The Right Stuff

            I’m in a mood, okay? Read on with that little forewarning.

            I’m old fashioned. I’m a dinosaur. Ask me if I care.
            I was raised in a culture of honesty and honor. When I was a kid, no one locked their doors at night. People went away for days at a time and left the house unlocked. My first paying job was for a man who had peach and apple orchards and a huge garden and sold his produce at a roadside stand. He didn’t tend the stand; no one did. The individual items were priced and a five gallon glass jar stood beside the door. People selected their produce and put the money in the jar. If they needed change, they made it themselves from the jar. It was called the honor system. My dad asked him one day if he lost any money. He replied that over the course of a summer he might lose a dollar or two. It was called, I’ll be redundant because some things are worth repeating; it was called the honor system.
            When I was a kid, the phrase, ‘his word was his bond’ still applied. If someone said he or she would do something, it was a binding contract and he/she did it, even if it cost him/her financially in the end. I once overheard a contract at the local general store when a poor man, a very poor man, bargained his labor for some groceries. He worked at the store every day after his regular job until he paid off the debt. You see, it didn’t matter who you were; it didn’t matter if you were on the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder, your word was your bond.
            My parents taught me, by word and by example, and the culture around me taught me, that duty was one of the highest goods, that being worthy of another’s trust was more valuable than money, and that honesty and honor were the true marks of humanity, the marks that really separate us from the beasts.
            What happened?
            I wish I knew the answer. If I did, maybe I could understand the world I see around me and maybe it wouldn’t make me so sad to see the endless striving after the wind.
            Maybe it’s just me. I have to admit to that possibility because I have some curious buttons. The national anthem can still bring a tear to my eye. If you saw the second Lord of the Rings movie, you may remember that the forces of good are holed up in Helm’s Deep and they know they have little chance against the legions of the evil army. Then, unexpectedly, a company of elves shows up to honor an ancient alliance and to fight with the men. The first time I saw that scene, I got choked up. Honor, courage, loyalty. My favorite novel of all time is ‘Watership Down’. I’ve read it a dozen times. It’s about rabbits. Well, rabbits are the characters, but it’s about friendship, trust, honor, courage and loyalty.
            So, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I expect too much from our frail humanity. That could be because I am, after all, a dinosaur. Ask me if I care.

Update

            I wanted to post a short update. Most of you know that the print version of What Rough Beast was published December 7^th. The Kindle version was made available two weeks after that. Several reviews have been posted on Amazon, and I’ve heard in person from a number of you, and the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. Overwhelmingly.
            I have to tell you, honestly, that I am humbled and gratified beyond words.
            I’m working with various County Arts Councils to arrange book signings in nearby counties. I have nothing firm at this time – perhaps in February or March. I’ll keep you posted. If you know ‘somebody’, let me know.
            Nearly everyone has asked when the sequel, Taylor’s Kin, will be available. (It was a good idea to put that teaser chapter of Taylor’s Kin at the end of What Rough Beast.) It warms my heart to know that you came to care about Jonathan Taylor and that you want to know the next chapter in his life.
            We’re aiming for the release of Taylor’s Kin by the end of February. I think we’re in the final edit. We’ll proof the copy and polish it. There’s work to be done on the cover, then we’ll jump through the publishing hoops, and it’ll be ready. (Sounds easy, doesn’t it?) The original plan was to release Taylor’s Kin in Kindle version only, but so many have said they want a physical book that the original plan will have to be revisited.
            What’s Taylor’s Kin about? After reading What Rough Beast, you know what Jonathan Taylor has gone through. The Beast has withdrawn, and Jonathan now has to face a new set of challenges in a new world. All that he knew has disappeared. What would it be like to find yourself in a world where only one tenth of one percent of the population survived? How would you continue? What kinds of challenges would you face? Would you try to reshape that new world to mirror the former one?
            Taylor’s Kin isn’t as dark as What Rough Beast. It’s not a laugh riot by any means and there are a few heavy spots, but it isn’t as frightening. Taylor reflects some on the Beast and on being human, but there’s a greater emphasis – survival.
            Be advised: there are scenes in Taylor’s Kin which will touch your heart, maybe even bring a tear. You’ve been warned.
            What else is going on? I’ve dusted off a couple of stories I wrote several years ago. They’re nothing like What Rough Beast, but they try to look at the human condition. Also, I’m working on a new story set in the South of the late 50s and 60s. Yes, I remember those days when we thought the party was just getting started. And, I recently let Jonathan Taylor start running free in my mind again. Guess what. He has another story to tell after Taylor’s Kin.
            Stay tuned.
           And thanks again for your kind words. They’ve meant a lot to me.

