the window and insert the cat window contraption into the window. No cutting a hole, and it goes with you when you go. I was amazed that there was such a thing. It was sorta pricey, but we ordered it and got our neighbor to help install it. (We are from the city and we went to law school. We can't do anything useful.) Jeff's father-in-law saw it, loved it and made himself one. (He is from the country and he did not go to law school--though his daughter Cyndy did. He can do everything useful!) If you are of our ilk instead of his, I will be glad to share the purchasing info with you.

It took Puck and Muck a very long time to figure out how to use it. We swung the flap back and forth. We stuck our hands through it. We stuck them through it. We put bowls of tuna on the other side of the flap. We waved sardines in front of their noses and snatched the sardines through the flap as the kitties grabbed for them. Finally there was a breakthrough and it has been heaven since. No more litter box. No more having to feed them outside where the raccoons can steal the food. They are completely independent. They are free to come and go as they please and so are we. We can go away for a weekend with no worries.

Nothing is ever perfect. Though Puck--the lazy one--is not, Muck is a hunter. I think it comes from his time living in the field on his own. He quite frequently catches things and brings them in through the cat window. (see earlier post YEECH SOME BUGS DESERVE THE DEATH PENALTY) Usually they are not dead; in fact, they are often quite lively. I try to catch him if I see him come in with something in his mouth, but if he sees me approaching, he dashes down the hall with the garden snake, cricket, field mouse, baby rabbit, frog, or bird and decides its fate. If it gets away, it may live in the house for several days before we rescue it or he recaptures it. Then it is released back into nature or suffers a slow death at his paws in the same way it occurs in the wild on Animal Kingdom. Except it is our rug that gets all bloody under the bed and all. Yuck!

This window thing has worked well for many years. There have been naysayers. So many of our friends have warned us of the dangers. "What," they say, "if wild creatures from the outside--raccoons, possums and such, come in through that window? What will you do then?" Of course, it has not happened in all these 9 years, so why should it now? I have seen no raccoons, no possums, no deer, no bear. Not in all these years of Muck and Puck going in and out 10 or 15 times in the day and in the night.

And then............

About a year ago, a big black cat came in that window. This feral cat, once in, did not like the inside of our house, nor the people in it, and especially the loud screams they made and he tried desperately to get out. The people did not like the feral cat inside the house, especially the loud shrieks he made and they tried desperately to get him out. We were all unsuccessful. The cat tore around the house screeching and shredding things and we sprinted after him. He clawed up the walls and slid down; he tore across the tops of the upholstered chairs; he ran up the front drapes and shredded his way down, pulling them apart as he came. Then by some miracle he found the cat window and zipped his way out.

We were all traumatized, including Puck and Muck and sat quietly for awhile, gathering ourselves until we could regain our senses and be thankful it was over.

AND THEN THE CAT CAME BACK. Again. and then again. and then again. Mostly he comes in the dead of the night. Mostly he comes straight in and out like a streak through the cat window. To get food and water and be gone. Muck and Puck, who once freaked out each time, hardly blink an eye now, though they do not approach him, or even move while he is inside for those few seconds. He has become slightly bolder. He comes sometimes in the evening while I am at the computer in the next room, but never when I am in the den--the room with the window. He comes more often. I can not post a picture, because I do not have a camera with a shutter speed fast enough to catch anything more than a blur.

So, is he ours yet? Or will he ever be? Is it time to start trying to make friends? To start picking out a name?

Fenster and Sam

Among the most recent good names we have used is one by master namer Jeff for their german short haired pointer who just died after 11 wonderful years. Fenster was the most kid friendly dog I have ever known with almost the best name ever. We have immortalized Fenster in the law firm by incorporating his name into some of our computer passwords--though I guess we will have to change them now since I have spilled the beans.

Some years ago Jeff's kids gifted us a bronze cat for our deck, which they and Tom together named Buck, to go with Puck and Muck. Tom is quite anxious to be in charge of the next choice of names for any new animals. Considering his South Park nature, I am refusing to accommodate and, still in the nascent stage of the relationship, I am wondering, what shall we name the cat who came in through the window?

NAME THAT KITTY - Part 1 on a Sunday

2011-01-27T03:04:00.000-05:00

The Cat Who Came In Through the Window

He is part of our family now--sort of--and it is time we gave him a name. In our family the naming of pets is most important and the--sort of--is sort of important.

We had several pets when I was young, some Jim's some mine,

some ours together. Our names for them often were physically descriptive or , more often, reflected their personalities. Our very first was Shorty Shorttail, a tiny turtle that Mom and Dad found in the creek in Estill Springs, which, you may remember from earlier posts, is Mom's home town in Tennessee. He was just the right size for our pet restricted apartment and we were allowed to keep him at our young age only after earnest, down-on-our-knees oaths that we would care for him.

We hovered over Shorty Shorttail incessantly for weeks--picked him up, talked to him, fed him lettuce, bugs, fish and turtle food, hot dogs and other more inappropriate things. As time passed by, however, the novelty wore off, we visited his tiny turtle tank up on the mantle less and less often and Mom took over the feeding more and more. When Shorty Shorttail passed on, from natural causes or heartbreak, Mom disposed of his tiny body. According to Mom (I have blocked this from my memory), it was several weeks before she heard, one morning, the plaintive cry from me, "Where's Shorty Shorttail," and had to tell us that he was gone forever. We were inconsolable. Clearly we were too young to accept the responsibility of pets and were not allowed to have another for a long time.

We had several pets with lovely names after that. Her Majesty Honey the Cat earned her name because of her color and because she thought she was the Queen. Her major accomplishment was to leap onto the mantle, delicately weave her way along the various pieces of bric-a-brac there, without disturbing one--an amazing feat--and, just at the edge, strike a majestic pose where she would sit for several hours. Thus her name. Our family tradition was to gift animals names of more than one word--with a last name and first, or with titles and surnames--and we always called them the full name--still do. So, for instance, she was not called Honey or whatever, but Her Majesty Honey the Cat. Even when I was calling her to come in, it was not "Here kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty.....", but "Here hermajestyhoneythecat,
here hermajestyhoneythecat........"

The Great Jimmy Piersall

My favorite pet name when I was little was my last cat's. She came along at a time when my Dad and I were big Birmingham Baron fans. They were a farm team for the Major Leagues and we went to many a game together. I was in heaven. I liked the hot dogs, drinks and pop corn at least as much as I did the game. Being on an adventure with Dad and being in the know about the team was also very cool. My favorite player was Jimmy Piersall, a shining star of the team, lightening fast outfielder and great hitter, who went on to star in the Majors. He became famous and had a movie made about him for other reasons--but that is another story.

