Presidential Jeopardy

Just a few thoughts I've been having as I've been watching the Republicans presidential candidates battling it out. It seems to be a given that President Obama will be the Democratic nominee again.

My main thought: THERE MUST BE A BETTER WAY TO SELECT A PRESIDENT FOR OUR COUNTRY.

First, consider what our Constitution (Article ll, Section 1, Clause 5) lays out as qualifications:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

Is that broad or what?

That clause has allowed us to elect a few great presidents, a few near-greats, a host of mediocre specimens, and most unfortunately, some outright embarrassing duds. People not intellectually qualified to be president can - especially in this media-driven age - charm their way into the job.

It's impossible for me to imagine people without good sense being able to exercise good judgment, certainly one of the skills necessary for an effective administration.

Perhaps what would be better is if we somehow first selected the best qualified candidates and then had them play a Round robin tournament of Jeopardy. At least that would gives us some intellectual material to work with. And we would never have to worry about another Reagan or George W. Bush making it to the White House.

Maybe it would be good if we selected a president from among the ranks of those who are already in the business of governing a people on a broad scale, i.e., state governors, national Congresspeople. In other words, people who are already trained.

"Oh, but that's undemocratic" and maybe discriminatory against business people, lawyers, media stars and so forth, people will say. Yeah, but so what? We're electing a president. Or how about this: let those folks first work their way up through the ranks of government and prove they can do that.

Ronald Reagan, for example, may have been an actor originally, but he was governor of the state of California before he ran for president. (I just don't think he could have made it through Jeopardy.)

Donald Trump flirted with the idea of running for president. Ross Perot actually made a run for it, providing us with a few laughs in his bizarre campaign. But what were their presidential qualifications? Are we to assume that running a business successfully is proof one can run a country effectively?

Also, I don't like the role big money plays in our election process. Maybe the government should fund this thing. If we can blow nearly a trillion dollars on an immoral and unprovoked war, surely we can figure out a way to thriftily elect a president. It should not be the case that whoever has or can gather the most funds can control the process.

Perhaps we need a selection process from among governors and Congresspeople to get some viable candidates. Then we could do the Jeopardy thing and winnow out the less intelligent representatives. Let's get it down to something manageable like the three best qualified candidates (the winner and two runners-up) - just so we have a real choice. Then let the government fund and sponsor some debates and maybe a few media spots to reinforce their messages. No battle for who can spend the most cash in an effort to buy the election, just an equal opportunity to let us hear their vision for America and make an earnest pitch for the job.

Having done that, what say we get rid of that archaic Electoral College? Do we really need a president who collected half a million less votes than the "loser" (W. Bush versus Gore in 2000)?

I haven't said anything in all this about party affiliation. Maybe, just maybe now, touting a party label ought to be considered undignified for a United States president. That person should represent every citizen. That person that should be free to work with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, without partisan mudslinging.

Sure, President X might have always been a Democrat throughout his government career - but remember that now we are electing people who are highly qualified, not just any charming John or Jane Shmoe who happened to finance their way into the job.

Maybe its time we recognize that a person running for president and eventually being elected is now an Independent, free to follow solely their conscience and best judgment in deciding how to best lead our nation. Why in heaven's name should the gulf between Democrat and Republican be as wide as it is today? It used to be more a matter of degree. Today it is as if the parties speak entirely different languages.

Okay, so maybe my system isn't perfect. At least I've tried to address some of the problems that can't get addressed in our present corporate democracy.

Groper Poll: If You Don't Vote You Don't Have The Right To Complain

There is a popular slogan - I've heard it all my life - that essentially suggests that if you don't cast your votes in our elections process, you don't have the right to complain about what our representatives are doing with our country.

The late comedian George Carlan had the following to say on the matter:

People like to twist that around – they say, "If you don't vote, you have no right to complain," but where's the logic in that? If you vote and you elect dishonest, incompetent people into office who screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You caused the problem; you voted them in; you have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote, who in fact did not even leave the house on election day, am in no way responsible for what these people have done and have every right to complain about the mess you created that I had nothing to do with.

A very funny man, in my opinion.

My latest Groper Poll question is:

Do you agree or disagree with the popular and much expressed "if you don't vote, you can't complain" idea?

And of course feel free to elaborate on your answer.

We Are Animals!

Last week I did a post about Black Friday. In it I made the comment that I don't like what those events bring out in people. As usual, I wasn't proved wrong. From a lady unloading pepper spray on fellow shoppers, to this latest Black Friday horror story concerning a man's collapse during his shopping trip only to have shoppers climbing over him, totally unconcerned, in order to get their bargains, to thousands of presumably less newsworthy incidents, we have the worst side of our species put on display.

Were the words "it's a jungle out there" ever more appropriate?

Not that it takes a Black Friday to bring this sad aspect of our species out into view. It's literally everywhere we choose to look - sometimes even in our mirrors.

The religious tradition I originally came from has a neat little story about God creating man directly from the dirt and fashioning this mud man after his own image, then directly breathing life into him. It's just one creation myth among many. Still, it displays an early impression humans have that somehow we are a bit more than our animal brothers and sisters.

I left my religious tradition. I still have sympathy for religion as a means of bringing out the best in humanity and distinguishing us from the more brutish aspects of the lower animals.

I Remember JFK

We just passed another sad anniversary, the 48th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. There wasn't a lot of hoopla over it - expect that when the 50th anniversary rolls around - but it was noted by many Americans.

If you want to make yourself feel old just count the presidents you have lived through. For me, as amazing as it seems, that number now stands at 11.

Eisenhower was winding down his second term when I was born. President Kennedy was the first president I have memories of. My parents were big JFK fans, and my family always watched the evening news - a habit I have retained all these years. So I do remember when he was in office, and do remember watching his sad funeral on TV as I sat in my father's lap and asked endless questions.

Back in the 1960s, the Religious Right had not yet arrived on the scene. The fundamentalist sect my family belonged to were not big on voting. We were waiting for the Second Coming of Jesus, which was (as always) nearer than ever before. Christians were thought of as being "in the world, but not of it" and this made politics a worldly affair. The Millennium would not be brought about by man's efforts, but by the sudden and supernatural intervention of Jesus Christ. Many fundamentalists (but of course not all) were content to keep themselves "unspotted from the world" (James 1:27) and stay out of the political fray.

My parents didn't vote. But my father especially was a staunch Democrat his whole life. My parents liked our young President Kennedy and were inspired by his vision of hope for America and by his positive rhetoric. Dad had confidence he would provide the working man a fair shake.

And then came Dallas, Texas and that horrible November day in 1963.

That made Kennedy something of a martyr, and his successor, President Johnson, used that martyrdom to push through some of the most landscape changing legislation in our recent history. I lived through all this during those turbulent 60s. Johnson did a lot to combat poverty, did a lot to advance the Civil Rights movement (which made him less popular here in the South), and unfortunately for him, became the scapegoat for the national embarrassment known as the Viet Nam War. That one had been in the works for some time and Johnson certainly did his part to make sure this tinder box became a full-fledged inferno. Still, it's interesting to speculate about how President Kennedy might have handled it.

So much of President Kennedy's presidency has become the subject of myth, some magical Camelot. He certainly had his moments as president. But he also at times displayed a certain ineptness that undermined his general leadership. His poor health and his character flaws, such as his philandering, of course were hidden from us by the press protocol of the day. Looking back, perhaps his personal charm was his greatest asset - and as was true with President Reagan, another charmer, that can both take you far and hide a multitude of shortcomings.

President Kennedy's sad and shocking end has always been a sore point for many Americans. Most of us doubt we have gotten the full truth on the matter. Personally, I can accept that Lee Oswald was the lone gunman. Yet the Ruby affair and the ever present hint of mob activity surrounding it causes me to wonder what was really back of this whole affair. We will probably never know for certain.

I remain fascinated by the first president I remember. His is a sad story filled with a ton of what ifs.

When It Comes To President Obama, Conservatives Just Can't Handle The Truth

Leave it to the insane people at Fox News to create for their daft viewership a groundless and totally idiotic Thanksgiving controversy involving our president.

