Glad to say I have graduated to kindergarten

Back in 1988, Robert Fulghum came out with a slim book called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It was a collection of this Unitarian minister’s observations gleaned throughout his life. But the book wasn’t a heady compost of sage advice based on decades of experience; rather, approaching the world through the eyes of a child.

I sneered and chuckled the first time I read that book. The sentimentality of his words oozed slowly like warm maple syrup spreading across a stack of homemade pancakes. I was amused by his attempt to boil this complex world down into a rivulet of simplistic solutions. Sure, it made for genial suggestions and would fit nicely into Mister Rogers’ neighborhood, but not the real world.

Here’s what Fulghum wrote:

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school. These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don't hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don't take things that aren't yours.
• Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

I have since re-read Kindergarten a few times. And much, if not all of it, now kicks in as I approach nearly six decades of break-dancing across this fragile, blue orb of ours. Lessons learned as the calendar pages seem to flip more rapidly.

Friendship at first bite and the day I met Elvis

Friendships often begin in the most usual and mundane ways. Perhaps through a simple introduction from a third-party or a chance encounter in some circumstance or at an event. Sometimes, you just have to take the initiative at an opportunity to step across the room and shake a hand.

When you’re a kid, it can happen at school or being teammates in a sport or similar activity. On occasion, friendships begin in more unique ways.

Consider, if you will, how I met my best boyhood friend, circa 1961, after my family moved into a home on Kensington Avenue in the sprawling Gotham that is Evansville, Indiana. He was a year or so older than me; it was spring and I was amusing myself in our hardscrabble backyard doing nothing when I noticed him crawling across the fence and heading my way. I was faced with the spontaneous decision if he was a friend or foe. So, I ran at him took a swing that missed, then sunk my fangs into his lower left leg, through his denims.

After my long-suffering parents apologized and his widowed mama sorted it out and became acquainted, this kid and I became fast and endearing friends over many years. His name is Markle (a family choice), but his name is, and always shall be, “Mark.”

There doesn’t seem a time from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, when our two lives weren’t entwined. He was a grade ahead of me at Harwood Elementary School and was always quick to give me the low-down on teachers’ quirks and expectations for the next school year. 

An Army Halloween Story: A Hillbilly Werewolf in Okinawa

From the dustbins of past writings (circa 20009) ...


Recently, I was in the local Wal-Mart to pick up a few cut-rate medicine cabinet essentials and made a casual detour down an aisle stocked with your traditional Halloween stuff. Among the offerings were ghoulish, grotesque masks of every kind.

But the one that caught my eye was a fairly righteous Wolfman mask. It wasn’t the modern lycanthropic kind, slack-jawed and yawning to sink its pointy fangs into a victim. It was closer to the Lon Chaney look of the 1940s movies – a grunting, growling thing. Kind of a cross between Eminem and Mike Ditka.

And what once was stored in some distant folder of my memory banks returned momentarily.  I was back in my Army MP days in Okinawa nearly four decades ago and to a place called Torri Station. For quick perspective, the entire island was a heavily fortified conclave during the latter days of World War II, when American foot soldiers and sailors were pounding the place. In fact, my Dad had been there less than three decades ago as to witness that horrible adventure.

One of our roles on that post was to regularly patrol a jungle area. It was an eerie place to patrol during daylight; far more ominous when the sun slipped beneath the horizon of the South China Sea. For you see, that location was strategically placed and was dotted with a multitude of tall antennae that our spooks used to monitor intelligence from Vietnam, China and Russia. For all we knew, they might have been dialing in Communist porn.

It was the site where GIs launched a major invasion and where many died on the beach and in the surf. Its legacy was countless unexploded bombs and God-knows-what else stuff from that grisly campaign. And there were caves, tunnels and pits of deadly nests of Habu snakes.

And later came the The Sobe Ghost.” 

Happy birthday, Mama!