So as I planned out the name of my new kitty, Jimmy Piersall was a major player. She was one of a litter of 10 from Mitzi, our next door neighbor's cat. She was a fuzz-ball new born. Having lived under the house for a time during her early life, she had fleas. My last name (pre-Turnipseed) was Davis. All that rolled around together in my head and came out

Fleabitten Butterball Piersall Mitzi Jr. Davis

THE BEST NAME EVER

I loved her. I loved her name. I loved to say it. I loved to call her.
"Here fleabittenbutterballpiersallmitzijrdavis............

Here fleabittenbutterballpiersallmitzijrdavis.........."

My grandkids love her name now!! We play a game of trying to see who can say it fastest, who can call her the best. I expect the ghost of Fleabitten Butterball Piersall Mitzi Jr. Davis to come flying in the door now just as she used to do back then.

Our children have carried on the tradition of giving careful consideration to our pet names, sometimes more creative and sometimes not so much. During a particularly busy and stressful period of our lives, when we were in the midst of a political race or something, we had some simple names, Bicky and Licky -- which were short for Big Kitty and Little Kitty.


G E R O N I M O !

Jeff was always the best namer. His black cat was Geronimo. Geronimo liked to hide somewhere--behind the couch or door, on the top of the shelf, and, when you passed by, he would spring up in the air with his back arched and bounce at you on little cat feet. If he were able, you can be sure he would have been screaming "Geronimo."

Most of our pets have been found, like Sideways Kitty. When he came up out of the back woods, he had multiple problems, all of which the vet cured. The most problematic was a ferocious ear infection. When it finally stopped draining and the swelling was gone, he appeared


Sideways Kitty

healthy, except that his head leaned way over to the left side in quite the unusual way. The doctor assured us that he was well, but could not predict if he would ever straighten up, or if his balance would be permanently affected. Well, no, yes and no. He never straightened up, but forever after walked with his head way sideways, like he was trying to catch raindrops in one ear. At first it upset his balance even after the infection was gone, I think just because he was having to look at the world sort of cattywampus, as it were. He sort of wobbled when he walked. Once his eyes and brain got adjusted, his equilibrium did too and he was fine, except for his sideways head. It was very strange to see Sideways Kitty jump like any other cat though, and strangers were quite unnerved by the sight.

We had several other no-name kitties, not named because they were not really ours long enough. One was a bedraggled, white kitty found in the bushes, close to death. Jeff and Jeny were frantic to keep her, but I refused to add her to the 2 cats and 1 dog we had at the time. We did take her to the emergency vet (it was on a Sunday) and spent a vast amount of money to save her life. The doctor, bless his heart, agreed to split the cost of the treatment (in other words, I guess he charged us half price) and agreed to find her a home. We visited her and kept tabs to be sure that truly happened, to be sure she didn't end up in the place where the unadoptable kitties go. Had we kept her, I would have called her Expensive.

Our dog was the only pure bred we ever owned. He was a poodle. We never had him poodle cut and, in fact, rarely had him professionally groomed, so only an expert would have known he was pure poodle. Augie Dawgie was a delight, though pretty scruffy looking, and we wanted to honor his heritage by having him registered. We thought it would enhance his self esteem to have papers. Since it was their idea, I leaned on the kids to prepare the papers, which required gathering an infinite amount of detail about his health, his family tree, his measurements, his daily routine and the name he was to be registered under.

Imagine our surprise when Augie Dawgie was rejected. The powers that be returned the application the kids had sweated over, not because his lineage was faulty or lacking, but because the NAME WE SUBMITTED WAS INAPPROPRIATE. Jeff's children love to hear what he and his sister decided to do about this setback. This is their favorite family story.
We put our heads together and decided to come up with a name that would pass muster in the snooty world of pure breeds and show dogs. We submitted it and it was accepted. That was how he became....

but he was always just Augie Dawgie to us.

(to be continued)

King Day at the Dome in South Carolina

2011-01-18T17:29:00.051-05:00

Creating a Coalition for Social Justice

The 12^th annual King Day at the Dome march and rally at the South Carolina State House on January 17 brought together a coalition of organizations and individuals who are working to fulfill the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They advocated cooperative activism for more jobs, affordable housing, better health care for the poor and disabled, and to oppose drastic cuts for public education, as well as a draconian Arizona styled immigration legislation that will be very costly, financially and morally.

Our event has had the highest attendance of any King Day birthday celebration in the country since 2000, with this year’s crowd filling the front plaza and including two busloads from Detroit. More than 50,000 people participated in 2000 in our first such march and rally sponsored by the South Carolina NAACP to protest the Confederate flag flying atop our State House along with the United States’ and South Carolina’s state flags. In a disrespectful gesture to the massive protest, the South Carolina General Assembly brokered a “compromise” among themselves that moved the rebel flag from atop our state capitol to the Confederate soldier’s memorial monument in front of the State House on July 1, 2000.

The Confederate flag has been a symbol of white supremacy, waved by the Klan, racist rednecks and assorted devotees of the Confederate morality when they lynched and terrorized black people from the Civil War to the present day. The KKK waved the rebel flag as they burned black churches in South Carolina in the ‘90s. In 1962 it was placed atop the State House in defiance of the Civil Rights Movement. At the Confederate soldier’s monument the rebel flag has remained a visible statement of in-your-face disrespect to people of color. At the rally we renewed the S.C. NAACP's call to remove the Confederate battle flag from the State House grounds.

Dr. Lonnie Randolph said it was an atrocity to celebrate the 150th anniversary of South Carolina's secession from the union on December 20^th in Charleston with a “gala”. South Carolina’s secession and subsequent firing on Fort Sumter to defend slavery started a war that killed over 600,000 soldiers, and is nothing to celebrate. He declared it is as offensive to black people as it would be to Jewish Americans if we “celebrated” their oppression under Nazis Germany.