Yes, it seems that in his annual Thanksgiving message President Obama spoke of reasons to be thankful without specifically mentioning God, "from whom all blessings flow."

Eric Bolling was all over that with this insight:

I feel terrible — I absolutely think he should’ve had some sort of mention. We’re thankful to whom? About 86% of the country believes in some form of a God — whether it’s Christianity or Islam or what not.

We all know that President Obama is a professed Christian, does and has attended Christian church services, regularly quotes from the Bible in his speeches. Only a buffoon doesn't know to whom Obama is thankful. This is no missing puzzle piece that has fallen into our laps. It is understood that when a Christian speaks of giving thanks in this way, they are thanking their God.

So I guess Bolling is a buffoon, as is any Fox viewer who was enthused by this childish attack.

The article I linked to above also contains the vile ejaculation (yes, I chose that word for a reason) of another conservative commentator who wanted to weigh in on this, Ben Shapiro, who in the interest of partisanship decided to show his utter contempt for truth and reason by calling Obama a "militant atheist."

You see, with me it isn't the fact that we have basic disagreements with the way we look at things when I am dealing with conservatives. It is the fact that so many of them want to lie, to twist the truth, to say anything in some immoral spirit of "all is fair in love and war," all the while pretending to stand on the high ground.

So to the folks at Fox News, the worthless and hypocritical opponents in Congress of President Obama's efforts to restore stability to our wobbling nation, the rank and file citizens who will latch on to any hint of scandal involving the president, no matter how unfounded, I submit for their consideration the following quotation from someone they claim to revere:

You belong to your father the devil, and you want to do what he wants. He was a murderer from the beginning and was against the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he shows what he is really like, because he is a liar and the father of lies.

- Jesus

Writer's Diarrhea

I planned to have this post up a few hours ago. And here is what happened instead. I had intended to write a little about the very interesting conversation I had with my mom and younger brother after we had eaten our Thanksgiving dinner.

Of course, in talking with my mother - my religiously devout and truly precious mother - God always has to take center stage. Now my brother is an interesting study, too. He isn't a devout and churchgoing man. He doesn't live what most Christians would consider a moral life. Not that he is a bad guy or anything; he, like his older brother, has condensed the Ten Commandments down to one: treat others with the same respect with which you wish to be treated. But he believes in a personal God, believes that their is a design and intent to the universe. He has a reverence for the Bible. And then there is me -- way out in left field, having long since relegated such concepts to the realm of metaphor.

That was a very interesting dialogue we had, covering many subjects. And I feel I have lost the ability to communicate effectively with theists because we just don't speak the same language. I don't believe God (Nature) had a choice in "creating" the universe the way it is. About the only thing I can bring to the table is my conviction that organisms evolve with reference to their environment. When I did believe there was purpose and intent to existence, it made me a bit bitter. It eventually became impossible for me to take seriously a God that I honestly thought did an inferior job of running things than what I could do given the same powers. Now what theist wants to hear that?

Okay, but what has that to do with writer's diarrhea?

Just this.

I wrote three drafts of my intended post, each different, each long and overflowing with detail. So long, in fact, I would have felt compelled to offer a prize to any of you who could have stayed around long to enough to finish it. Our after-dinner discussion yesterday was so rich, I couldn't hone in on one direction to follow. I do that a lot, you may have noticed.

Some bloggers are plagued from time to time by writer's block. Not I. I have the opposite problem. There is so much waiting to get out, the problem I have is deciding which of the many roads that lie before I should take and how far along I should travel with my readers.

So that's today's post. Not a recap of my family visit yesterday, but more of a brief summation of why I just couldn't deliver that recap I had intended to give. In fact, now that I look back over it, even my brief summation isn't all that brief!

A Non-theist's Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving Day and what it has come to mean to me: a day to enjoy the company of friends and family and to eat more delicious food than is necessary or desirable.

As a person who does not find reasonable the belief that there literally is a personal deity or deities that organizes, and oversees the outworking of existence, I find the day means something a little different to me than it does to the majority. I'm pleased indeed with the good things in life, what the theists consider blessings from God. At the same time I'm painfully aware of the all the evils. I don't see how I can honestly say "thanks" without also saying "What the f--k?"

But being less philosophical, yes, life can be grand sometimes so let us enjoy the day, especially if we are not being bombarded at the moment with more than our share of life's evils.

The brilliant orator and freethinker Robert Ingersoll once said:

You know we have a custom every year of issuing a proclamation of thanksgiving. We say to God: "Although you: have afflicted all the other countries,, although you have sent war, and desolation, and famine on everybody else, we have been such good children that you have been kind to us, and we hope you will keep on." It does not make a bit of difference whether we have good times or not—the thanksgiving is always exactly the same. I remember a few years ago a Governor of Iowa got out a proclamation of that kind. He went on to tell how thankful the people were, and how prosperous the State had been. There was a young fellow in that State who got out another proclamation, saying that he feared the Lord might be misled by official correspondence; that the Governor's proclamation was entirely false; that the State was not prosperous; that the crops had been an almost utter failure; that nearly every farm in the State was mortgaged; and that, if the Lord did not believe him, all he asked was that he would send some angel in whom he had confidence to look the matter over and report.

Judging from the shape our country has been in in recent years - the depressed economy, living under the constant threat of outside attack, the near-breakdown of our governmental process, the draining strain of sustained war, more wacky weather events and natural disasters than in recent memory - it strikes me that the pious among us are actually groveling and instead of saying "thanks" are really saying, "Lord, please don't let it get worse," which of course it always could. Thus I find these national Thanksgiving Day proclamations mostly hot air.

Thanksgiving Day is for me as good a day as any to enjoy the good I find in life. As a matter of fact, I do that throughout the year. Also throughout the year I can't help wondering why, if God sits above all on his throne of glory and omnipotence, this sad old world struggles on in the manner it does. The theologians sound their most foolish when they attempt to deal with that problem.

However you celebrate this day, I wish each of you happiness and peace.

The 232,674th Coming Again Of Jesus

Actually I grabbed that number out of thin air. There's just no way to arrive at a totally accurate accounting of those deluded souls down through history who have believed and attempted to make others believe that Jesus returned to earth in their own person.

The latest is an obviously mentally disturbed man by the name of Oscar Ortega-Hernandez. His main claim to fame is being charged with the attempted assassination of President Obama after having fired a few shots at the White House while the president was away.

I watched with amusement the other day as the national news played a clip of a video he had sent to Oprah Winfrey in attempt to gain an appearance on her new television channel. I guess Jesus, too, is in awe of the power and influence this woman yields over the massess who can't seem to get their acts together without a guru-type.

And from that video came these words from Ortega-Hernandez:

You see Oprah, there is still so much more that God needs me to express to the world. It's not just a coincidence that I look like Jesus. I'm the modern day Jesus Christ that you have all been waiting for.

Yeah, right. We all know what Jesus looks like because we have seen the paintings and the Hollywood movies. Oh, let's not forget that famous shroud that contains a "photographic negative" of Jesus. In fact, when I let my beard and hair grow out I look just like Jesus myself. Or Charles Manson. People have told me that.

Okay, snarkiness aside, just as a thought experiment I often ask Christians if they have ever given thought to how obnoxious, how just as unbelievable as we find these latter-day Messiahs, it must have seemed to the Jews in the first century when the original Jesus came forth preaching the Kingdom Of God and as he and his followers reinterpreted the Jewish scriptures in order to make them appear to apply to the events they were beholding.

People are often misled by two millennia of good press for orthodox Christianity. But for the early orthodox Jews, that idea was not only out of left field, it was blasphemous. And to gain a foothold among the pagans who did eventually come into the fold on the ground floor of the Jesus movement, the original story had to be paganized, which the priests were happy to do in order to win widespread acceptance. Eventually Christianity became the official religion of the crushing Roman Empire and the rest, as they say, is history. Nothing, it seems, does more to make a religion flourish than when it becomes intertwined with political power.

Okay, perhaps the majority would say Ortega-Hernandez blew it by taking shots at our president (or so he apparently assumed he was doing). Jesus wouldn't do such a thing, I'm certain they would say.