I cannot think of my good Mama withhout considering all that she has endured and accomplished. Born into a family that had a bit of money, thanks to her father’s prosperous newspaper business in Crittenden County, Kentucky. – good, proper and respectful folk, mind you – their fortunes drastically changed when the Great Depression hit. The world suddenly had plunged into a chaotic abyss at the time of her birth.

Barefoot much of the time during those long bluegrass springs and summers, she and her older brother Pat, explored and endured the hardships of those dark times in Marion. Her parents scrambled to find whatever ways they could to survive, with their younger sibs soon joining the family circle: Caroline, Walter, Jimmy and Martha. And two step sibs, Buddy and Elaine, who, although older, exacted a positive influence on so many lives.

Over early morning coffee sometimes when I visit, she recalls the good, bad and ugly of her childhood. Usually the anecdotes are punched with laughter: An African-American woman, the granddaughter of slaves, and her husband George who looked out after my Mom and her sibs when their parents had to work days on end out of town. These surrogate parents taught her, perhaps, tolerance in an age when some were cruelly labeled as “Uncle Toms and Mammies." And worse.

Dummies and bigots see the world and its issues purely as black and white. My Mom sees them as Technicolor 3-D realities.

She matured, this barefooted gal from Kentucky, and eventually moved to Evansville, Indiana. At Central High School she excelled during WW2, developed many educational and artistic talents. But as fate would have it, a grinning, gold-toothed sailor would change whatever dreams she had on an early December day in 1949.

And in the best ways, they meshed, these two unlikely souls, and made a life. For good and ill. Till death did them part.

A life that spawned three children and several grandchildren and grands. Though her husband has been gone nearly nearly 22 years, this woman is the cement, the foundation on which many lives have been built.

For you see, Norma Patricia Henry Stuteville (a.k.a. Pat, Trish, Aunt Trisha, Gramma Pat, etc) has lived a meaningful life at an altitude far beyond the summit of Mount Everest. And I am blessed to have her as a mother. 

On this 12th day October in the 2012th year of our Lord, may my Mom always know that she has been, and continues to be, much loved. What you have given is returned in great measure.

A buzzing hand and a pervert's eyeglasses

Back in the early 1960s, there was never a shortage of literature in my family’s home -- back about the time LBJ promised the nation was not about to “send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” We had publications of every genre.

The old man preferred the gut-busting tales of saloon-soaked cowboys ending their last cattle drives and the desperadoes who met their fates on the streets of Laredo. The Mom preferred True Romance, whose characters often were lusty lasses making bad choices and wives at crossroads in their marriages, and Reader’s Digest condensed volumes.

My library consisted mainly of Childcraft books, dog-eared back issues of Mad magazine and stacks of comics, ranging from Superman and Batman, to Archie Andrews and his classmates at Riverdale High. Virtually ever issue of any comic book worth its salt in those days reserved the inside back cover with content capable of making any pre-adolescent boy dream big. The page always kicked off with a screaming header like “Look Here Kids!!!!”

Does the image of growing your own “sea monkeys” at home ring a bell? Maybe not. But that slick page offered a world of adventure and promise. But the catch, as it always has been in advertising, is to persuade a reader to ante up with their hard-earned bucks. You could run the table on the universe, at least among your friends, for fun and your personal amusement. I often fantasized what I could do if I possessed a few measly dollars. 

Consider a few of the possibilities I once yearned for:

Joy Buzzer. This nifty little device fit in the palm of your hand attached to a fake ring on your hand. Wind it up and shake hands with another and get a laugh from giving the victim a “shocking sensation.” In truth, there was no electrical jolt; just a slight, noisy vibration. Cost: 50 cents.

A horseshoe for Danny Webber

Last week was just like any other here in Indianapolis. The predictable homicide victims, usually by gunfire. Firefighters risking their lives put out flames on abandoned homes torched by cheap-jack gangbangers or meth-heads. Undocumented Asian massage parlor gals busted while their “managers” and patrons escaped arrest. Tech geeks hanging out to get wrist bands to purchase the latest iPhone model and discovering its new mapping system might locate their home address somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean. 