The NAACP held a protest march and rally against the secession “celebration” in Charleston and I was in a picture on the front page of the local newspaper participating in the march. On December 29 Dr. Randolph held a media conference that I attended. 3 days later I received a handwritten letter from an unnamed person who signed the letter, “a fairly intelligent redneck who loves South Carolina”

and printed “Sons of the Confederacy, Senior Vice President” on the envelope. He began the four page diatribe with, “Mr. Tom Turnipseed, Since you seem to love the black people (Re: Your recent smiling face while Lonnie Randolph did the usual BS on TV and you marching in Charleston ) Do you realize the blacks are taking over and whites like you are helping and cheering them on?...They have a truckload of children (without) a daddy so they get a bigger welfare check…the white race creates everything in America”. As a life member of the NAACP serving on the SC NAACP’s planning committee, I‘ve raised the wrath of racists who have picketed our law office with signs calling me a race traitor.

The immigration issue is also threatening to racists. Dr. King said “We may have come on different ships, but we are in the same boat now.” Wade Henderson, CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Coalition spoke at our rally against the immigration legislation pending in South Carolina, calling for coalition action to defeat it.

Passage of the law will require State resources for additional law enforcement personnel, more prison space, the defense of legal challenges. We will lose tourism dollars due to boycotts and lose labor for the tourist and construction industries and to harvest our crops, all while vital government services are cut. Morally, the bill violates our values by jailing peaceful, hard-working people and separating children from their families, as well as by racial profiling.

Homeless Helping Homeless (HHH) was on the King Day agenda. HHH members are working to remove the negative stereotyping of homeless and become responsible, productive citizens with jobs, affordable housing and health care.

John Holmes, chairman of Homeless Helping Homeless (HHH) quoted Dr. King, “we are all interdependent, all interrelated. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are our brother's keeper because we are our brother’s brother.”

Our interdependent coalition at King Day at the Dome will work for social justice to fulfill Dr. King’s legacy.

Christmas, Holiday or Holy Day?

2010-12-24T01:06:00.080-05:00

Santa, Jesus and Christmas

Santa Claus is the icon for the marketing madness that dominates the season named for Jesus Christ, who taught us to love everyone everywhere. Jesus was an activist for peace and poor people who drove the money changing marketers out of the Temple, and became a martyr for social justice. Our ever lengthening Christmas season is make or break time for retail marketing and the economy as we struggle to make ends meet in the aftermath of the great recession. Before Halloween, Santa Claus was seen popping up among the pumpkins in TV ads. We decorate the mantle in our den with a diverse collection of Santas and his elf-like predecessors of ancient religious and pagan groups who reveled at annual mid-winter celebrations. Increasingly, Santa has become the supreme symbol of out-of-control consumerism. The Jolly Old Elf of mass marketing rules the day named for Jesus in the most materialistic culture in world history. We are caught up in a frenzy of advertising, buying and selling, that diminishes the relevance of the birth and exemplary life of Jesus. On Monday of Christmas week the largest newspaper in South Carolina had two thirds of its front page occupied by an article titled “From paintings to gizmos to toys, Christmas bringing folks to stores” and a picture of a young boy and his mother rummaging through giant stacks of toys in a local store. On most days since October, the paper has become a wrapper for a big bundle of advertising inserts for local retail stores.

Not surprisingly, Christmas is the most likely time of the year to experience depression under the pressure of such marketing madness. Especially for Christians, Christmas should be the happiest time of the year as they celebrate the birth of Jesus with family and friends. But according to the National Institutes of Health, Christmas is the time of year that people experience the highest incidence of depression.Mental health specialists say there is a significant increase in complaints about depression at Christmas time and a survey revealed that 45% of the depressed respondents feared this most festive time of the year. Health care providers and law enforcement report the highest incidences of suicide and attempted suicide during the Christmas season.

I began feeling an overwhelming sense of sadness around Christmas when I was about 12 or 13 years old and retreated to my bedroom even though Santa Claus was coming to town. Maybe I worried too much about whether I had been bad or good, naughty or nice, but visions
of sugar plums didn’t dance in my head and I didn’t have myself a merry little Christmas. I would become despondent and would tell my Mom and Dad I didn’t feel like going to school. Mother took me to the Doctor and his diagnosis was seasonal affective disorder (SAD), caused by the dark winter weather. I don’t know for certain why I got depressed, but I still tend to get irritable and down-in-the dumps during the holiday season. I am 74 years old and dread of the holiday season has haunted me since I was a kid. When I was in high school and college I was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and received electro-convulsive (shock) treatments as therapy.

A major reason for depression is that people get angry and regretful at Christmas because of commercial and social pressure to spend too much money on gifts and go further in debt, and attend or host too many parties. Many are depressed due to a victim mentality created by excessive reflection on the inadequacies of life in comparison with other people who seem to have more happiness and possessions. I dwell on missed opportunities of the past and coulda, woulda, shoulda speculation rather than focusing on an awareness and the reality of the present. Others dread Christmas because they are expected to attend social gatherings with people they'd rather not be around and have dinner with their extended family and argue politics etc. Especially, in our economic crisis, folks feel bad because they can’t afford to buy nice gifts for their family and friends. At least for Christians, the greatest gift at Christmas is Jesus Christ, who gave his life in the struggle for peace, justice and poor people.

With over a trillion dollars budgeted for the military and defense related expenditures in 2011 we should emulate Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jesus who engaged in civil disobedience and gave their all for peace and poor people. Jesus rejected the vengeful “eye for an eye” in favor of “turning the other cheek” in universal love. After Jesus turned over the tables of the money changers in the temple he was arrested, tried and crucified. Rather than joining in the excessive commercialism symbolized by Santa, those of us who believe in what Jesus did should love all people and become activists for peace and poor people.

Michael Moore is my Hero

2010-12-22T16:15:00.014-05:00

Government secrecy destroys democracy. In this video from the Rachel Maddow show of December 21, 2010, Michael Moore discusses the necessity of transparency in government, particularly in light of the revelations of the WikiLeaks cables.

Poetry for Boys

2010-12-15T17:51:00.000-05:00

Billy Collins, My Kind of Poet

Boys are brave; boys are adventurous; boys are daring; boys are bold.

My Eleventh grade boys in Williston-Elko High in low country South Carolina were no different. They fought on the play ground; they snuck cigarettes in defiance of school rules (this was 1964--before marijuana was discovered there); they played tough man football; they cussed, they drank and they spit. But they shared a universal fear of one thing in my classroom, even the truly brilliant ones--as did all the boys I ever taught. They were afraid of Poetry.

Some didn't want to tackle it because they were afraid they couldn't understand it. Others didn't because they were afraid the class would discover they liked it and they would suffer ridicule. When it was time for the poetry books to open,the boys would be begin to slump, slowing sliding down on to their spines. Their heads would half disappear beneath the desks and they would will themselves invisible, trusting the eager girls to take up the slack.