But many people have foolishly become convinced that our president is our enemy. Many supposedly rational people have been convinced that President Obama is the or an Antichrist. Jesus returning to earth to slay the Antichrist is an idea that is biblical to the core. Hear the last book of the Bible describing Jesus' return to earth:

And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.

And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.

And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.

And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.

And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;

That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.

And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.

And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.

And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh (Revelation 19:11-21).

Granted, Ortega-Hernandez's arrival on the scene seems to fall short of the vividness and grandeur of the above passage. But any Jewish scholar will tell you that the original Jesus fell quite short of fulfilling the messianic prophecies of their scriptures, too. It's a matter of interpretation.

Here you have both men claiming they were sent from God and bringing his message. Why would this man be deemed less credible than the historic Jesus? For that matter, why is the historical Jesus given such a lofty position among the masses?

Even to ponder questions such as these demonstrate the frailty of supposed divine revelation.

Is God Up With This Modern Computer Age?

There are those Bible believers who confidently tell us that the Bible and its many prophecies are relevant to our day. Books propounding that idea continuously roll off the presses, and mostly become obsolete very soon thereafter.

You might think I am completely closed-minded on the subject. I have to admit that after years of study I believe the Bible and its prophecies are best seen as a historic relic. I don't say that lightly, defiantly, or tauntingly. It just seems so painfully obvious that the Bible does not foresee the modern age. Not that Bible students haven't tried to find modern inventions in certain vague descriptions of apocalyptic passages. I just don't find this approach very convincing.

If only the Bible had predicted that one day man wood walk upon the moon or investigate the heavens in indescribable "chariots." That would get my attention.

Then there is the matter of that great Judgment Day. Both testaments give an account of that great day, when the dead will stand before almighty God to give an account for their lives.

The Bible descriptions, first from the Old Testament:

I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened (Daniel 7:9,10, KJV).

Next from the New Testament, from the last book of the Bible:

And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.

And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.

And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:11-15, KJV).

Is such a scene conceivable in this modern age? Would the Almighty really keep his records in this way?

I suppose the major response from the Bible believers would be that authors were simply describing things in terms their readers would understand. But why would they do that? According the words of the Bible itself they were writing down what they say they saw. Say they had beheld angels sitting at a computer and gathering data for God. Would they have described that as rendered above? The ancients had boxes. And they knew what lights were. Would they not have described angels at a box with flashing lights, maybe that spat out parchment with writing on it? Instead they saw books, ledgers, just as was used in days of old.

These things make it difficult indeed to take the Bible as a true prophecy of far future events.

Black Friday Comes On Thursday. And?

I've been reading about the unrest being caused by big box stores cutting more and more into these traditional holidays in order to allow more shopping and the making of more $$$. Mostly this is coming from the imposed upon workers who must leave their families or put family gatherings on the back burner in order to come serve customers.

Well, these are hard times. The financial crisis has driven consumer demand down and that has pushed unemployment way up. Many of us still lucky enough to have jobs have faced reduced wages and a cutback in working hours.

These are the realities.

I'm not defending the retailer's decision on this. My mother and my ex-wife worked in the retail business for many years, and it could be a real holiday-breaker. I'm just saying, I see where the retailers are coming from. And people realizing the value of a job grumble but do what needs to be done in order to make ends meet.

Perhaps the real fault lies at the doorstep of we the consumer. I say "we," but honestly, I never go shopping on Black Friday or on these holidays ... I don't care what is on sale for what price! I like a bargain as well as anyone. I just don't like watching what these "madness" sales do to my fellow animals, the behaviors they bring out. But everyone is different. I know many folks who live for these things.

Some folks are outraged by the commercialization of these holidays. But what hasn't been commercialized these days?

There would be no supply of stores open on the holidays if there were no demand on the part of consumers. If most folks declined to attend these sales, retailers would refrain from holding them. We can't condemn these practices while we heavily partake of them.

So I guess we must adjust to circumstances as we find them. Towards that end I am keeping my blog open on both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Drop by if you have time.

The Sedentary Life

Health "experts" constantly warn us about the dangers of the sedentary lifestyle. To live long and healthily, they tell us, it is necessary to get regular, vigorous exercise.

However, that ever wondering skeptical side of me can't help but say, "Really?"

Personally, I know at least as many lazy people as I do exercise freaks. You know what? The lazy folks seem just as healthy, if not more so. In fact, the people I know who do go to the gym regularly have had some pretty serious health problems, including getting pacemakers, knee and hip replacements, etc. The non-exercisers, like myself, somehow seem to keep going and going. (And if I do someday come on here and write about a heart attack I just had, bear in mind that both my parents had heart disease and had heart attacks in their forties; I haven't and am now in my fifties.)

But I think what really got me to thinking about this is all the pets I've owned and those I have know down through the years. Lazy, every one of them, and that to an excessive degree. If their sedentary lifestyle impacted them negatively, I sure never noticed it. In fact, all the pampering seemed to extend their lives way beyond that of their "wilder" counterparts.

The noted "dog's life" consists of little more than lying around and "chilling out," not unlike those lazy characters on the old Hee Haw show. Old dogs can hang in there for a long time, it seems.

My cats play around a little and briefly chase an occasional squirrel or bird. That's about it. Oh, and they have regular sex. But my cats are outdoor cats and what happens to them most often is they get too far from home and meet the rubber of a car tire. I suspect that some less than cat-friendly neighbors may have picked a few off here or there. But I have been unaware of an epidemic of ill health among pets in general due to lack of regular aerobic exercise.

I'm sorry but I can't help wondering if all this emphasis isn't a bit misplaced. It sells books and programs and such things. It can make one feel better about his or her self-image and changes their body into something it was never intended to look like in the first place but that we have been sold on believing is beautiful. But is this really necessary to live well and live long?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating becoming a slug or a sloth (but even they seem to do okay). I'm just questioning whether this whole exercise thing is really the panacea these health experts say it is. One can be normally active and balance that activity with extended periods of relaxation and relative idleness (my idea of the perfect weekend) and do okay I think.

Are we that different from the lower animals?

History is full of idlers and many, many of them lived a good, long time. And I'm willing to bet with my life that this exercise faddism is mostly hype. My health advice has tended more towards what the incomparable Voltaire observed when an associate told him that his habitual coffee drinking was ingesting a slow poison. "It surely must be," observed he, "for I have been drinking it these eighty-four years and am not dead yet."

I think Bobby McFerrin's prescription may just be best: "Don't worry, be happy."

Overexposed

With many blogs - like this one, for example - you get the chance to learn the blogger really well. Some of us are more comfortable than others with bearing our souls. Some my friends have written challenging posts containing some very personal information, revealing their deepest personal fears, scars from the past, and even their family secrets. There have been more than a few times when I had to really think long and hard before I clicked "publish." I wonder how many of my friends struggle with that before exposing themselves?

For me there seems to be two parts to that. One is psyching myself up to bare myself. The second is wondering what those I am exposing myself to will think. Will it make my readers uncomfortable? Will it offend them. Those of us who our blogs as a journey of self-discovery and even self-healing must take that chance.

Twenty years ago I probably could not have written this blog. I wasn't far enough along and into the process of life to be comfortable doing it. If I live and am still blogging 15 or 20 years down the road I think it will be easier still for me to sit down at my keyboard and let it rip. There seems to be something about age and maturity that makes being yourself that much easier.

During the early part of my life my religious beliefs kept me on edge, not wanting to be seen as lapsing into heathenism and a life of unbridled debauchery. Not wanting to disappoint my family and friends of a lifetime was a constant concern. Down through the years that has become less and less a concern for me.

I still have my mom and there is always that wee small chance that she will get wind of what I write from someone who knows someone who knows someone else who knows her. My fear there isn't so much from my self-exposure but that she will be hurt and feel I have unfairly exposed her. That is a consideration when I write about my life.

I do have a girlfriend and some friends and coworkers who keep up with my blog on an occasional basis. I have to be careful there because what I write could cause problems or have some rather unpleasant consequences. I've noticed down through the years that in close personal relationships, what you say will be remembered - and can and will be used against you down the road! Care and thoughtfulness is in order before you start baring everything.