Place Holders

            I had such a good time at my brother-in-law’s recent surprise birthday party. He turned the big six-oh and my sister invited family and friends, and a large group attended. The coolest part for me was seeing people I hadn’t seen in years. I saw people I had grown up with and had seen at least weekly at church for twenty-five years. I knew their parents and, in some cases, their grandparents. Then I moved away and I hadn’t seen some of them for thirty years or so. I don’t know if you’re like me, but I tend to be intimidated by gatherings like this because sometimes it’s hard for me to pull up a name that hasn’t crossed my lips in ten, fifteen, twenty or more years.
            And they had changed. They were older. Well, we were all older.
            I knew them when we were children bounding around the churchyard playing tag or hide-and-seek. I knew them in their pressed Sunday suits and their pretty dresses. I knew them when our eyes were bright and innocent. I went to school with them and knew them into early adulthood. I knew them when they married and when their children were born. I knew the events in their lives which had brought joy. I knew the events which had brought sorrow.
            We were family.
            Then I moved and our paths seldom crossed. I felt a pang of remorse that I had moved and lost touch, but one can only follow his destiny.
            We’re grandparents now. I’ve mentioned before that I’m an observer and as I watched the other night, I started thinking. It occurred to me we are all place-holders. We were the grandchildren of our grandparents, the children of our parents. Then we took the places they had held. We became the parents of our children and then the grandparents of our grandchildren.
            I began to wonder what it was all about. Through the ages the march of humanity has been an endless procession of place-holders: we’re born, we live, we die and another generation steps up to take our places. We take the place held by our parents then our children take that place from us. The term, place-holder, may sound insignificant. It isn’t. I think I can argue that being a place-holder is a significant part of why we’re here.
            What have I done as a place-holder? Have I taught my children to respect themselves and others? Have I taught them how to make their way in life? Have I taught them the difference between right and wrong, the difference between faith and religion, between wanting and needing, between inner wealth and a gilded exterior?
            It will be obvious to you that place-holding has application beyond our families to life in general. Have I done anything in my time here to benefit the human race? Is that too ambitious? Have I done anything in my time here to benefit even one other human being? Or has my life been only about me?

            These are questions worth reflection. And it’s not a bad thing to reflect upon life.

Christmas2011

            Christmas is probably my least favorite holiday of the year.
            Some will read that and wonder what kind of scrooge I must be to say such a thing.
            It’s not that I don’t like the idea of Christmas. I do. I like it very much. My heart is always deeply moved as it ponders the possibility of peace, joy and harmony between us individual human beings and between races, classes and nations of people. It’s a wonderful and beautiful concept, a model, really, of how we ought to see and treat each other every day. And the underlying belief, the foundational belief that the divine has pulled down and will continue obstinately to pull down the barriers you and I throw up every day makes the heart swell with humility and gratitude.
            Christmas, to me, memorializes a magnanimous gift of the divine, a gift so obscure in its origin and so outrageous in its scope that it defies our puny understanding, a gift lavished upon us without regard to whether we’ve been naughty or nice. It memorializes a gift which we cannot consume but which, instead, consumes us.
            So, yes, I like the idea and the promise of Christmas. I just don’t care much for what we’ve done with it. Christmas is a season of the heart, a season when the heart is especially encouraged to listen beyond its own selfish beating to hear the soft, sweet song of the divine. I’m not going to subject you to a rant about how we have taken this season of the heart and turned it into an orgy of consumption. I will content myself with that mini-rant and tell you a story. You may have heard it before, but I’ll tell it again.
            This is a condensed and simplified version of what became known as the Christmas Truce. During the week before Christmas, 1914, during the First World War, at various points along the battle lines British troops in their trenches heard singing coming from the German trenches on the other side of the no-man’s land – the killing zone – which separated them. They recognized the songs as Christmas Carols. The British troops began to sing carols, too. Before long the opposing troops were shouting Christmas greetings to each other. On Christmas Eve men on both sides eased out of their trenches and joined their adversaries in the no-man’s land. In the center of the killing zone, they laid down their weapons, shook each other’s hands, exchanged simple gifts of food and cigarettes and sang Christmas carols.
            All were soldiers, men who were doing their duty to their respective nations. That which united them: their common Christianity, was able to unite them for only a few hours. That which divided them: their common humanity, sent them back to their trenches and back to their devoted efforts to kill each other.
            There is an element of deep sadness in that story. But there is an element of hope, too. Warring factions laid down their weapons and opened their arms to their enemies. Yes, it was brief, but it could never have happened at all, never in a million years, if the spirit of Christmas had not briefly taken sole possession of the hearts of those men. There is much hope there.