I cracked the wall of resistance only once each year with an Emily Dickinson poem. It always worked and I always used it because I am very sneaky as you may have observed from other posts. The poem is I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed, (or Inebriated on Air Am I, as my students liked to call it) wherein Emily compares, metaphorically, being gobsmacked by the beauty

of nature to being stinking, staggering drunk.

They loved it. The imagery was absolutely clear to them, and they fought for the opportunity given to read it out loud to the class as the dew drunken Emily--complete with staggers, slurs, and retching. It was usually a little too realistic, but what's a teacher to do?

How I wish Billy Collins' poetry had been around then. All my students would have loved it, fresh faced girls and skeptical boys. His subtle, understated, humorous poetry is made for young people. And when he makes a point, touches your heart, shows you what's good in the world, you are so ready to receive it, it rushes right on in. I have seen classrooms full of kids of all ages, but especially teenagers (yes, girls and boys) unabashedly gush over his poetry.

Billy Collins is the most popular living poet in America, chosen New York State Poet Laureate and U.S. Poet Laureate (twice). He writes witty poetry--sometimes controversial--about everyday things, in a really quirky, tender and profound way. Even his titles are odd. Two of my favorites are Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes and Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep A Gun In the House. This last is about a neighbor’s dog barking incessantly through the night and Collins’ dark, ominous longings.

My truly favorite Collins’ poem is Litany. Oh how my Eleventh grade boys would have loved it! That year we studied the English Romantics—Byron, Shelley, Keats—writing treacly, syrupy elegys, odes and sonnets that they could not abide!!!!! Though this poem is open to many interpretations, Collins sure plays with us as he takes on the love poem, piling on, as the love struck often do.

He “steals” a bit of someone else’s romantic poem:

You are the Bread and the Knife

—then runs with it, tongue in cheek. Listen as the poet reads aloud in his understated fashion:

For a great treat watch a three year old recite Billy Collins' poem Litany from memory.

I wonder if he will still like poetry when he is an Eleventh grader?

How Does Your Garden Grow? The Harvest

2010-12-09T00:15:00.001-05:00

Containing more Lessons from my Daughter and From My Son

The End for 2010

The last of the harvest has been eaten. Tom cut four lone pieces of okra from the garden the end of November and ate them raw, cut up into our mixed salad. It was not enough for a mess and some folks would have just tossed them, or put them in the compost pile.

But Tom is a WWII baby, whose mother’s voice still echoes in his head. “Waste not, want not..... You must belong to the Clean Plate Club..... Eat your food—just think about all those starving children in Africa.”

I hear a similar voice. I could never understand, though, about that starving children thing. Why in the world couldn’t we send the food—which I DID NOT WANT---to the hungry children who so needed it?

First Harvest of the Season 2010

This year we planted a limited number of crops, unlike in past years. The tomatoes and okra were givens, though not quite as much okra as in the past. Peppers and fields peas rounded out the garden. My three favorite summer foods are tomatoes, okra and field peas. I could eat them every meal.

I do not eat peppers. To be in the same room while Tom is cutting them up makes my eyes water. Tom puts them in everything he eats and if, by accident, it is something I also am eating, my mouth burns for hours. Taking a hint from Jeff's cheese stuffed peppers dish, Tom also makes his own unique stuffed hot peppers, stuffing them with all kinds of cheeses, smoked oysters, crab meat, chopped shrimp, smoked salmon, tuna, minced clams and other interesting and unusual things. The two tricks to this dish are to wear gloves during preparation (the more important of the two) and to roast them well so that the intense heat is under control. He freezes these individually on cookie sheets so that he can pull out one or two at a time to roast for his dinner.

The only disappointment were the field peas. They were heavenly tasting, but almost nonexistence. We planted four rows of them, two on one side of the garden and two on the other. The rows on the right side yielded some every now and then, so that every few days we had gathered enough to cook a mini pot full. Tom let me eat them all each time(about 3 spoonfuls), because I was the one who had begged to plant them this year. The other two rows yielded nothing—not one pea. The plants looked healthy and were heavy with dark lush leaves. That was it. No peas. We are going to be more careful about the exact kind of field pea we try next year. I think we will try two different kinds, maybe crowder and pink eye peas, and keep track to see if either does better than this year. If anybody had a recommendation, please let us know. I don't know if I can go another summer without fresh field peas. On the other hand, Tom may be over it and have no interest in trying them again. If you have read my previous gardening posts, you know that Tom is the master gardener and I am the sometimes helper—except for the summer of his hip replacement, when I was the worker bee under his rigorous oversight. So if he says it’s a no-go, then we will be pealess next year.

The tomatoes were .......... Wow!!

Sam & Madeline pick our tomatoes

We planted many heirlooms this year, harder to grow, but so worth it. The whole experience is an affirmation that beauty is only skin deep. Heirlooms are open pollinated, not hybrids, that look like they've grown wild. They're all different lumpy shapes and sizes, with scarred splits in the delicate skin and the flesh is firm, sweet, rich, lush, and smoky tasting. I love to eat them straight out of the garden, like apples, hanging over the sink with the juice dribbling down my chin. I have been excited to learn that, besides being funny looking

Davis & Tom

and tasting scrumptious, they are more nutritious, packed full of vitamins and antioxidants, than are the more common hybrid varieties. Hybrids, on the other hand, are cross pollinated, developed for commercial purposes--a uniform size to make them easy to pack, with thick skins to be bug resistant, and to stand up under rough handling and for travel. Hybrids look uniformly, perfectly attractive, but are mealy, juiceless and drip free, manipulated for the sake of economics, taste be damned.

Our earliest harvest is always green tomatoes, picked to thin the plants so that they will yield more. I have searched all my cookbooks and the internet for the best green tomato recipe to be had. I am glad to share it with you. The secret is the mustard mixture that you spread on the tomato before you fry it. It is messy, but the spread adds a tang that makes this dish special.

Fried Green Tomatoes

This recipe is from Robert Lorino of The Irondale Café in Irondale, Alabama.This restaurant is the inspiration for Fannie Flag’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café. The recipe is world famous.