Personal relationships aside, I have some thoughts on business and business management that might place my employability in jeopardy. Discretion is probably the better part of valor there. But I do have a lifetime of tales to tell on that subject.

Not being independently wealthy and unwilling as of yet to become a total hermit, I just have to deal with certain limitations on my soul-bearing.

Or maybe I'm just too timid.

I'm Here Because Someone Was Pro-life

I guess I'm in a sarcastic mood this morning. It happens.

I have a friend who occasionally wears a T- shirt with the slogan: If you can read this it is because someone was pro-life.

Indeed both my parents were pro-life. Both my younger and older brothers, my mom tells me, were "accidents." But I was a planned baby. My mom is one of those who considers abortion to be murder. It's a theological view for her, not a logical one.

Of course my friend and I are both old enough that back in our day the only alternative to continuing an unwanted pregnancy was to attempt to induce a miscarriage or to visit an outlaw abortion provider. Both were risky endeavors, the latter was not only very dangerous but expensive as well.

I'm just saying that not everyone that can read that T-shirt necessarily owes that to a pro-lifer. I'm all for free speech, I just wish people would attempt to use it wisely.

As a rule I don't have a lot to say about abortion. Actually, it is an issue that doesn't directly affect me. I am a male and am unmarried. I have no immediate family that would be affected by the issue. I'm not "for" abortions. I'm also not for people pushing their theological viewpoint onto the masses as would be the case if Roe v Wade were overturned, the desire of so many religious folks.

For the most part, I avoid discussing abortion. There is absolutely no point in "debating" a person's emotions - and that is what I find is usually the real issue here. Those who believe abortion is wrong because of some form of the Divine Command Theory of morality would better defend that thesis first. That I will happily discuss. Settle that matter correctly and a whole world of options become available.

Personally, I think people who wear these T-shirts (or buttons, or who have similar bumper stickers on their automobiles) probably overestimate the value of their fellow humans and themselves. The concept that we humans are God's little sunbeams falls apart upon deeper reflection on human nature.

Towards that end, I think birth control is something I could be passionate about. I need to see what T-shirts are available with that theme.

Forbidden Fruit

I've maintained that there is a sharp difference between the outlook of those devoted to a religion and those who are more or less religious in only a nominal sense. In my own case, my family practiced our religious belief system on regular, daily basis. The Bible was read, believed, consulted and thought of as the final authority.

I have often wondered, have thought long and hard about just how my religious upbringing molded my sexual views. I know it has, and at times I feel certain its impact has been greater on me than I sometimes casually realize.

Like most fundamentalists, sex was mostly a dirty subject. Even between married adults - the only time sexual conduct was considered proper - there were limits to its use and pleasure.

Now my mother gave us children regular "birds and bees" talks, but speaking for myself, these were always dreaded, horrible affairs. Mom's explanations were so bland, so filled with euphemistic nonsense, so fairy-tale like, I hated having them. Besides, I had already learned quite a bit from my big brother (who was six years older) and my friends at school, the most of whom did not come from fundamentalist homes.

The culture in which I was raised, women stayed "properly" covered in order to avoid enticing men or inflaming their passions. The women at our church, including my mom, wore long dresses that hung below the knee, no sleeveless tops, ever! Shorts of any length were forbidden and mixed swimming was anathema also - because one exposed too much body. Although both my parents know how to swim - having learned and indulged back in their "sinner" days - neither I or my brothers learned how to swim because it was one of those "off limits" activities.

It was as if looking at nudity or even near-nudity would force one into a life of sexual insanity. Maybe treating something normal and natural as something abnormal that is the problem.

Of course, forbidden fruit being always the sweetest, I suspect this helped turn me into a voyeur of sorts. Truthfully, it did and has impacted my ability to be comfortably intimate with women. I have more close relationships with women than with men, but how much of that is because of my difficulties with intimacy? And let me say, I don't want to over-analyze this or make it sound as if I'm sexually dysfunctional - I'm not! Instead I am saying that my religious upbringing saddled me a lot of what I feel is heavy, worthless baggage that I could have well done without.

As a child I remember a thing Pentecostals call being "slain in the spirit." For those of you who aren't "in the know" about this, it describes having the "Hoy Spirit" poured out upon a person to a degree they fall - as if dead (thus, "slain") - and lie unconscious, or sometimes babbling in their "unknown tongue.

As a young child (even before I went through puberty) I remember watching this spectacle. I enjoyed when the women would fall and their dresses would become disarranged and display lots of thigh or sometimes those fascinating girdles! (It tickled me to watch the men piously pretending to turn their heads as they would drape their suit coats over the displayed flesh - yeah, look away and aim by watching out the corner of their eyes!) I would feel bad about it later and would even repent in my nightly prayers. I would ask the Lord to forgive me and promise I would refrain from that sinful behavior. But I couldn't refrain from long. It fueled my fantasies. It raised my interest about the female body. It occupied too much of my thinking. And before I long I remember anxiously awaiting the mailman bringing the latest Sears catalog so that I could sequester myself in privacy and with quivering fingers flip through to the section where ladies' undergarments were displayed, where I could without interruption or fear of discovery ogle the panties and girdles to my perverted little heart's content.

My grandfather (my mom's dad) was a Baptist preacher in his younger life. He held that the story of Adam and Eve was an allegory and that the "forbidden fruit" was sex. My parents didn't buy into that, taking the story as literal history. But sex was still fleshy and bordering on sinful, because once they ate the fruit and their eyes were opened, THEN, and only then, did they notice they were naked.

But I obviously ate the forbidden fruit quite early in my life and noticed the beauty of the female form early.

That's normal, I know, for healthy guys who are straight in their sexual orientation. But I think what made it more of a problem with me is that this healthy sexual interest was coupled with the damnable concept that the vagina is somehow capable of becoming a virtual gateway to Hell. It is safer and less of a risk to stand at a safe distance and only look over admiringly at the gate than it is to actually risk entering. Moreover, I tended to view those "bad" women who were comfortable with their bodies and their sexuality, who liked to dress provocatively and show more than a little flesh as Satan's little minions. These kind of gals tripped up Samson and King David. They could be Doug's undoing as well. But damn! they looked so nice. More than one time in my life I've let my let my desire for forbidden fruit overcome my better judgment.

Most people seem uncomfortable going into these things very deeply - at least with other people. Why not, it makes one feel a little weak or maybe perverse. But I know other guys whose experience was something similar to mine. And I've talked to some gals who became exhibitionistic because of their religious upbringing. I get along real well with them! I have known those who rebelled against their upbringing to the point of becoming sexually obsessed. But none of us who have had this type of religious sexual indoctrination escapes totally unscathed.

Supreme Court Will Hear Arguments On "Obamacare"

Our nation's High Court has decided to step into the healthcare reform debate. According to the New York Times:

The range of issues the court agreed to address amounted to a menu of possible resolutions: the justices could uphold the law, strike down just its most controversial provision or some or all of the rest of it, or duck a definitive decision entirely as premature.

In other words, nobody knows just what the hell is going to happen.

Our friends on the right of the political spectrum - those who constantly carp about having "activist" judges ruling our country - now want the "Supremes" to do just that and strike down that "most controversial provision" requiring all Americans to purchase health care insurance.

This is, after all, the United States, the land of the free. We hate when our freedoms are trampled upon. And the conservatives are the most adamant on that - unless, maybe, the subject is abortion and submitting ourselves to the will of the Almighty.

Now I'll be frank. I think our President's healthcare reform program quite simply sucks. It is impractical and does very little, if anything, to render health care more affordable, which seems to me to be the crux of the whole issue. Perhaps we could have figured as much would be the outcome when the insurance representatives took their place at the bargaining table.

The majority of us cannot afford a major illness, most of the elderly and disabled can't afford their medicines. Those Americans lucky enough to be able to afford health insurance and then choose to use it have to deal with an insurance industry geared to reject claims in the interest of making a profit. And that is the state of affairs that conservative thinkers consider the best health care in the world!