The screed of political candidates waging their war of truth against their opponents. And the endless road work around town and Interstates 465, 65, 70, 74 and 69 – numerals which truly explain why our city is dubbed the “Crossroads of America.”

But near the end of the week a story appeared in the Indianapolis Star, written by sports writer Phil Wilson who covers the hoof-beats of our beloved Colts. It was a simple feature/sidebar he wrote about this fellow from Knightstown, Indiana, who has been tam fan long before the late Bob Irsay high-jacked Mayflower trucks under the cover of darkness to bring the team to our city. It would take years and a few guys named Peyton, Dungy, Pollian and Jimmy to turn things around. But those are wonderful anecdotes.

Let’s talk about Danny Webber of Knightstown. In the old days, he had attended games in the former Hoosier-then-RCA Dome, a massive structure whose top resembled a festering blister on our city’s mid-skyline. In fact, Danny’s support goes back to the Baltimore Days when QB Johnny Unitas was making his bones for the horse.

Danny has been battling cancer for a number of years and has won a few of the battles. But now he’s the underdog and freely admits that the war is all but lost.Among his final desires was to witness his first and perhaps final game in the relatively new and stately Lucas Oil Stadium.

Barn-burning birds, Dillinger and a man with ink in his blood

Media of all types is rife with images and stories of folks who like to live life on the proverbial edge. The extreme sport enthusiasts who thrust themselves from cliffs and pop their chutes moments before they touch down. Snowboarders and skateboard freaks who defy physics and all sanity with their stunts. Rednecks and dipsticks of every ilk who attempt the most incredibly stupid and dangerous stuff and YouTube for the entire world to see.

Let me tell you about another who pushed the edge. My maternal grandfather, Norman Alister 

Henry. Not long after the turn of the 20^th century, moved from St. Louis to Crittenden County, Kentucky, with the great expectation he would join the family business, the lucrative Henry and Henry Monuments. At that time the business was – and apparently continues to be – a lucrative enterprise, literally having the final word about their clients.

But names and dates carved into grave markers and monuments didn’t have much appeal to Norman. He wanted a format where words could expand into full sentences, paragraphs and stories. He further desired to learn a trade to set type by hand (a long lost art) and to combine those stories with half-truths, rumors and salacious innuendoes. All the same things that pretty well make up with what we get today from the news media.

So he went into newspapering.  And he did quite well earning stature and influence in the community and turning a profit, as did one of my favorite uncles, Buddy Walker, would do years later in central Indiana.

In his off time, he had a playful if not offbeat nature. The story goes that one occasion he and some of his friends thought it would be interesting to see how captured birds would fare in flight carrying small, fuse-lit dynamite sticks tied to them. Most would discard the cargo after takeoff and go on their way. However, there was one occasion when one sortie flew into a nearby barn, dropped the stick and soared off moments before the blast. The barn exploded and burned to the ground. And according to the story in Norman’s newspaper, police had no clues to the arsonist’s identity.

The greed and goodness of a girl

Never underestimate the depth of greed and full understanding of a person’s capacity to take advantage of a situation of their fellow human being when given the opportunity. Ethnicity, socio-economic standing, political sway, religious faith and age have nothing to do with it. It’s not wired into our unique genetic blueprints necessarily, but it is a common characteristic we all possess.

In October 1964 such a person came into my family. Nearly eight years after me and my equally quirky older brother came ranting into the world, we suddenly had a new sibling. It was a she – a nearly perfect biological and well-behaved specimen whose presence never spooked our parents with episodes of dangerous sleepwalking, accidentally busting out windows with baseballs; losing baby alligators purchased from F.W. Woolworth’s to roam the house; faking drowning at the neighborhood pool; and heartlessly turning anthills into smoldering ruins from the laser-like beams from magnifying glasses reflecting a blazing hot, Hoosier summer sun.

