Writing for Sanity's Sake

The people who get the accolades in death are those who are famous.  This week there’s been a couple of those.  Aretha Franklin was laid to rest in Detroit, amidst singing and celebration of her life.  In a different setting, Senator John McCain was laid to rest at Annapolis in Maryland.  Famous people both, a singer and a politician.  Many people extolled their virtues, their relationships, and their accomplishments.  In many cases this is rightfully done, this is righteously done.  I think it was deserved in both these cases. These were indeed two good people.  Not perfect, but good.

For all of those famous people who fight for the less famous, who dedicate themselves to helping those less fortunate then they are, it is deservedly done indeed.  Let there be no doubt about it, that although working hard for things is a great quality of human beings, it does take fortune in these cases to be able to attain fame and riches.  Sometimes it just boils down to being in the right….or wrong….place at the right time.  Sometimes it’s just by grace.

I guess in some cases it could be called “infamy” instead of fame, and sometimes even those who are infamous get those accolades when they die.  It’s certainly not deserved in those cases. Mostly, history makes up for it though, by telling a different tale.

Thus it always goes in our human culture, the rich and the famous…the kings and the popes, the leaders and the playwrights, are remembered with much ceremony, while those of us who are less rich and less famous go to our reward pretty much unceremoniously and sometimes even ingloriously.  Sometimes too, even anonymously.

My Daddy was a Navy man too, like McCain.  He served in World War II and Korea.  He was on a destroyer at the end of World War II as a gunners mate. They were attacked by some of the last Japanese kamikaze planes, and took down a couple of them.  Later on, Dad moved into the sweltering boiler room as a petty officer and served out the rest of WWII there.

They went on to sail into the China sea, and on down the Yellow river.  Their destroyer saw action in the Korean War.  He told me of poor people freezing to death on their rooftops, and of starving children begging for candy bars.  He told me about man’s inhumanity to other men, and the lack of respect for life during that time.

He was on a ship which sailed into an area at Enewetak Atoll in 1948 and 1949, during which time the United States tested more than 43 nuclear bombs in that area….vaporizing the islet of Elugelab.  My opinion is that my Dad, along with a lot of other service members at the time were exposed to a lot of radiation which affected them the rest of their lives.  They didn’t know at the time how dangerous it was, and later on the government would deny it.  My Dad never complained about anything to do with that, nor about any other thing which had to do with his service to his country.  The only thing I ever heard him complain about was the food they served.  Too many Navy beans.

He came home totally disillusioned with War in 1953, to his wife and his 3 year old son.  He went to work in the cotton mill at Trion, and worked there most of the rest of his life…working his way up from a weaver and loom fixer, to the superintendent of the Weave shop.

When my Daddy died in 2010, at the age of 82…. he had a decent funeral with friends and family in attendance, and was buried with a Navy honor guard giving him a 21 gun salute.  Seven guns times three volleys.  Both holy numbers used one last time in the ceremony of his passing from this world.  His eulogy are the words which remain in my mind about all of the things he had said and done.  There was plenty of it there, because my Dad loved to talk.  He hated spaces of time in which there was no conversation, and I’m afraid I inherited that from him.

My Mom died just a few months later in December of 2010 and her funeral was much smaller, with no guns to fire.  It was close to Christmas, and I sang “Silent Night” at her ceremony.  There were about 15 or 20 of us who went to the cemetery as she was buried.  She deserved so much more because she was not an ordinary person….not to me.  She deserved a 21 gun salute for just putting up with me all of my life, and most of hers.  I regret she didn’t get it.

I remember a lot of the men, from my childhood who served in World War II and Korea, and not many of them talked a whole lot about it either.  They just did their duty, came back home and made a life for themselves and their families.   I remember their wonderful wives, who were the mothers of my friends and schoolmates. A lot of them made their lives by working in the Trion cotton mill in the little town by the same name in which I was born.  That mill has been there since before the Civil war, and still stands and is operating til this day.  Thousands of people have worked there, lived in the surrounding areas all their lives and died and are buried in the local cemeteries with just their names and the date of their birth and deaths etched into their stones to mark them being here on earth.  A lot of them didn’t even have funerals, although many, many of them deserved eulogies beyond those of much more famous men of the world.  They had done more good for humanity in some of the simple acts of kindness and contrition then most Kings and Queens had ever done, whether they were “kings of the political world” or “queens of soul”.

The majority of them were great people, hard workers and good family people.  They read their bibles, took their kids to church and made gardens in their back yards, out of which their families partook of most of their food.  They took their rifles and shotguns and hunted rabbit, squirrels and deer for meat, and took their cane poles and fishing rods to the rivers and lakes and brought home tons of bream, bass, carp, catfish and crappie.  They took care of their families.  Most of them loved their families.  A very small percentage, perhaps, did not, but there are some reasons, if you will read on you will find my opinion.