Right now, as the so-called Supercommittie is trying to wrangle out a budget deal, Democrats and Republicans are proposing substantial cuts to programs like Medicare and Medicaid in order, they say, to put us on sound financial footing. That's a shell game.

Personal finances are making it harder and harder to get see a doctor or to purchase prescriptions or pay for costly treatments once you have been seen - and they call this freedom.

The only viable solution I can imagine is initiating a national healthcare program that treats the matter as that of basic necessity. Sure, it wouldn't be perfect. Sure, there would be some folks dying and suffering because they don't get medical attention in an always timely manner. But we already have that now - only on a very widespread basis. In other words, it has become the rule, not the exception.

Insofar as I understand this matter, whatever the Supreme Court decides will be irrelevant to the basic problem: Our current system has allowed medical care to be priced beyond the means of the majority of the citizenry.

To Shower Or Bathe?

I like a good shower. It's quick and efficient, it keeps the dirt and grime moving downward towards the drain, and unless overindulged in uses less water than a tub full of water. For many years I have relied on showers to keep clean, especially during the hot summer months when I really feel dirty.

Soap scum certainly makes sitting in a tub of bath water somewhat disgusting. That is why, generally speaking, I have saved baths for those times when I was not overly dirty (as from a day of work). But I noticed even then that lathering up meant sitting in a pond of soap scum and leaving behind a bathtub ring. That got me to thinking that maybe that isn't is a bad as it appears. Rather than being merely a scum of dead skin and body filth, that scum is a chemical reaction of the soap with hard water.

I took a bath recently and used liquid shower soap instead of the bar of soap I usually use (alleged to be 99 44/100 percent pure). Instead of soap scum, the water was covered by a layer of innocent looking soap suds. Hmmmm. When it comes to the nose test, I can't smell a difference between bar soap and shower soap. I smell clean and fresh afterwards either way.

I have to say I enjoy the feeling of a bath - the leisurely pace, the greater attention to each body part (the feet, for example, are more easily thoroughly cleaned sitting a tub than while balancing precariously on one foot in a slippery shower), the way a good thirsty rag can really massage the skin (in the shower I usually used a shower sponge).

Sometimes I have reverted back to my youth and made use of a basin bath - not to be confused with what some folks call a whore's bath (just giving the smelliest bits a hit and a promise). When I was my father's caregiver I often used a basin (with a few changes of the water) to give him a bath. Although I've noticed now that the years and my lesser flexibility has made the use of a back brush a necessity when I give myself one.

Now that I think about it, I learned to bath in the basin. Mom wouldn't allow me to fill a bathtub with water to bathe in when I was first learning to clean myself. She was afraid I would drown. Instead she would fill the basin with water and hand me a rag and a bar of soap. And I remember her checking me afterwards to make sure I didn't scrimp on the neck and ears.

My showers tend to be quicker because I concentrate on the task at hand. In the tub I'm more likely to just sit and relax and allow the warmth (not hoth ... unlike most of the women I've known, I don't like a hot, hot bath) of the water to carry my mind away. Besides, have you ever tried to read a book or magazine in the shower?

Tub baths are for me more of a regal affair, making me feel kingly. A shower makes me feel athletic, even though I no longer am. A basin bath gives me that feeling of simplicity in living and of frugality; I use less water in that than I do in either the tub or the shower.

Well, I've certainly come clean about my thoughts on personal cleanliness. Do any of my readers care to give theirs?

Did Jesus Toot?

Not far from where I live, in a place called Dade County, Ga., there is a controversial book that has been pulled from the shelves of school libraries by school officials. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian - a book about which, confessedly, I know absolutely nothing - reportedly features "vulgarity, racism and anti-Christian content" and thus is now under review by said officials.

And then this, Superintendent Shawn Tobin, according this story, reports that "most of the complaints centered on profanity, as well as a depiction of Jesus Christ breaking wind."

That made me think of something I used to ponder when I was a child. Did Jesus - who according to orthodox theology IS God in human form - have regular bowel movements (and did they stink the place up?) and pass gas (and did it gross out his companions?)?

Is holy sh*t of a different quality than mortal?

This was a query I decided was best kept to myself, both because I could imagine my mom giving me one of her patented eyes-out-on-stems looks for my asking, but also because I felt a bit perverse for wondering about it.

Finally I just decided the answer is "sure, why not?" I mean we have records that tell us Jesus ate while on earth. Obviously he digested this food and passed the remains. In fact, Jesus made reference to the process of digestion and elimination in his discussion of clean and unclean foods (Mark 7:18,19).

I don't know about the overall quality of the book in question (but I'm not for book banning, preferring to ignore things that offend me), but it seems that some adults have a real problem dealing with the thought of Jesus breaking wind.

I outgrew that many years ago. Some folks never outgrow the childish aspects of their religion. And what is more childish than making a big-to-do over farts?

White House Memories

Okay, as planned I did take in the complete miniseries Backstairs At The White House this weekend. Wisely, I think, I watched the first episode on Friday night. It was the longest episode, clocking in at nearly two and one half hours! The other three episodes were around 90-100 minutes. I did break up my viewing on Saturday, which helped me because I just can't watch TV for long periods of time anymore. Don't know why that is. I just get restless after a bit.

So how did my memory stack up against my original viewing of 32 years ago?

Fairly well, I must say, for the parts that did make a great impression on me. On the other hand, it made me wonder how closely I followed this when I first saw it. A few scenes "came back to me" when I saw them again. Tons of it I had either forgotten or (more likely) just missed because I was doing other things (most likely reading) and watching it at the same time.

For one thing, I had forgotten to what extent the main characters Maggie and her polio afflicted daughter Lillian and their relationship with the other servants served as a backdrop for this presentation. This is easy to explain once you understand how big a student of our presidents I was from my youth. I was spellbound then by the portrayals of these presidents - from Taft through Eisenhower - and upon re-watching found myself again spellbound by the excellence of this entire program and its participants.

I always was a fan of President Howard Taft (I remember in school seeing old film clips of this jolly fat man playing golf) and the late Victor Buono's portrayal was nothing short of masterful. I'm sure his portrayal only further served to endear this president to me. And the portion of the program where he is dining alone in the White House and meets Maggie's young daughter as she is trying out his freshly installed and historically well-known oversized bathtub was almost exactly the way I remembered it. Taft's humanness, his distaste for the job of president (something his wife clearly wanted for him more than he desired it), and his devotion to his wife are all brought out beautifully.

Next the Woodrow Wilson administration takes over, and this puzzles me in that I generally didn't remember much about this segment. Robert Vaughn gives a brilliant performance as Wilson. For the life of me I can't understand how I failed to remember Vaughn's Wilson dancing with his daughters to the jazz tune "Ballin the Jack." Priceless, and seemingly quite out of character for the stuffy President Wilson. Just one of those human touches that this story brings out and which official histories often overlook. President Wilson's struggle with incapacitating stroke that affected him in his second term and the way Mrs. Wilson pretty much served as our first female president for a while is explored. It was as if I was seeing this for the first time. I don't remember it at all. But this time around I was struck that Robert Vaughn seemed a bit short to play the tall, thin President Wilson, but that is a very minor beef.

I did clearly remember the scene where the White House servants are placing out the spittoons in preparation for the Harding administration. I clearly remembered the period jazz peace that played in the background as we hear the voice of Harding (George Kennedy) repeating the oath of office for the presidency. Kennedy does such a good job of showing a troubled man, a man clearly in over his head and betrayed and manipulated by his friends. President Harding clearly comes across as quite the "man of constant sorrow," a truly tragic presidential figure.

Presidents Coolidge and Hoover seem to come alive and walk straight out of the history books. The effects of the Great Tribulation are vividly evident, and for the matter, the opulence of the earlier White House is diminishing ever more greatly throughout the rest of the picture, with the emphasis on cuts and thriftiness. This culminates during the Truman administration when the place almost collapses.