Her trademark was an ever-present smile or grin. In sunshine and in shadow.

May these two great forces be with us

A very dear and long-time friend of mine – a person who probably knows me better than I know myself in so many ways – called me on the phone nearly two years ago to tell me she had passed an important milestone in her life. She revealed that she had woken up that morning and, surprisingly, had miraculously shed an anger and disgust over another person who had rattled her bones and soul over the hurting of another close to her.

I woke up and felt this amazing peace and sense of forgiveness. Don’t know why and can’t exactly explain it all, but I suspect it was God’s way of just saying’ let it go’!  she said with a bit of giddiness and relief in her voice. So I have, and that’s the end of it. I just wanted to share that with you and I feel good about it!

I can misquote and misinterpret Hebrew and Greek scriptures with the best of them, but this proclamation came as close to any I ever have heard in explaining the tenets of Judeo- Christian beliefs. This declaration truly was an old and new testament of what it means to move faith forward.

Solid science teaches us there are fundamental forces guiding the universe: There are always strong and weak electromagnetic and atomic forces constantly at work which can create, alter or destroy life. Gravity always wins. And the vast expanse of time and universes, seen and unseen are far beyond our observation and our comprehension.

There are two less-scientific but more powerful forces at work which are far more difficult to grasp, at least for me. Love and forgiveness. The one I follow boiled the first one down to its purest form: Love the one who made you with all your heart and soul and mind. And by the way – love everyone else as you should love yourself.  There you go folks – Cliff Notes for understanding the literature of the Author of us all.

The shutter that still bugs me

I have been blessed throughout my many careers to have worked for a variety of bosses. Been under the tutelage of many good coaches as editors, advisors, fellow journalists and writers. More important, good leaders and cheerleaders, who have patiently suffered my myriad idiosyncrasies and encouraged me greatly. And who have taken a chance on me with the expectation that I had something to contribute.  

There  was this editor who took a chance on me long ago when I was hired a reporter the Mount Vernon Democrat, a small, aggressive daily due east of Evansville by about some 16 miles or so. He was looking for some eager would-be wordsmith willing to work for wages comparable to a salt mine worker and long, weird hours that would stagger a team of “manifest destiny” oxen. 

So, I joined a cadre of three other full-time general news reporters;  a “Family Living” editor; an intellectual well-read chap who headed up the newspaper’s Toy Department (sports); and a free-lance cartoonist.  I was thrown in head first to cover the city council, police beat and courts (we were a small river town with more violent crime than you might expect), the occasional murder, county council and commissioners, the Alcohol Beverage Commission hearings (we actually had an active Women’s Christian Temperance Union attending and opposing every liquor license application), zoning and school boards, business and so forth.

We also had community “stringers” whose homespund screed covered everything from funeral dinners, family homecomings, neighbors recovering after having gall bladders yanked, recipes and golden anniversaries. They worked for free and were rewarded by having their byline in boldface. One of the first hard lessons I learned is that you don’t edit little, old ladies’ copy; that adherence to the Associated Press Stylebook means nothing to feisty, blue-haired contributing columnists who considered their gossip sheets right up there with the Holy Scriptures and the Declaration of Independence,

Such was community journalism – sadly and sorely missed in much of today’s increasingly diminished newsprint and content. But alas, in this modern era we get our news from blogs, Twitter and and other nifty whirly-gigs zooming out there in that vast universe called cyberspace.

Even though we had a full-time part time photographer, we were expected to do our own shooting. We were expected to carry our carry our cameras on every assignment. Just in case “Photo Boy” was unavailable. More often than not, we souped our own film back at the newsroom and got it ready for half-tone reproduction. The sour smell of Dektol in the cramped darkroom. Negative strips hanging from a wire like tobacco in a barn.  “Dodging” and “burning” images as they were projected onto photo paper. 