            I’m not going to wish you Merry Christmas or happy holidays. I’m going to wish you a season of the heart. If you have that, you’ll have the others.

Illegal Drugs - Dancing with the Devil

            This is not an easy issue. I’ve tried to put aside my biases and previously conceived ideas and to look honestly and dispassionately at this issue and all I can say is, sometimes you have to dance with the devil.
            Are you watching the aptly named ‘Border Wars’ on the National Geographic channel? If you aren’t aware of the war going on along the US/Mexico border, you need to get your head out of the sand. Every day cartels in Mexico attempt to ship huge amounts of marijuana and other illegal drugs into the US to feed the insatiable American demand. It’s a multi-billion dollar a year industry. It funds a shadow government of thugs and terrorists. Innocent men, women and children in Mexican border towns are unable to go about their normal lives for fear of being caught in the frequent cross-fires between rival drug gangs. I hope you won’t brush this off like one man I heard who said, ‘Well, that’s a foreign country’. His callous attitude left me speechless. Don’t brush it off. It isn’t a matter of there being cartels in Mexico and none in the US. The difference is that they’re more organized there. When criminal groups in the US start organizing and consolidating, as they surely will – the huge financial potential guarantees it, we’ll see dead bodies pile up in our streets, too.
            The illegal drug industry is a gushing faucet pouring billions of dollars out of this country every year and putting it into the hands of monsters who use it to buy political influence and to secure their murderous regimes. Why can’t we extract one of the fangs of that monster? Why can’t we remove marijuana from the list of illegal drugs?
            For the record, I don’t partake. This is not a self-serving position. Tobacco is my drug of choice and it kills more people every year than all the illicit drugs combined. And it’s legal. I say we should legalize marijuana. Standardize the THC content, educate the public as with the recent successful anti-smoking campaigns, regulate it like we regulate alcohol, and tax it.
            Is this a question of morality? Yes. Absolutely. Admit that we live in an imperfect world and that our choices are usually between imperfect alternatives. If you admit that you’ll begin to see that this is a question of whether it is more immoral to legalize marijuana or to continue to fund a vicious, murderous, criminal element. It’s impossible for me to see the issue as a choice between good and bad. I can only see it as a choice between bad and horrendous. We made that choice with alcohol, which may be a more dangerous drug than marijuana, and we made it with tobacco, which certainly is. I haven’t heard the term in years, but when I was a kid the tax on alcohol and tobacco was called the ‘sin tax’. It was accepted that people were going to consume substances which could be harmful to them. It was accepted that sometimes you have to dance with the devil.
            Moreover, we would all agree that our government has a moral obligation to protect its citizens, to provide for each of us a reasonable expectation of safety and security. But the policy of criminalizing marijuana has created a growing atmosphere of danger and insecurity, especially for poor inner-city communities. If we continue blindly down this path we can only make the situation worse. The argument could be made that, in order to protect its citizens, the US government has an obligation to legalize marijuana so as to deny gangs and cartels the opportunity to consolidate and become more firmly established institutions in this country. I sigh deeply as I hear myself saying that we should give government further institutional control, but in an imperfect world we have to choose between evils, and this is a lesser evil than allowing cartels to seize that power through bribery, coercion and murder.
            What if marijuana were legalized? Put emotion aside for a moment and consider the practical benefits. 1) It would partially disarm a powerful criminal element both in Mexico and in the US. 2) It wouldn’t be a shot in the arm for American farmers, it would be a transfusion. 3) It would pare down the government bureaucracy and save taxpayers millions of dollars. 4) The tax revenues would be a welcome addition to suffering local, state and federal coffers. 5) It would keep dollars in this country instead of shipping them to foreign hands.
            It’s a difficult issue. In a perfect world we wouldn’t have to make these choices. In a perfect world this wouldn’t even be an issue. This isn’t a perfect world. I come to the end of my argument and I realize that this isn’t, after all, a question of whether or not we will dance with the devil but a question of whether or not we will choose to dance with a lesser devil.
            Don’t stop here. Study the issue. Why is marijuana illegal? How many drug related murders occur in the US every year? How did Prohibition contribute to the rise of organized crime (the ‘mob’)? These are a very few areas to get you started. And remember William Drummond’s observation: “He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave.”