And speaking of Truman, I have to say that Harry Morgan (bringing the same crustiness that made MASH's Colonel Potter such a beloved character) does a good job capturing Truman and his down-to-eathiness. There when he is first introduced to the servants is a place where my memory proved almost but not completely accurate. I had remembered one of the female servants remarking on how short President Truman was. In fact, it was one of the male servants, and the word he actually used was small, not short. It was a common thing during Truman's years in office to hear him referred to as "that little man in the White House" (something that clearly annoyed him and which he answered in his memoirs by stating, for the record, he said, that he is (was) 5'10" tall. Most historians place him at the 5'9 mark, which film and photographs seem to suggest. Morgan, then, was a tad short here, but every whit as crusty!

By the time the last episode is running down the White House servants are all ending their careers and their lives, and the Eisenhower's are not dealt with in much detail, perhaps and probably because, as one of the servants commented, he never spoke to them. First Lady Mamie (and to an extent most of the first ladies) comes across as a pampered Prima Donna. These folks clearly come across as distant and cold and not overly likable, even if the country at large liked Ike.

Now I skipped over President Franklin Roosevelt, one of my favorites. Having served so long as president, you might think FDR would have had a disproportionate amount of time spent on his years in office and World War ll. It didn't seem that way to me. FDR and his wife come across, in spite of being part of the uppercrust of society, as quite laid back and down to earth. The actor John Anderson, who portrays him, seems rather thin for the earlier Roosevelt, but he was aged quite well and looked gaunt enough for the war years Roosevelt. He projects a certain warmth and charm on the president. FDR's bond with the polio stricken Lillian Rogers Parks was well remembered by me from my first viewing and it was heartwarming to see this again. I can't help but admire President Roosevelt. He wasn't a perfect man and wasn't a perfect president, but he was certainly unique, I believe, among our Chief Executives.

All in all I think I enjoyed this miniseries more upon reexamination than I did when I first saw it. For one, I'm older and know my history better than I did back then. It was easier for me to absorb this time around and that left me free to concentrate on the characters of Maggie and Lillian and their troubled but loving relationship. Their story was blended in masterfully with their time at the White House serving the presidents and their wives as something more than mere background but at the same time not something totally in the foreground. Just right, I would say.

It's a cliche, I know, to say that this was an all-star cast of players, but it truly is. Besides the actors I mentioned specifically as the presidents, there was also the great talents of Leslie Uggams, Olivia Cole, Louis Gosset, Jr., Cloris Leachman, Leslie Neilsen (excellent as Ike Hoover), Andrew Duggan, and Estelle Parsons, just to mention several.

I bought this on sale at Amazon.com for around thirty dollars. Not cheap, but to me worth every penny. I am going to let my lady friend borrow it after having described how enjoyable it was. I may watch it with my mom over the holidays. Certainly I don't plan on letting another thirty-plus years elapse before I see it again. Each DVD (one program per DVD) has scene selection, a feature I will certainly use in order to rewatch portions of the program without having to sit through the whole thing at once.

My intention in this post isn't so much to review this series - but I can't help giving it my best endorsement as a way to both be entertained and at the same time learn a little American History - but to let you know the results of my little memory experiment. I feel that my memory is fairly sound and trustworthy. When I write about my past I should generally be assumed trustworthy in my reports. At the same time, like everyone, there is inevitably a little distortion and recreation of hazy parts. Part of being human, I suppose.

This has been a fine weekend so far!

My Special Penny

My favorite aunt, no longer among the living, gave my father a gift to hold for me until I got older. It was an 1835 penny and she passed it along to me when I was born as a sort of keepsake. It was one of the large pennies that featured Lady Liberty on its face, was darkened with age, but still in fairly good shape. But it seems we raided his collection nearly as much as we added to it.

Dad kept this for me in his ammo box, a souvenir from his WWll days. In this small metal box he kept an assortment of old coins he had found and culled from his change, Indian Head pennies, Wheat pennies, Mercury dimes, Buffalo nickels, "Walking" half dollars, even foreign coins - in short, all kinds of treasures to a young and curious mind such as mine.

In case you might be wondering how a small box could hold what should probably have been an ever growing collection, the answer lies in the fact that since my family was a part of the great American underclass my dad often dipped into his old money in order to make up our school lunch money. Well do I remember being a nickel or dime short of having it and Dad going through his coins selecting the least collectible of his collectibles. I'm old enough that when I was child their were still a number of Buffalo nickels and Mercury dimes floating around in circulation - not a lot, maybe, but they were there, and so were the Liberty quarters and half dollars.

But back to my penny, given to me by my favorite aunt, Grace, my Dad's sister. He always told me he was holding it for until I was older. But he would let me take it out and examine it and hold it. As I did I would close my eyes and think about all the people, now long dead, whose hands this penny has passed through. If inanimate objects could talk! It was a piece of history, as was every coin in my dad's collection (and with him this was just a hobby, not something he did seriously). As a child I spent hours looking through these old coins, examining the dates and trying to place each in it's proper era. I loved American history as child and love it now.

My "Matron Head" penny was the oldest coin in my dad's ammo box. It was special to me for that reason, but especially because it had been given to me by my beloved aunt. As you might be beginning to suspect, this story doesn't have a happy ending.

After my parents divorced my dad loaded up his belongings in his old Datsun station wagon and went in search of a sleeping room. He spent some time with his brother, then in several different furnished sleeping rooms, and finally in an apartment that was owned by his sister-in-law. Somewhere in all this moving around someone broke into his car and took the ammo box, his coin collection, and my beloved penny. He always suspected it was one of his nephews, one who had a drinking problem and who knew about the coins. In the interest of family peace he never pursued the matter.

I was eleven or twelve when this happened, and as I recall it was the first possession of great importance to me that was stolen from me. I never would have sold my keepsake, but would have held on to it and cherished it for my aunt's memory and for the all the childhood pleasure it gave me.

From time to time I've had my own little informal collection of old money. It never amounts to much. I don't see many old coins in the change I get now. No doubt there are more collectors than ever before. Anyway, I've reached a point in my life where I treasure my memories more than things, so I don't do much collecting. The great thing about memories is that other people can't steal them from you.

I'm Gonna Be Backstairs At The White House Saturday

Well, sort of I am. I look forward to every weekend and the chance to get away from the pressures of my job and just live life on my own terms for a while. But this weekend, if things go as planned, will be a little something special, and for this reason. Thanks to careful shopping and patient waiting for the price to drop I now own (and it is in my possession, having arrived Tuesday) the 4 part, 4 DVD miniseries Backstairs At The White House, based on Lillian Rogers Parks' memoirs My Thirty Years Backstage At The White House. (Parks was a seamstress at the White House and her mom was a maid there for three decades; together they give a fascinating view of the personal lives of our presidents from Taft to Eisenhower.)

Never read the book, but I remember watching every episode of this miniseries when it originally aired back in 1979. As a lover of presidential history from about as far back as I can remember, this miniseries held my interest. I remember being sad when it came to an end. I waited for it to be repeated, but if it ever was, I never caught. It has been over thirty, then, since I watched this.

I like being able to do that, re-watch and old program that made a strong impression on me. I have these firm memories in place and now I can test my overall memory and see how accurate those memories are compared to reality. I've done this with other old movies and television shows, portions of which I would have taken a court oath to confirm the way it was. And if I had, a few times I would have been almost totally wrong, many more times I would have been mostly right but not as clear as I thought. Rarely if ever are things exactly the way I remembered them. Obviously my mind fills in blanks and for some reason alters some details. (Bet yours does, too.)

These exercises always give me pause when I write about my memories. Our personal filters greatly influence our take on things. Only fools deny this. I'm not one who can claim a photographic memory, but mine is usually pretty good. Yet I have to admit that somehow I don't remember many things, even those I find significant, in a precise manner.

That bothers me, of course. But maybe I'm being too hard on myself. These memory tests usually indicate that I'm mostly accurate in my memory. However, I like precision.

At any rate, my plans this Saturday are to settle in under a quilt on my couch (or maybe my favorite chair) and watch all four parts of this series. (I'm sure I'll break that up a little with a few other activities.) I have waited for this a long time and plan to thoroughly enjoy it. If all four episodes are a bit much at once, I'll probably finish it up on Sunday.

I'm sure I'm not wrong about it being a highly interesting and entertaining series. But I will let my esteemed readers know how my memories (many of them quite hazy due to the length of time since my original viewing, but there are several key points I seem to remember strongly) stack up against the reality.