One of the things that used to distress me when I was a child was the amount of mostly men of my Dad’s age and generation who, as my Mom would say, turned out to be drunkards.  A lot of these men were men who had gone off to war.  I used to look down on some of them…we had one guy who lived two doors down from us who stayed drunk most of the time.  It wasn’t until later in my life that I found out he’d been on the front line in Germany fighting.  I realized how small minded I had been, or at least how uninformed I was about the reasons for all that drinking.  I think a lot of men who went to war over the centuries came back home and had to turn to drink in order to be able to stand the pain of what they had seen and done.  It used to be called “shell shock” Nowadays they have another name for it: PTSD.  Back then, and further back in history there wasn’t any such diagnosis.  Just drunkards and malcontents.

But even still, most of these men managed to take care of their families, although there were certainly some scars left on children and spouses.  They were just ordinary people.  I suppose some of them had funerals in funeral homes and such.  Probably had family and a few friends and a preacher, like we did with my Mom.  No memorials in the big cathedrals though, because there were no famous men among them, and no rich men….at least very few.  These people also deserved words of sympathy and respect.

I wish I’d given all of the “ordinary” people more respect than I did.  I wish I could go back and apologize for what many of them had to go through.  Acts of tiny heroism which were never recognized, but which needed to be, and still needs to be.

All of the ordinary people living their ordinary lives who kept, and still keep, the wheels of society turning.  Without them….these poor to lower middle class citizens of this country, there would not be, nor will their continue to be, a society left which can even afford to have a famous singer, or pay attention to a war hero turned politician.

But, as I say…that’s the way life happens isn’t it.

In this day and age the semi famous and infamous can have their 15 seconds of fame, due to television and social media, where in the past things had to be consigned to the history books, novels, newspapers and magazines.  Too many times in our day and age the need to be “famous” comes out as a compulsion to explode in a final frenzy of terrible and heinous acts.  School shootings, mass murders, and other savage acts are done only in order to get attention.  That seems to be sort of where we have arrived in this day and age.

I sincerely hope our future generations can see the worth in all people, no matter their station in life, and can learn to appreciate who they are and what they are, letting each of us live and let live….without impunity.

Doctor, doctor give me the news

I’ve got a bad case of lovin’ you….

I understand that the practice of medicine has changed. Its changed greatly especially over the past 25 years. There is SO much specialization now. If you have a problem with your fingers…you can’t see a Dr. who specializes in shoulders. If you have a hip problem, like my wife has…you can’t see a Doctor who only sees people for knees. (we found that out this past week) There are so very few physicians who have “private practices” anymore. Most of them are “captives” of huge medical groups. They work for these groups just like a regular person works for a “boss” in the mill. The difference is the pay I suppose. Things change.

Back when I was a kid there were three Doctor’s practicing medicine in Trion. They all had offices at the old hospital. The one I went to was “Ol’ Doc Clemens” I remember him as a larger than life figure. A “big” man in the sense of size…more large in the middle than he was tall and big boned. He was a chain smoker and more than likely had a cigarette in his mouth when you walked in his office. The Doctor that was portrayed in the movie Forrest Gump was almost an exact double for Dr. Clemens as I remember him. A little gruff and grumpy at times, but he knew your name and was true to the title “General Practitioner” He treated anybody for anything. It would have to have been an extreme problem that would have sent you to a “specialist” in those days. They were few and far between, and if the Doctor sent you to one of them, your relatives might have been wise to start consulting the funeral home. Ol’ Doc Clemens didn’t believe too much in “specialists”

I went to him for everything from the mumps, to stitches, to infections, to severe colds, to severe knee problems.

I ruptured a ligament in my right knee when I was 14, swinging too hard at a baseball. Doc Clemens treated me for that. I ended up in the hospital for close to a week with my knee in traction. After that, it was a huge and heavy cast for 6 weeks. Doc Clemens recommended after I got my cast off, that I start walking to exercise it and that was when I started playing golf.

I remember we always loved to go by his house for Halloween every year. He didn’t give us kids that he knew a piece of candy. We got ice cream cones one year, candied apples another year. He lived there on the end of Sunset Lane by himself. I think his wife had passed away some years earlier…but I’m not sure. My memory is a little fuzzy in that area. All I know is that he was an unusual man. A very compassionate man.