2 Medium hard green tomatoes, chilled

1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon sugar

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon paprika

1/8 teaspoon ground red pepper

1 ½ teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

½ cup yellow cornmeal

¼ cup hot bacon drippings or vegetable oil

Cut tomatoes into ½ inch slices

Stir together mustard and next 5 ingredients. Spread on both sides of tomato slices. Coat with cornmeal.

Fry tomatoes in hot drippings (or oil) in skillet over medium heat 3 minutes on each side or until browned. Drain.


Yummmm!!!

We planted less of everything this year, so we only froze a few of our tomatoes and gave away those we couldn’t eat at three meals a day sliced, diced, minced and roasted, in sandwiches, sauces, and stews. The office attorneys and staff got lots and we had enough get ripe at once during the summer to serve them on Sunday in Finlay Park at Food Not Bombs.

Our wonderful preacher, Neal, got the lion’s share though. In fact, he called every Saturday night to remind us to bring him some. “You know my favorite food is a BLT sandwich,” he would say. He even wanted us to bring a bag of them and hang them on his office door on the Sundays he was not preaching. There was a little catch in his voice the Saturday night we had to tell him the yield was over and there would be no more tomatoes in the morning. He is a tomato glutton and I threatened to tell the Board to reduce his salary, as we were paying part of it in produce, the old fashioned way. LOL.

He did not LOL.

Okra was our most prolific crop this year. Originally from Africa, okra is a hot weather plant. We put the seeds in the ground later than any of our other crops and it is the last to stop yielding—when the weather is below freezing for several nights in a row, usually in late November. We use it in stews and gumbos and soups, but primarily we coat it with corn meal and deep fry it. Fried okra is as Southern as fried catfish, fried chicken, fried pork chops, fried squash, and….fried green tomatoes. Good as it tastes, Tom and I have stopped eating fried food of any kind, switching to broiled or baked, for the sake of our health. But fried okra--we just have not been able to give it up. Until this year. In yet another of the Lessons From My Daughter, Jeny introduced us to a new way to cook okra. It is healthy, less messy than fried, and so tasty that we are never looking back. Sauteed okra is simple.

Sauteed Okra

Cut okra in slices as for frying. (If you have just washed it, pat it dry with paper towels, or wait for it to air dry). Coat the sauté pan well with oil. On medium high heat, sauté the okra in pan until brown on edges and slightly crisp, 4-6 minutes, stirring constantly so as not to burn. Lightly salt if desired.

There are more elaborate recipes with onion and various spices, but we all like it so well plain we’ve not tried to fancy it up yet. Maybe next year.

Both of our children have turned into master gardeners and master chefs and their gardens include a wide variety of herbs to use in their cooking. Our garden in no way rivals theirs. Jeny grows a wider variety of crops than we do, including a fall garden.

Jeff plants cucumbers, and pumpkins, in addition to most of the same things we do. He plants pumpkins and such for fun for the kids. Sam loves cucumber cookies. The Lessons from my Son in this blog post involve his turning his garden produce into highly sought-after gifts. His cucumber and okra pickles and fresh salsa, made with his own tomatoes and peppers, are to die for and he makes many of us happy with his homemade Christmas and birthday gifts. The marvel of this is that he manages it at all, in a teeny plot on the side yard, raided frequently by their two large, rowdy family dogs.

Winter is here, the temperature is in the 20’s and the garden is only a memory, except for a few frozen quarts of tomatoes in the freezer and some of Jeff’s pickles in the cupboard. We are already looking forward to next summer and so, I am told, is Neal. He misses his BLT sandwiches.

The Rich Get Rich and the Poor Get Poorer

2010-11-27T01:18:00.085-05:00

Hunger and Homelessness in America

"There's nothing surer; the rich get rich and the poor get poorer," was a slogan of the roaring 20s. The famous phrase was adapted from “Ain’t We Got Fun,” a popular song recorded in 1921. So what’s new in America in the first decade of the 2000s?

Nothing! America’s top 72 wage earners averaged 84 million
dollars each in income in 2009, according to Social Security Administration data. The richest 1 percent of us earned 24 % of the nation's total income, the highest since 1928, just before the Great Depression. On the other hand, 14.3 % were living in poverty in 2009, according to the U. S Census Bureau. 50 million people from 17.4 million families are so poor they couldn’t buy sufficient food last year. About one million children from more than a third of these households missed meals regularly according to a recent study by the Department of Agriculture. At dinner, families gather to share together. But for the children, dinner time can be the cruelest part of the day. Almost 1 in 4 of them doesn’t know when they will have their next meal.

Because there is a high turnover and many homeless people stay hidden, homeless and hunger counts are only estimates. The Department of Housing and Urban Development reported a count of 643,067 homeless persons nationwide on a single night in January 2008. 1.6 million used emergency shelters or transitional housing during 2007/2008, suggesting that 1 in every 50 persons in the US used the shelter system at some point. 170,000 families lived in homeless shelters.

With home foreclosures at record highs and continuing unemployment, homelessness is increasing.

Republicans in the U.S. House have blocked a bill that would have extended jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed beyond the holiday season. About 2 million people will lose their benefits if they are not extended, according to the National Employment Law Project. The blocked benefits would save the jobless from hunger and homelessness during the most severe recession since the 1930s and boost spending in the economy that will generate more jobs. Long-term unemployed workers are likely to spend their benefits right away on rent, food and other necessities, and create jobs in our economy. The Congressional Budget office estimates the "multiplier" effect of spending $65 billion on unemployment insurance extensions will increase gross domestic product $104.7 billion which translates into 488,000 payroll jobs.

The plutocrats controlling our government with campaign contributions and slick lobbyists oppose extending benefits to unemployed people. They fight to keep their unjust tax cuts and sit on the billions in bailout cash they received that we were told would save the economy and create jobs for poor and unemployed people. U. S. companies reported after-tax profits of $1.22 trillion last quarter, the highest on record dating back to 1947, according to the Department of Commerce.
When will some of their government bailout welfare for the rich trickle down to poor and working people?

My wife, Judy and I are sponsors of an organization called Homeless Helping Homeless and volunteer at the local winter shelter. And, along with about 35 other people from diverse backgrounds, we have fed an average of 150 mostly homeless and hungry people every Sunday afternoon for the past 7 years at Finlay Park in downtown Columbia, South Carolina. . Each server brings a dish or two--turnip greens, mac and cheese, fresh fruit, banana pudding. Pastries are donated by local super markets. Our picnic provides a nutritious and tasty meal for the homeless and many of the servers.We are known as Food Not Bombs, a national organization that encourages feeding hungry people rather than supporting military madness.