And let me hasten to add, concerning my plans for Saturday, that I do plan on getting up and doing my regular daily post about whatever is on my mind before I head to the couch. I usually sleep in a little bit on the weekends, so my post may not be up as early as usual, but many of you don't drop in until later in the day anyway. I will certainly look forward to your visit if you do stop by.

Was That An Earthquake Er Whut?

How is it that as long as we have had the 9-1-1 national emergency system, there are so many folks who don't know it's proper use? Of course the answer is probably that we have so danged many idiots all around us. We've all the seen the way too frequent news stories where one of our idiots has called 9-1-1 because their fast food order got mixed up. Last year a lady was jailed because she dialed 9-1-1 in order to report a bad manicure!

While not rising to that level is stupidity, an idiotic 9-1-1 call was featured on the local news just now as they were covering the earthquake we had here in Northern Georgia yesterday, a 2.7 centered near Dalton, GA. They play a 9-1-1 call from a local lady who was asking if that was an earthquake she felt.

I was at work and on my lunch break when the quake hit. Didn't feel a thing. It was weak as earthquakes go, and only those nearest felt much. I've been through a few that I remember, but nothing major. Sure, it's a bit unnerving ... but why call 9-1-1 unless there is a true emergency?

"9-1-1, what is your emergency?"

"Was that an earthquake we just had or what?"

I tell you, the dispatcher who took that call acted with more patience than I probably would have. In fact, the dispatcher confessed she would like to know the answer, too. Perhaps reminding the caller that we have these neat inventions like televisions, radios, and widespread internet access to turn to for that purpose would have been in order.

Of course this is the Bible Belt. Any ground shaking could just be the return of Jesus to earth! It is also Republican and conservative DINO country. Al-Qaeda has probably had us on their planning map for some time now.

I might be coming across as a tad mean here, but it really is a sad thing that so many of my neighbors worry constantly about the Apocalypse or terror attacks and overlook the basic stuff like the fact that we live near the East Tennessee Seismic Zone. Earthquakes happen. Here, too.

Sort of like the way everyone down here was caught off guard last spring by the deadly tornado outbreak. God must be have been trying to get our attention, right? That stuff doesn't happen here. In "Tornado Alley," sure. But all the mountains protects down here, right?

Hey folks: Mother Nature (God) doesn't discriminate. Learn it. Accept it. Deal with it.

Groper Poll: Fifth Face On Mount Rushmore?

South Dakota's Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a well known symbol of national pride. Four of our great presidents have their faces blasted into a mountain there (it was intended to be their busts before funds ran out), chosen for their roles in preserving and expanding this great nation of ours.

Enter GOP presidential unlikely Michele Bachmann, who in an interview Tuesday was asked who she would like to see added to the monument. The thing I love about hearing Bachmann speak is that you can just about always count on her saying something silly and amusing. And on this question she didn't disappoint.

As you might expect, her initial response was that Republican god Ronald Reagan should be so honored. Then, as if to try to flaunt her historical knowledge, she threw out the names of Presidents Garfield and Coolidge. (I believe she couldn't think of Millard Fillmore's name as she answered.)

She thinks Garfield is worthy because he was the only president from the House of Representatives to be elected to that office. (With absolutely no disrespect towards Garfield intended, he was president for such a short period of time he would seem ridiculously out of place among the quartet.) Calvin Coolidge, she thinks, deserves to be there because, until Reagan, he was the laziest president we ever had. Well, really, because, she says, he "got the country's budget back on track." Yeah, okay.

Honestly, I think Mount Rushmore is fine the way it is and should be left the way it is. But if, for some reason, it was decided that a fifth president should be enshrined, who would be worthy? My Groper Poll question is:

Which president is worthy of a fifth spot on Mount Rushmore?

I will go first and suggest that Franklin Roosevelt would sit well among those other greats. Our only four term president (although he died early into that last one), Roosevelt changed the way the government deals with national crises, seeing us through the Great Depression and most of the way through the second world war. The Republican party has in recent in decades become obsessed with turning the clock back to those pre-FDR days when the government sat mostly passive (except for wars) as the nation reeled in crisis.

What think my readers on this question?

That Gloomy Time Of Year

This is an awkward and gloomy time of the year for me. I am always anxious for the approach of autumn and the end to the stifling heat and humidity that is so much a part of life in the South. The changing of the leaves is always nice. The falling of the leaves interesting. Those first whiffs of autumn leaves burning are exhilarating. And then comes the changing of the time when we "fall back." We just did that this past weekend.

Now the sun is fast descending in the western sky by the time I get home from work. When my six o'clock news comes on, it is already dark outside. And we are just getting started. The days will be getting shorter and shorter for quite a number of weeks yet. These cooler, brisker nights and mornings will soon enough give way to downright bone achingly cold nights and mornings. By January (probably by late December) the flannel sheets will be on my bed so that I don't have to do the fetal position thing when I first get in and until I get the sheets warm enough to gradually stretch out.

These shorter days are a bit depressing to me. Always have been. Looking forward at the many dark, cold days of winter that lie just ahead is a downer. Happily Thanksgiving and Christmas add a couple of bright spots into the mix. But they are sandwiched between a lot of gloom.

It's fair to say that I don't enjoy winter, I endure it. And yet these cooler months of the year have their charms. I just wish my body handled them better. It seems now that I'm that age when the extremes of winter and summer really take a toll.

In several more weeks I will be watching the calendar for the winter solstice, the year's shortest day. I will be impatiently waiting for my friend the Sun to start reasserting himself. Gradually the days will lengthen, I will get more daylight, and my mood will gradually improve.

Well, I said this is awkward. As gloomy a frame of mind as this time of year puts me in, it has its good points. I sleep so much better with the early dark and the cooler temps. Nothing like snuggling under the covers to get warm and then having sleep over take you as you do.

The truth is, it doesn't make sense to go through live trying to hurry through the less enjoyable portions of it. Sometimes I catch myself living for the weekends, looking past the work week, eager for more of my own personal time. One can get old quick doing that - living only for the best of times and looking past the less than best of times.

I will have to remind myself of that again in January, when I am really in a gloomy funk because of the continued dark and cold.

My Bed Is A Teleporter

...of sorts, to a strange land where wishes are fulfilled, where long dead loved ones (like my father and best friend brother) are alive and able to interact with me again. It takes me to a magic land where emotional needs are routinely met and fulfilled, unlike here in the real world. I've amassed fortunes far beyond the realm of what is likely here, made love to women long gone from my life or that never have and never could be part of my life. There I've perfected skills beyond my ability and came to possess superhuman powers that exist only in fiction. In short, I'm so much more in my dreams than what I truly am.

I truly look forward to my nightly adventures into the land of the strange and wonderful. My dreams are usually vivid and richly detailed. Some of them are quickly forgotten, yet many stay with me. I have many dream memories from my childhood days. If I were to routinely catalogue for public consumption these "night plays" everyone would know a lot more about me than I care to reveal.

Then there are the nightmares, those horrific corners of my psyche, my unresolved fears. These aren't so pleasant, but certainly helpful for me in my attempt to fully understand myself. Sometimes I am able to rise up to conquer the monsters and adversities that attack me in the dream world. Other times I am left to deal with my vulnerability.

Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote:

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?

That is probably true enough for me inasmuch as my dreams are who I really am, my thoughts unbridled from the limits I place on them in order to make myself fit in a bit better. It's a fascinating nightly trip.

Ture Love

For some reason I've been thinking about my first ever girlfriend and so thought I would dedicate today's post to her memory. It was in my eleventh year. I had had a girl, Sandra, latch onto me in the first grade, (grabbed me by the hand and literally dragged me all over the school yard), but I didn't return the affection. Then when I was in the third grade I liked a girl named Jamie, who, conveniently enough, lived just down the street from me. But she didn't like me.

Ah, but it was different with Glenda. We "loved" each other at the same time. And to make it easier for us to maintain the "relationship," my best friends at the time (and next door neighbors) were her cousins. So Glenda and I were able to keep the flames of love burning red hot - which meant we all would sometimes spend Saturdays at play and maybe she would go to church with us on children's church night.