The other two Doctors who were there in the 50’s were Dr. Little, and Dr. Hyden. They were both good men also. Dr. Hyden was the doctor who “birthed” me, and also the doctor who saved my brother’s life with an unusual blood transfusion treatment for a blood infection back when he was a little kid. Those Doctors were icons of the community. When the little hospital closed and these three Doctors stopped practicing, the old hospital sat there for quite a few years empty until Dr. Gary Smith had the front part renovated and he had his private practice there for many years. Dr. Smith was another Dr. who worked hard, for many long hours to benefit this community.

Now, I’m not commenting on what should be done about the state of medicine in this country today. I really am not writing this in order to get any political opinions about what should or should not happen to improve things. I just think back, and kind of long for the days when your Doctor knew your name, your family, and actually cared about getting you well more than he or she cared about how much money they were going to get for seeing you. They cared about all the parts of your body, and they knew what I know about the human body:

The foot bone connected to the leg bone,

The leg bone connected to the knee bone,

The knee bone connected to the thigh bone,

The thigh bone connected to the back bone,

The back bone connected to the neck bone,

The neck bone connected to the head bone,

Oh, hear the word of the Lord!

How can we have a true understanding of other people, if our minds are so closed we cannot even process any opinions which are contrary to the way WE think?

In order to understand you must first listen…really listen. Then, before you quote your rote memorized reply, stop and think about what you heard….really think. Think about putting yourself in the other persons position…walk a mile in their shoes. This goes for everyone on every which side, and every which position.

Hemingway said: “I love to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening. Most people never listen”.

Epictetus said: “It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks he already knows”.

Proverbs 1:5 “A wise man will listen and obtain learning, and one who KNOWS will obtain guidance”.

I am one who has not listened well in the past, but now that my hearing isn’t quite as good, and I have had to listen more closely in order to understand…I find I have learned much more than ever before. Perhaps we should sometimes close our eyes when someone is talking and listen as would a blind man. Maybe our senses would be heightened, and we could hear beyond the sheer rhetoric and pomposity to the deep core of truth which we must surely seek.

And then there are those who quit reading after the first paragraph.

September 2nd……..September 4th

I remember sitting down in the edge of the grass, with my feet out on the chert rock lined road at the old Trion cemetery. I think somewhere there’s a picture….

Looking back now forty seven years later, I don’t see anything different that could have been done. I believe things happen as they happen, and even if human technology were to develop a time machine so that a person could go back in time, one has to wonder if tampering with what has already come and gone would even be remotely a good idea.

If you change one heartbeat, if you save one heartbeat….would it be in exchange for another?

When you come back from your time travel, all of your photo albums would have different scenes….different people would be in them.

Familiar love might be gone and be replaced by a different set of love.

So even with the sorrow which runs through this coming week every year now…

knowing what I know, and having what I have, I could not and would not go back and take a chance on rearranging history. Things happen as they happen and there is a reason for everything. Randomness, or planned to the infinitesimal, it doesn’t make any difference, it’s in the books.

Somewhere, out there in the Universe, or here in the Universe her spirit waits for me. That’s enough to know, and to hold onto.

Some days you go with the old ways, sometimes with the new.

I am reminded today that I do not know the real truth of anything. We as humans believe what we believe based on the use of our senses, which are sadly lacking even compared to lesser species of the animal world. We take pride in our knowledge, which is derived from what we can perceive from our tiny dust speck of a planet in our tiny section of the Universe.

I of all people do not stand in any particular position of knowledge, as it relates to anything any other human wishes to comfort themselves in believing. For all I know, we may each have different outcomes awaiting us, based on what we sincerely believe is going to happen. I have to therefore caution any and all to not cast dispersion on the true beliefs of others, even if they are far different from your own. My Daddy used to say in his wisdom, “as long as it’s not hurtin’ nobody, let ’em believe what they want…” Thanks for that one Dad.

It’s no fun getting hit by a car. I can tell you that from personal experience, having been hit by one back in 1959 while crossing the street to get to the Grammer school. It’s was foggy that morning and I stepped out in front of Bo Brown…a HS Senior who was turning into the parking lot. It knocked me about 15 feet through the air and cut open big gashes in both of my knees. I was lucky that’s all it did!

Poor old Bo…God rest his soul, he bounded out of that car and carried me to the hospital which was only a block away back then. It scared me, but I know it scared him more. I’ve had knee problems off and on for years since then. They still ache some cold winter days.

Tonight, coming back from Walmart I turned onto Simmons Street. There were tons of cars at the track field, lots of little kid football practice going on… and I remembered how bad it felt to get hit by a car. I slowed way down. Sure enough a little feller darted right out between two cars in front of me. I had plenty of time to stop as I was going so slow, and it wasn’t even close. “I guess everything happens for a reason” I thought as I rolled down the window and hollered: “Hey boy, you look both ways next time!” It hurts to get hit by a car. I Know!