Our a-frame sign, set up near the entrance to our picnic, has a famous quote from a speech by former General and President Dwight Eisenhower that describes the military industrial complex:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

The U.S. defense budget is $720 billion, which includes the Pentagon base budget, Department of Energy nuclear weapons activities and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We far outstrip the rest of the world in defense spending, surpassing the next closest country by more than eight times. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports that the U.S. military budget accounts for 43% of the world’s total military spending.
If we heed the words of Eisenhower and stop the madness we call war, if we require the wealthiest to pay their fair share, then perhaps we can end hunger and homelessness in America. There will be food, not bombs, and we will no longer destroy the hopes of our children.

Tea Partiers Prefer Secession

2010-11-07T22:35:00.101-05:00

Rather Than Health Care For The Poor

Tea Party oriented Republicans who will control the US House of Representatives want to repeal “Obama Care”. Southern Republicans like Governor Rick Perry of Texas and US Representative Zack Wamp of Tennessee have threatened Secession from the Union because of federal mandates in “Obama Care”.

In South Carolina, Republican State Senator Glenn McConnell is President Pro-Tem of the South Carolina Senate and one of our most powerful politicians. He also opposes Medicaid mandates. Recently, officials of South Carolina Health and Human Services asked McConnell to help continue funding health care for poor people. He replied, “ When the money provided by the state for Medicaid is gone, the insurance program for the poor must simply stop providing services.” “Your obligation under the constitution … is to the taxpayer of this state and not to bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.” South Carolinians pay both state and federal taxes that fund Medicaid, but by refusing to allocate $1 billion of our state tax revenue for this program over the next decade, South Carolina will lose $ 4 billion from the federal government for health care for 656,000 poor people, who are disproportionately black and children.

Tea Party states’ rights activists say their struggle against health care continues the struggle of Jefferson Davis and the secessionists in 1860. Rev. Cecil Fayard, chaplain in chief for the national Sons of Confederate Veterans, said “The War Between the States was fought for the same reasons that the tea party movement today is voicing their opinion.”

Senator McConnell opposed removing the Confederate flag from atop the South Carolina State House in 2000 and finally brokered a compromise that placed the rebel flag in front of the state capitol at the Confederate soldier’s memorial monument. McConnell is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Secession Camp #4, and a Civil War re-enactor who owned a Confederate memorabilia store in Charleston.

He founded and Chairs the Hunley Commission that raised a Confederate submarine from Charleston harbor. The Commission is restoring the sub for the Hunley Museum in Charleston with $22 million that is coming from state and federal funds according to their fund-raising organization.

McConnell was recently photographed in Civil War military regalia with two African- Americans dressed as slaves at a

meeting of the National Federation of Republican Women in Charleston. The Sons of Confederate Veterans work closely with the Confederate Heritage Trust.

The Confederate Heritage Trust is putting on a play and grand ball in Charleston on December 20^th, celebrating the Secession of South Carolina from the United States in 1860. Neo-Confederates claim that secession was an issue of states’ rights rather than slavery but William Preston, a secessionist leader in South Carolina, said, “Slavery is our King; slavery is our Truth; slavery is our Divine Right.” South Carolina’s Declaration of Secession refers to Northern States; “Those States…have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery…They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes.” Several thousands of those slaves from South Carolina served in the Union army in the Civil War that was started in Charleston by South Carolinians when they bombarded Fort Sumter in April, 1861. At least 618,000 Americans died in the Civil War.

I was also a champion of the lost cause of Dixie. In 1964-65, I became the first Executive Director of the South Carolina Independent Schools Association. Now emphasizing academic and athletic excellence, originally the private schools were created to allow white children to avoid racial desegregation in public schools in counties with large populations of blacks. Several were named for Confederate figures like Stonewall Jackson,

Robert E. . Lee,

Jefferson Davis,

and Wade Hampton.

I was an aide to George Wallace and then his National Campaign Director (1967-1971).

Confederate flags were waved and racial slurs shouted at Wallace rallies throughout the country. My great-grandfather was a Confederate soldier and my grandfather was a Klan member. I named my only son Jefferson Davis Turnipseed. I was a racist who used my Confederate heritage to deny my racism.

I returned to South Carolina in 1972 and helped organize a coalition to reform electrical utility regulation that included African Americans. Electric rates for low volume residential users were 5 ½ times higher than for industrial users and a disproportionate number of the mostly poor low volume users were black. The rate hike hearings offered an opportunity to bridge the divide between poor blacks and whites. Our successful coalition helped me realize how prejudiced I had been against black people. I became an anti-racist activist and was elected to the SC Senate by an interracial coalition of everyday people. I am a life member of the NAACP, and was a leader in the effort to remove the rebel flag from our State House.

Our law firm was co-counsel in a successful suit against the Klan for burning a black Baptist Church in South Carolina in 1998. These terrorist Klansmen waved the Confederate flag as they destroyed the church.

If a prejudiced devotee of Dixie like me could change, maybe there is hope for Secessionist Tea Partiers to change and allow poor black and white folks to have adequate health care.

COUSIN MICKEY AND THE HEN HOUSE

2010-10-25T02:28:00.000-04:00

Cousin Mickey contacted me on Face Book the other day and suddenly a host of childhood memories flooded in. Mickey lived in Estill Springs, my Mom's home town, in middle Tennessee, between Winchester and Tullahoma, just so you know. Jimmy and I were big time city cousins who loved to visit from Birmingham.

We had modern things in Birmingham, like TV, way before they did and stuff, but Mickey had things we had never seen up close, in Estill Springs, like salt licks in the pasture. Well, we'd never been in a pasture before either. Mickey explained about the fun of licking the cows' salt lick, right in the middle where their tongues had worn it down. Jimmy didn't try it, but I did.

Mickey lived across the road from Grandma Cherry, whose house was the big old one she raised her 5 kids in. Mickey had indoor plumbing and a regular kitchen and all at home, but she didn't have anything like that when we were little. We couldn't believe it. She had a big old coal fired cookstove in the kitchen. There was no running water inside the house. She got her water from her well, which tasted fresh and cool. However, no inside water meant we had to take baths in a big tin pan with water warmed on the stove, and, worse, we had to use an OUTHOUSE. I was astonished again every time I visited. The root cellar under the house with all the stored potatoes and jams and all; the grape arbor, weighted down with muscadines

enough to make your stomach ache for three days; the telephone you dialed by cranking the handle--those were all neat and made you think you had stepped back in time. But I could not abide using the outhouse.