On one of these occasions when my mother drove Glenda and one of her female cousins to church with us, I sat in the back seat with them and made goo goo eyes at my gal. They carried tissues with them in order to daub their mouths as we ate licorice candy on the way. As we got to church Glenda tucked her used tissue into the ashtray built into the back door and we readied to go inside. After church and after we took Glenda and her now nameless and faceless cousin home, I retrieved her tissue from the empty ash tray. I took it to bed with me that night and held it to my nose, reliving the evening through the scent of her perfume mingled with the licorice spit.

I thought this raven haired girl was about the prettiest thing I had ever seen - at least up until that time in my life. And my "love" for her grew throughout the winter. But did she feel the same about me?

As winter gave way to spring and our relationship continued, she for the first time let me know she really felt the same about me. And it happened in the following way. Glenda was over at my best friend's (her cousin's) house and we were all playing. Then she spied a can of black spray paint lying out in the yard. She took that can and walked straight to the patch of street immediately in front of my house and sprayed out a big plus symbol. Then she sprayed in those magic letters I will never forget: DB + GG = Ture Love.

Yes, you read that right: Ture Love. And it was big as life, too. I was both elated for myself and embarrassed for her at the same time. A female school mate who lived just around the corner tried to make me feel better by explaining that true can be spelled two ways, and the proper use for expressing true love was ture. It didn't help and reinforced something my male friends had tried to explain to me all along: girls are stupid.

The spring rains came and then the summer thunderstorms, and car tires rolling over the hot pavement acted as erasers, until finally the graffiti was gone. I don't think my parents ever really noticed it, or maybe didn't notice what it said.

Our ture love lasted at least until the next school year began. I can say that because I distinctly remember her birthday being in September (when public started way back then), and I - with my dad's help - bought her a cheap but flashy bracelet for the occasion. Shortly afterwards her family moved away and I was left sweetheartless. Now I longed to see the misspelled emblem of our love in front of my house, but only the faintest lines and my memory of them remained. There ended my first love affair.

In many ways, as I look back, my love life mirrored poor old Charlie Brown's. Finally, I married my high school sweetheart and we stayed married for eight and half years, then we divorced. Since that time I've had a string of relationships, that I must say, were ture love affairs. I tried, but the women obviously somehow couldn't get it right.

Whatever happened to my first love, Glenda? Well, I heard through mutual friends that she later got into drugs and was seeing older guys. Shockingly, I ran into her only one time afterward, at a laundromat where I had stopped in to buy a coke from one of the machines there. She was there, haggard looking, pregnant, very red eyed, and - just as reports had indicated - with a guy who was much older than her sixteen years, I supposed she was washing their clothes. I remember how that saddened me, I remembered the innocent fun our fling was. I never held her hand, never kissed her. Heck, the most intimate thing I ever remember was the time I was at her house to pick her up for church and she let me pick out the dress she was going to wear. But it was sweet and innocent.

Aargh ... life!

Food For Thought

It was the ancient physician Hippocrates who is credited with saying: "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food." A simple thought and good. I think we now know, however, that it is a case perhaps a bit overstated.

I grew up hearing in primary school that "an apple a day keeps the doctor away." Again good advice, but overstated. My family could never afford to put that to a strict test when I was a child, but I've eaten at least my share of apples as an adult, and I rarely have go to the doctor. Yet there have been long stretches where I wasn't eating apples at all and my health continued to be good.

We are inundated with various news stories and health reports touting the health benefits of various foods. Tomatoes, for example, may protect our bodies from cancer, studies have suggested and health bits on the news have told us. And to show the way this type of thing falls on many ears, I had a close friend tell me she "knew that was a lie" because she always ate lots of tomatoes and she developed colon cancer in her late thirties!

I know plenty of health food nuts (and for a brief period in my younger days was one myself) and exercise fanatics who are in much worse health than I am and have had more serious physical conditions than those which afflict me.

As I was starting out into adulthood with a whole world ideas at my beck and call through a well stocked public library, I read many books on health, nutrition, and longevity. I read many books by well meaning folks that I now tend to think of as nuts, who taught that solely by eating only the proper foods and avoiding "man made" bastardizations of Mother Nature's products, we can avoid disease and remain healthy.

I'm sure that is wrong.

My favorite piece of food advice is quite old and comes from wise old Ben Franklin: "To lengthen thy live, lessen thy meals." Not that I have always practiced that religiously, but as health advice goes, I think it is pretty good.

My efforts at treating myself with food is limited to trying to eat a variety of foods and not overindulging in certain types of food. Balance, in other words. I limit fast food to rare occasions, don't overdo meat, and in general try not to burden myself with a ton of dos and don'ts.

I have known fat people who have lived a long time, and slender folks who checked out quite early. With all there is to truly be concerned about in life, trying to beat the system (our fate as determined by our genes) just doesn't seem to me to be time well spent. (I'm not offering advice here, just stating my outlook.)

If somehow I could with a certainty know that I could add eight or ten years to my life by eating unbuttered, unseasoned oatmeal for breakfast, a salad for lunch, and for dinner vegetables and a half-palm sized portion of lean baked meat with fruit for dessert, and only allowing myself a tablespoon of mixed nuts or a half of cup of popped corn for occasional snacks, I'm sure I would still do it the way I am doing it now. I would sacrifice a little longevity to indulge in the foods I really love.

Perhaps I'm wrong but I think stress and constant worry probably does more to wreck out health than a hot dog smothered with toppings. Unhappily living the life of a wage slave is I'm sure more taxing on our systems than a slice of pizza with all the toppings. Tofu won't cure an unhappy life and yogurt won't undo the damage caused by lack of adequate sleep and relaxation.

Just a bit before starting out to write this post I had a hot bowl of oatmeal and a modest-sized glass of orange juice for my breakfast. That made me feel good. I had added a half-teaspoon of real butter and a quarter cup of sugar to my oatmeal and that made me feel better. It certainly improved the taste of the oatmeal. But it is the rest of the day and weekend that I hope will do the most for my health. My time away from my job duties is the time when I really get back in harmony with my "cosmic self."

The more I study my cats, the more I think they are far happier than most of us. They don't torture themselves with long lists of dos and donts and worries about the cares of life. They just live. That isn't possible for most of us in our modern society. But it should serve as a reminder that life is about living and finding happiness and fulfillment or at least a sense of contentment. One worry my cats don't have is finding food to eat. I take care of that. And with full bellies and a little petting, they are ready to face the world. I try to do at least as much for myself.

On Partisanship

Partisan: 1. A fervent, sometimes militant supporter or proponent of a party, cause, faction, person, or idea (The Free Dictionary).

It seems the scandal swirling around Herman Cain has been a fundraising bonanza for him and his cause. Perhaps I'm wrong but I can't imagine that this story has brought hitherto closeted sexual harassers out into the open and energized them into a movement to elect one of them as president of the United States. I'm guessing that this is a case of blind partisans "rallying" around their guy for the simple reason that he is their guy.

True fans and devotees know nothing of objectivity. God, how I hate that mentality!

Every now and then I do a post critical of President Obama. Not a hit piece or anything, just a little explanation of why I think he is letting us down as president and why and how I think he could improve his job performance. Just my two cents, I know, but my mint ought to be as valuable as anyone else's.

Invariably I will get comments from some of my liberal friends that almost suggest to me that they think I am somehow giving aid and comfort to the other side. It's as if it's okay when I lay into conservative politicians, but I shouldn't criticize "one of our own."

That's not the way I do business. There is a big difference between supporting someone faults and all and supporting them no matter what.

But our entire political system - at least on the national level - is built upon partisanship. Then we wonder why we get gridlock!

Our president is chiefly (bad pun, I know) a figurehead. The real power is in congress, and is for sell to the highest bidder.

The power should be with the people, and would be, if only we would act intelligently instead of, when we do try to get together and push for something, becoming an angry mob.

Easy answers? I have none. But I do know that so long as money controls leadership and partisans care more about personalities than principles, these are going to be rough times.