The days of Summer are numbered. The only thing left in the garden is Okra and a few scraggly tomatoes growing up too high for the bugs to get. The mosquitoes are so bad that they looked like a veritable cloud around my poor little dog when she went outside this evening. You can’t walk around town without slathering yourself in a ton of “off” So…I’ll trade the last of the fresh Okra to get rid of the mosquitoes.

Perhaps an early frost this year? An early end to the “dog days” of the Summer of 2014. Usually the first frost is very close to my birthday…which is October 21, but I definitely would not mind a good hard, white hoar frost much sooner. I love them. I love the crisp, snapping, hot Apple cider, make a pot of chili days, which start out in the mornings with a white icy ground and ease up into the mid 60’s by afternoon, with a bright warming Autumn sun in the sky.

I love those days. The ones where you wear a sweatshirt but not a coat, and you see the kids out tossing around a football. The ones where the wind kicks up little whirlwinds of red, orange, brown and yellow leaves. The smell of somebody off somewhere in the distance burning a pile of those same dry leaves. The sunsets which are bright and clear with a few streaks of purple… oh how sweet and precious are those days. More valuable to me than piles of gold or diamonds.

I want to be even more aware of the wonderful days of Fall this year. I want to notice how blazing Orange the pumpkins are at Halloween, and how wonderful my wife’s Thanksgiving dressing smells and tastes. And then I want to see the little one’s eyes light up at Christmas when they tear into their gifts. I want to hold my new granddaughter, and smell the fresh newness of her life.

I never took the days of Autumn for granted. Even as a child I knew they were something special. The first poem I ever wrote was about the beauty of a special Fall day. The first song I played on my guitar and sang to was “Autumn Leaves” ” ….the falling leaves, drift by my window, the autumn leaves of red and gold…”

And so I hope for an early fall, an idyllic fall, a peaceful fall, a loving fall, a prosperous fall and a memorable fall. Not just for myself, but for all of us who need one right now so very badly. For those of us who have already seen more of them than we will ever see in the years ahead.

A taste of simplicity, a smell of memory, a sight of loveliness, a sound of familiarity and the feel of hope…for the future of all mankind. An Autumn of change..and not just in the weather.

In the reserve of human emotions which we all contain, sweetness is not seen as often as it should be seen, by any means. We commonly misuse the meaning of the word.

Sweetness is to be pleasant, marked by good humor or kindliness, as in having a “sweet disposition”.

I’ve known a lot of sweet people in the past, and we all know that babies are “sweet” but I am getting kind of worried about the good humor and kindliness portion of the dictionary’s definition. I know I don’t qualify as sweet….certainly. But , I distinctly remember a lot more sweet people comprising our populace in years gone by. You’d meet them everywhere.

Now…..well, in the scheme of things now, in the current state of our country and our world, I am hoping genetically speaking that having a sweet disposition is a dominant genetic trait.

The Catholic Church is rich. Nobody knows exactly how rich. Money, banking, land, artistic and literary treasures…and ancient antiques which boggle the mind. In the name of Jesus they have become a multi national, multi layered business run by people who say they are doing the almighty’s work. But they have grossly failed the people of their faith, the common people who wanted only to do the right thing. They depended on the priests, archbishops, cardinals, and the hierarchy to lead them. 

Instead they got abuse, sexual, physical and mental. They were led like lambs to the slaughter, but said not a word….until recently. 

I was not Catholic, but instead was brought up Baptist. We learned that Jesus healed the sick, gave to the poor, and had very few worldly possessions of his own. We were taught the golden rule, and John 3:16. We sang “Jesus loves the little children of the world….red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.” 

The church gave a large amount of money every year for “foreign missions”. Money earmarked to help bring people in poor countries to Jesus. 

But things change. I’ve seen the rise of the prosperity gospel money mongers like Joel Osteen, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar…and on and on. These men and women who flaunt their riches with jet planes, 5000 dollar suits, and multimillion dollar mansions. 

I’ve seen television preachers like Pat Robertson, Falwell Jr., Graham Jr., and Robert Jeffress become more and more scions of politics and political leaders, instead of leaders of people towards morality and decency. 

I started moving away from organized religion shortly after my open heart surgery in very late 2010. I have moved away from some many long held beliefs due to my vision of the world and its inhabitants. I have taken a new path because my heart told me I was not treading the right one. I still believe in a creator, but in a much different way now then before. There are other things I still believe in, including many of the teachings of Jesus himself….and only himself. 

I say these things not to create discord or anger, but simply to let my friends know where I stand. I stand for justice, equality, tolerance, charity, love and happiness for all of the inhabitants of the world.