Especially since Mickey warned me about all the snakes and black widow spiders that lived there.

When all the cousins were there, which happened now and then during winter holidays, all the kids slept together in the attic at Grandma Cherry's. It was warm most everywhere else in her house, even in the coldest part of the winter. She had great fireplaces in every room that kept them toasty warm. There were quilts as well. The attic was a different story. There was no fireplace. There was no insulation. It was
one big drafty room with a host of iron frame beds lined up side by side. I never tested it, but I am pretty sure if you licked the iron post on the bed, it would have frozen your tongue right there onto the post till spring. For warmth we had a stack of homemade quilts to use, dozens--as many as you wanted to pile on. Trouble was, in order to stay warm, the number of quilts required could be in double figures. So we would be warm--except for our noses sticking out from the covers to breathe-- weighted down and unable to move side to side or turn over, and reduced to hysterical giggles. There is not much required to induce hilarity in a bunch of 6-12 year olds.

What really sent us over the top was when we had to get out from under the 12 or so quilts, make a mad dash across the icy room to visit the slop jar. In the attic, since the sleeping space was shared, the bathroom arrangements were different from the usual slop jar under the bed. In this case the slop jar was in a separate room at the end of the attic, set into a large throne-like chair that you sat on, much like the something you sit on in an outhouse. Mickey would help out with a running commentary about the things we might encounter while up and about, like bats and rats and such.

The first step in the march toward modern things was Grandma's spigot on the back porch. The next year she got indoor plumbing. Since she no longer needed the outhouse, she sold it for the lumber. I never knew whether that was a joke or not, but it was told for the truth. She was mighty thrifty, so it probably is.

Mickey was a wealth of information about country things and was helpful in so many ways. He was careful to explain how to recognize poison sumac, for example. He just forgot to tell me about the poison ivy patch.

Uncle Brooks, Mickey's Daddy, owned the General Store in Estill. General Store means it sells overalls, flour, kerosene, corn, chickens, and I don't know what all. Whatever you needed you could find somewhere in the General Store.

Our favorite thing was the penny candy at the front. Uncle Brooks would let us pick out two or three pieces a day each while we were there and it was agony for me to decide between Mary Janes, Sugar Daddys, Necco Wafers, Bit of Honeys--oh my gosh, do they make that stuff any more? I was delirious during the whole vacation each year (probably on a sugar rush). Mom was a strict nutritionist at home, so we had nothing sweet in the house except fruit. Jimmy

was not so much into candy, but Mickey and I would fight over the sack of candy all the way home. We would make ourselves sick on Wax Bottles. You bit off the necks, sucked out the sticky sweet syrup inside, then chewed up the wax. Yummy. They were about as good for you as soft drinks are now. Eating the candy cigarettes made us decide to try the real thing, and so of course we did. Or they did.

The boys didn't want to include me. They never did. I was little. I was a girl. I didn't count. Sometimes I could appeal to Mom and she would intervene on my behalf, but if it were some big, dark, secret thing or whatnot, I had to whine and wheedle my way in on my own. I was pretty good at that. Unceasing whining is effective. Refusing to go away is a strategy I tried often. Threats to tell was the best.

The boys sneaked a few cigarettes from each grownup's pack and some matches. That was easy, since they all smoked several packs a day in those days and left cigarettes, ash trays and matches everywhere. The boys had their pick--Lucky Strike, Philip

Morris, Camel, Winston, and more. In the field by the side of the house Jimmy and Mickey smoked their first cigarettes. As they puffed away, I ran around in circles hollering for them to give me a turn. Pretty soon I stopped though, cause they quit puffing and sorta laid back stunned and sweaty, with greenish faces. Mickey moaned and Jimmy kinda half-gagged and I stayed very quiet. After the vomiting was over, we swore a pact never to tell and returned to the front yard. Well of course one look at the pale sickly faces by the grownups and the jig was up. The punishment was light and I didn't have to share, since I was not party to the crime. We were soon ready for our next adventure.

Some of the country things that were supposed to be fun involved the farm animals. Jimmy and I love animals. We have been involved with fish and turtles and dogs and cats and hamsters and guinea pigs, but never with farm animals. They were foreign to us and quite interesting. Almost everything looks easier than it is. Take milking for instance. You just walk up to the cow, poke the bucket under the teet, grab it and start pulling and the milk streams out. When it slows down, you go to the next cow. Yeah, well it doesn't work that way for me. It doesn't work at all. The milk streaming out part. Oh, well. Fun to try. The cows were gentle and let me feed them hay while Uncle Brooks milked them.

The next thing was gathering eggs. This was an absolute nightmare and I still won't go close to a chicken. I don't hate them like I hate cockroaches, I just keep my distance. The first few times I helped gather the eggs I went with Aunt Pete or Grandma Cherry.

Here's how it went. They would pass by each brood hen, reach up under her and take an egg. They would pass it to me and I would carefully place it in the basket. Soon we would have visited every nest and leave the hen house with our basket brimming.

After several days of that, it was time for me to gather the eggs for the family. Unaware of the disaster I was about to face, I stepped into the hen house tentatively

and with great hesitation timidly approached the first hen. She grew larger before my eyes and sort of hunkered down over the nest and her eggs. Grandma explained later that she was fluffing up her feathers to make herself look bigger as a defensive tactic against foxes and other enemies, me included I guess. I was about a foot away when all of a sudden........ wooowweeee....... Such screeching and flapping I never saw. She came at me with all she had and I dove to the other side of the hen house with my arms wrapped around my head. It was an awful few minutes. After awhile, when she determined that she had me subdued, she settled down and
scrambled back on her nest. I unfolded from my fetal
position and thought about what to do. Well, I didn't want to be labeled as a scaredy cat from the city and disappoint my Aunt, Mom and Grandma and be made a laughing stock by the boys. Maybe that was just a
specially figgity hen and if I approached the next one with more confidence and authority, things would go better. They did not. This time I got my hand almost up to the nest. Two hens went nuts. I got my hand pecked in several places and then my heels from the back as I high tailed it out the door. So much for what the world thought of me. I knew what the hens thought. They had made that very clear and my egg gathering was ended.

Jimmy and Mickey did make me a laughing stock.