            Light a candle.

Bring Jobs Back

            When I started on this post, my mind went almost instantly to consumerism and, while I see unbridled consumerism as related to the exporting of manufacturing jobs, the issue here is more straightforward: how do we turn off the faucets that are pouring money out of the country, so I’ll save my rant against consumerism for a future post.
            Did you see the recent series, ‘Made in America’, on ABC’s World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer? A crew went into the home of an American family and removed everything that wasn’t manufactured in the US. When they were through, the house was completely empty. Well, almost. There was one lonely little bouquet of artificial flowers – not the vase, just the flowers.
            A friend who shares my concern about the state of affairs in our nation told me that there are fewer than twelve million manufacturing jobs in this country. The population of the US is about three hundred million. Yes, there are other types of jobs, but manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas. As manufacturing jobs were being taken, we were assured that other types of jobs, especially technical, computer related jobs, would replace them. That hasn’t happened. It’s unlikely that it will.
            The effect of this wholesale exporting of jobs has been to impoverish us. 1) The incomes of millions of people disappeared, along with the taxes they used to pay. 2) The property taxes formerly paid by the businesses to local governments, taxes that helped support law enforcement, emergency personnel and schools, dried up. 3) The money people spend on goods manufactured overseas, everything from clothing to major appliances, leaves this country and no longer circulates within the community. 4) People who want to work cannot find jobs.
            What happens when we ship off our tax base? A recent TV show chronicled the sorry condition of our infrastructure: roads, bridges, water lines, sewer lines, etc. are falling apart and there’s no money to repair them. The deterioration of the infrastructure seems to parallel the exporting of jobs. Are they related? I can’t say for certain that they are, but it sure is an interesting parallel.
            Why were jobs shipped out in the first place? Personally, I wonder if they weren’t shipped out to punish and, ultimately, to destroy labor unions. I’m not a big fan of labor unions. In my view they occupy the same position as big business, big finance and government on every level – they are necessary evils, necessary because people seem incapable of controlling the compulsion to screw other people for profit.
            Anyway, we were told that manufacturing jobs were shipped out to save money, so that we, the consumers, could save a dime here and there. Well, we saved those dimes – where are they? We aren’t richer; we’re poorer. We’re poorer because jobs and the income they provided have vanished, poorer because the taxes that used to help support local services have departed, poorer because what money we do have is spent on foreign goods and, therefore, cycled out of our communities forever.
            What’s the downside to bringing manufacturing back? For the life of me, I can’t think of one thing. It may slightly increase the cost of manufactured goods, but the few studies I’ve seen are split on that issue. American workers do make more per hour than their foreign counterparts, but American workers are famously efficient. A recent study said that Chinese workers are 30% as efficient as American workers. In practical terms, for every 100 finished parts an American worker turns out, his Chinese counterpart turns out only 30. But does it matter that we pay a little more for American-made goods? It is, after all, bringing jobs and income, investment and taxes back home where they will benefit us and our posterity. And it will put people back to work. People want to work. As I understand it a woman’s sense of self-worth revolves around her family, but men peg their sense of self-worth to employment. A man with no work will soon question his worth as a man. I’ve been there. I know. Put him to work.
            What can you and I, individually, do to bring manufacturing jobs back? We can stop buying foreign made goods. Christmas is coming. How many gifts can you purchase that were made in the US? We can tell the managers at the big box stores that we want, nay, demand, American-made goods. Don’t tell them once. Tell them repeatedly.

            Light a candle.