One afternoon in our tobacco-stained newsroom, the police scanner seemed to go haywire. A story in the making loomed up Ind. 69, a rolling stretch of roadway connecting Mount Vernon with historic New Harmony – site of one of America’s first experiments in search of Utopia. The squawking on the scanner intensified. An ugly multiple vehicle accident needing ambulances, more cops, fire/rescue crews. And by the way, somebody better go over to the high school and let the social studies teacher/county coroner know about it. 

I immediately followed the red-light caravan to the scene with my trusty 35 millimeter in tow. In fact, I got there before many of the responders. I loaded my Cannon and prepared to shoot the scene. I fired off many frames until I got to one of the vehicles involved in the wreck. 

I was front and center of the sedan and saw the driver, a middle-aged woman mashed face-first against the windshield. Blood streaming from her brow to the dashboard. Alive, alert, and thank God, not seriously hurt. As I raised the camera we locked eyes for only a second or two. Her look clearly pleaded:  Please don’t!

But my right index finger wasn’t listening.

Click!

The perfect moment. The perfect shot.

Then I quickly went about interviewing the cops and others at the scene, jotting that scrawl of information into my nifty reporter’s notebook. Then I hurled my beat-up jalopy back to the newsroom to deliver my film and file the story.

I briefed my editor on the basics and immediately began to write the story. Gritty yet accurate details all. Our part-time shooter pitched in by processing the Tri-X film.

The verdict was swift. My perfect shot was blurry. Not artsy “soft focus.” The image was as distorted as an interpretation of the Affordable Care Act. Obviously not Pulitzer images on that black-and-white strip. So, a less-dramatic pic was chosen.

To this day, I harbor some slight regret about squeezing off that single frame. Not because it didn’t make it into the newspaper. Not because it was poorly executed and that its quality sucked more than a Rod McKuen anthology. Rather -- because I refused an honest plea from a victim and a small, still voice to balance my personal and professional instincts.

Had I been a better photographer, I suspect my regrets would have been even deeper. Today, thank God, I have a cell phone to take and edit my photos.

The Tennessean: A place for democracy in dining

I hate hearing, much less using, that cliché “back in the day,” but I had one of those thoughts the other evening while needlessly burning $4 dollar-a-gallon fossil fuel in a long drive-though line at one of the mega fast-food chains near my home on Indianapolis’ south side. I anticipated a neatly arranged, sculpted and reasonably warm burger clone, the exact kind you can find anywhere between Bowling Green, Kentucky, and Outer Mongolia. Those guys have it down to a sad, predictable science.

I found myself drifting back to Central High School, circa 1970, in downtown Evansville, Indiana. Opened in 1854, it was and remains to this day to be the oldest continuously operating high school in the nation west of the Allegheny Mountains. I was in the last freshmen class as the school would move to a new location on the city’s north side. The school and its gym across the street were stately and reasonably maintained, but the classrooms smelled like a nursing home that has avoided inspection for years.

Then there was the cafeteria, which some dubbed the “Choke and Puke.”  It wasn’t that the food was that terribly bad – your standard, limited and bland menu – it was the setting which drove many of us to pocket our lunch money or use it to buy cigarettes. It wasn’t uncommon to have a piece of ceiling plaster plop into your plate or see something dark oozing up from between the cracks in the floor tiles.

But there were a few options available to a kid willing to sneak off campus to grab a bite. Many of us chose the Tennessean, located a few blocks away from Central. It was a squat, small facility, and frequented by an eclectic clientele.  Where else could a zit-faced “greenie” freshman sit at a counter stool with the likes of cops, clergy, rheumy-eyed winos, working stiffs, well-groomed businessmen, GIs, perfumed bouffant lady shoppers, and occasionally the mayor? If you eavesdropped, you’d hear off-color jokes, pointless and sometimes pitiful stories, rumors and outright lies. The Tennessean was a true democracy in dining.