The summer of the great adventure was the one after Jimmy got his Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. He loved that gun. He polished it. He read all the inserts--the

instructions, the safety precautions--over and over. Mom and Dad outlined very specific limits about how he could use it. He was pretty much confined to using it to target practice, shooting tin cans in the back yard--which backed up to the railroad tracks. He also practiced by making me dance to the tune of BBs bouncing off my tennis shoes. That, however, was outside the limits of acceptable BB gun behavior and ceased. There was little use for a BB gun in the city. Then we were off to Estill Springs!

In the wide open spaces of Estill, Jimmy and Mickey had great fun. They shot lots of cans off fence posts. They shot lots of leaves off the elm trees in Grandma Cherry's great huge front yard. They shot the cows in the fields from the porch (a long way) to see if they would feel it enough to take off running. It made them flick their tails, but not otherwise move. As a previous target of the BB shooting, I felt sorry for my fellow victims, threatened to tell on the boys and the cows were spared further torture.

They soon got bored with regular ol' targets and tried to think up new ones. While they were thinking, they passed the time by making fun of me some more about my hen house adventures. That's when they came up with the greatest plan of the summer! Why not shoot all the windows out of the hen house? Why not indeed!! It sounded delicious. There in Aunt Pete and Uncle Brooks' back yard was the long luscious hen house with its many windows, the ideal target. We waited till the grownups were all gone down to the creek to fish, and then----- the boys started shooting. All the

chickens ran out with great cackling and clucking and the coast was clear to get serious. Oh my gosh, it was wonderful!! It started with little round holes in the first window pane. Then more and more. Finally that one crashed to the ground, with a lovely sound and shattered glass all round. Then another and another. They got fancy and started shooting patterns in the glass--criss cross and hearts and all around the edge in a circle. It took many BB's to finish off the first side, with Jimmy and Mickey taking turns. As they made their way around the hen house, I could see that there were fewer and fewer panes left. I began to

holler for my turn. They ignored me! It was always the same. I pulled on their arms! I screamed! I jumped up and down! I cried! The last pane crashed to the ground. They clapped each other on the back and rolled around on the grass They were high on naughtiness, drunk on pure boy badness and I was as mad as spit.

So full of themselves they never saw the grownups coming up the road. I did though and began to scream and point in horror at the terrible thing the boys had done. And it was terrible.

There were some 30 windows in shards on the grounds and many chickens desperate for a place to call home. The remainder of the summer was another kind of terrible for the boys. They worked from dawn till dark-- milking, tossing hay, digging fence posts, hoeing weeds from the garden, doing all the farm chores needing to be done--to pay for replacing the windows in the hen house, the many windows in the hen house.

And what punishment for the one who did not do the crime, but only longed to, who only lusted in her heart? Other than spending the rest of the lonely summer in Estill without playmates, I got off SCOT- FREE. So there!

Disclaimer: I wish to point out to Jim and Mickey that any distortion or exaggeration of fact is solely due to the tricks of mind/memory caused by the vast passage of time and is not at all intentional.

Money Talks

2010-10-14T12:08:00.043-04:00

Corporations Become Humans and Curse Their Creator

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, gave corporations, unions and individuals First Amendment rights to donate unlimited amounts of money to buy political ads for candidates without disclosure.

Meanwhile, corporate fat-cats, whose corporations are created by government, rant and rave against government and condemn government creation of public sector jobs programs for the poor and unemployed.

In Citizens United the five conservative justices composing the majority said, “… this court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or to the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy.” Can we keep faith in a government whose highest court makes such an absurd comment about big bucks being spent by “speakers” sponsored by the US Chamber of Commerce and other special interests who lobby government for corporate and big moneyed interests? The Chamber’s lobbyists led the defeat of the Disclose Act to close the loopholes created by the Citizens United decision.

Foreign corporations contribute money that goes into a Chamber of Commerce fund used to pay for political ads to defeat candidates who do not tow the line for their profits over people agenda. Playing key roles in the effort are Karl Rove who was George W. Bush’s political hatchet man and the late Lee Atwater’s protégé, and Ed Gillespie, former Republican National Committee Chairman and another Bush advisor. They are involved with a group called Crossroads GPS and its associated organization, American Crossroads. The groups are running ads in key Senate and Congressional races and are trying to raise $52 million for ads in the November elections

The Court’s conservative majority of justices were appointed by conservative politicians in the White House and confirmed by conservative US Senators who owed much of their political success to wealthy contributors and corporate interests. The history of corporate influence and control of our government is depressing.

In the 1886 case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company the U.S. Supreme Court “ruled” that corporations are "persons" and have the same rights as human beings based on the 14th Amendment, which was intended to protect the rights of former slaves. However, in the decision itself the Supreme Court never ruled on personhood, but a former railroad president named J.C. Bancroft Davis who was the court reporter put the “ruling” in the decision’s headnote:

"The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."

Headnotes are not law but subsequent cases dealing with the issue accepted the headnote as precedent to give corporations rights under the Fourteenth Amendment like natural persons. Justice William O. Douglas's later lamented that, "corporations were now armed with constitutional prerogatives."

The Buckley v. Valeo decision in 1976 said donations could be restricted as potentially corrupting, but there should be no ceiling on expenditures since that could be like limiting speech itself (money equals speech). The McCain-Feingold law in 2002 closed a loophole that allowed companies to spend money "independently" just before elections designed to defeat targeted candidates, but that loophole was re-opened with Citizens United. The Court struck down the provision of the McCain–Feingold Act that prohibited all corporations, both for-profit and not-for-profit, and unions from broadcasting “electioneering communications” that mentioned a candidate within 60 days of a general election.

Ironically, government initiatives that would put people to work rebuilding our infrastructure are condemned as socialism by the plutocrats of corporate America. In an Orwellian twist the money magnates would have us forget that corporations are created by government statutes. Government limits their personal liability for acts perpetrated by them under the auspices of their corporations.

Corporations would not exist if government statutes did not allow them to make profits and shield shareholders from liability if the corporation is caught stealing, or otherwise damaging people. Corporate employees, including CEOs and other officers of a failing corporation can lose their jobs but are not personally liable to the corporation’s creditors for their mismanagement. Corporations control the system that creates them by making campaign contributions to our elected officials, and by lobbying and influence peddling. Hiring relatives and staff of members of Congress also helps the big money interests to manipulate our government. Such tactics have enabled them to water down attempts to regulate their out-of-control greed that caused the worst economic recession since the great depression.

Democracy dies when corporations are given the rights of human beings and corporate bribery becomes free speech.