Turn off the petroleum faucet

            There’s still a lot of wealth in this nation. A part of me wants to focus on the real wealth in the US: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, right to trial by peers. You know the list. This is the true wealth of this republic.
            But my focus here is on financial wealth, of which there is still a huge amount. I want my children, step-children and grandchildren to have access to the benefits I’ve enjoyed all my life. I have no problem with sharing wealth with nations and peoples in need. It would be unchristian not to do so. What concerns me is that the wealth of the nation is being squandered. We’re flushing the financial hopes of the next several generations.
            Every day we send billions of dollars out of our economy to purchase foreign crude oil. Yes, it’s essential to the modern world, every nation needs it, but it is a finite resource. There’s no question but that if alternative fuels aren’t developed, we will find ourselves at war with China and/or India for access to crude oil.
            Will my grandchildren pay with their lives because I refused to remove my blindfold or was just was too damned lazy either to curtail my use of petroleum or to help find alternatives?
            Petroleum is a necessity, but are there viable alternatives? Gasoline may be the most obvious petroleum product, so let’s focus on that. Can we either control our insatiable appetite for gasoline or find a viable alternative? The answer to the first is, probably not. We’re addicted to the freedom gasoline gives us, so controlling our appetite will be difficult, but the good news is, there are workable substitutes.
            One has to applaud the advances made in developing alternative fuels. You’ve heard that some are converting used frying oil from the local fast-food joints to diesel fuel. Some are trying to produce gasoline from algae – pond scum. Electric and hybrid vehicles are more common. Very cool, but is that where we want to be down the road?
            I remember the gas crisis of the early 70s when OPEC turned off the faucets. There was near panic worldwide. The US felt the crunch immediately and we only imported about 25% of our petroleum needs at the time. Today we import 75-80%. Ordinary people complained and moaned but, when OPEC turned the taps on again, we went back to our previous uncaring attitudes. But one nation felt the pain and decided to do something about it. Brazil turned to ethanol. Today, ethanol powers the majority of Brazilian automobiles and they don’t have to import it. They grow it and refine it, keeping their money at home. I don’t know if Brazil is energy independent, but it’s a lot closer to it than we are. And as a little side note, your gasoline engine could be converted to use ethanol with a few minor modifications.
            There is a movement in the US to use more ethanol, but the effort seems half-hearted and, I believe, misguided. It’s half-hearted because ordinary people aren’t behind it. It seems that the prevalent attitude is, so long as there is gas at the pumps and enough money to buy it, most people don’t give a hoot. It’s misguided because when we think of ethanol, we think of corn, and corn is a poor choice for ethanol. First, it creates competition for a staple food item which drives up the price of the thousands of food products made from corn. Second, it’s inefficient. For every unit of energy used to convert corn to ethanol, only one and one-half units of energy are produced. The net gain is only one-half unit. In Brazil they use sugar cane. The benefits are: first, it doesn’t create competition for a staple food item and, second, for every unit of energy used to convert sugar cane to ethanol, seven units of energy are produced. The net gain is six units. That’s incredible.
            So, why don’t we grow sugar cane and refine it? Yes, it grows here. My dad grew it and had it made into molasses. We don’t grow and refine it because there’s no one behind the effort. We can’t import ethanol from Brazil because the US government import tax is so high that it removes the economic viability. I guess that’s done to protect the interests of big oil, who only care about their bottom line and don’t give a sick rat’s behind about you and me, or about our country, so we are forced to continue depending on foreign oil.
            But is ethanol is the answer? It might be used as a short term measure, but the long term answer, in my opinion, is hydrogen.
            This isn’t science fiction. Hydrogen powered vehicles are being driven already. They don’t pollute. The exhaust emission is – water. You could order one tomorrow. The problem is, you can’t refuel it. Critics say it would be too costly to set up the necessary network of hydrogen refueling stations. It’s a Catch 22. So long as there are no hydrogen powered vehicles, no refueling stations will be built and so long as there are no refueling stations, no one will buy a hydrogen powered vehicle. I say it’s too costly not to set up those refueling stations.
            How can it be done? Here’s a thought. Every state in the nation has a fleet of vehicles. What if a state could be persuaded to convert, as much as possible, to hydrogen powered vehicles and to set up the necessary refueling stations state-wide, stations which would also be available for public use? And what if the US postal service changed over to hydrogen powered vehicles and set up refueling stations, also available for public use?
            What are the benefits? 1) We decrease the demand and competition for crude oil, which means it’s less likely that your grandchildren and mine will be sent to die for it. 2) We keep our mobile lifestyle. 3) We cut way back on the amount of pollution entering the atmosphere. 4) We keep our money at home to benefit us, our children and our grandchildren and, if we build the vehicles here, we create jobs. 5) We can look back on our lives and say we stopped being part of the problem and became part of the solution.

            Light a candle.