An ugly dog day afternoon

We all have our quirks, don’t we? They may not always surface and make witnesses gasp yet they exist. And sometimes they rarely manifest; spontaneous occurrences which might cause a physical reaction to something observed in others. Before I reveal what brings me to my knees let me give you some background.

I am a veteran Army military police officer. While most of my work involved highly detailed “intelligence security guard” work, it occasionally drifted into responding to physical violence at its guttural level. Separating drunken GIs, while taking an occasional swing with a fist or nightstick. Perhaps dragging a combative, busted John Wayne who somehow managed to fall “up” a half-flight of stairs on his way to booking. Only drew my “trust rusty” 1920 .45 automatic once that I can recall, but fortunately did not have to fire it.

Later on, I became a daily newspaper reporter. In the small river-town I worked in, there were infrequent violent assaults, gruesome highway accidents and fatalities and the occasional murder, farm death or drowning to be on the scene to cover. A few suicides involving ropes or a shotgun. In fact, I was asked to help out on a few occasions – freelance mind you – to assist with autopsy photography with the local sheriff’s department.  

Several years later, I was in northern Saudi Arabia and Kuwait City to cover the aftermath of Desert Storm. I won’t share what few scenes I happened upon.

Love's labor never lost

Come daybreak, they rustled out of their bed. And it didn’t matter whether rain, sun, moaning wind or dumpy snowfall was outside. The morning coffee started brewing; the man hopped into the bathtub to loudly hum stentorian Ernest Tubb tunes and the woman would make his mush or fried eggs.

The newspaper always would thump against the door and they digest the “morning assignment” and musings of columnist Joe Aaron; snicker at the latest goofy government decisions; or to grumble about the rare act of violence or theft under investigation by the city police department.

A few minutes before he fired up the family car, the Dad would give a gold-toothed smile to his three kids and remind them to be good and learn a little something at school. The Mom would remind him to pick up his lunch pail of bologna-and-cheese sandwiches and snacks as he headed for the door. Then he kissed his wife goodbye for the next several hours.

Then it was on to the kids’ turn to kick in the jambs as they roused from their sleep. Eat the cereal – Oh geez not this oatmeal stuff again! – and get ready because that damned yellow bus didn’t wait for anyone who wasn’t standing in line in at the stop. If you missed the ride, you took Shank’s Mare.

A few years would pass into the mid-1960s and the family needs grew. The nurturing wife convinced a begrudging husband how to improve the family income. The need. More housewives were entering the workforce to improve their lot. So why not help them out with the best possible care, unconditional acceptance, and offer an affordable rate? In the end, it wasn’t entirely about economic gain; rather, a chance to provide stability in a growing world of two-income households and fractured marriages.

Jim. the Bread Man

His name was “Jim.” He drove a bulky, white step-van, journeying endlessly on planned routes throughout the interconnecting and tightly-closed villages of Country Club Meadows within Evansville’s evolving north-side in the 1960s. He made the route once and sometimes twice daily, depending on the weather and other circumstances, to deliver his goods. This was a time long-before all-night groceries and convenience stores.

With near Swiss watch precision, you could count on Jim’s arrival, long before hearing the quick horn beeps. Moms and kids would gather at roadside awaiting his perfunctory stop. More milk there, Jennie and Dottie?... Okay, Bonnie  and, you there, Pat, here’s some bread and I’m ‘bout out of it until the next run… You over there – I told you I can’t run too much lunch loaf and bologna ‘cause I can’t icebox that much… Okay, y’all tell me what I might need to load up on my next run and I will make a list.

Most paid in full; others were given an extension which, no doubt, would be paid, by his next visit. Or conveniently forgotten if the debt was not too deep.

The Wizards of Ahhhhs! (and Ooos!)

With profound apologies to Walt Whitman

I resurrect this humble morsel from nearly two years ago with a few edits..
 

I Hear America Bitching

 

 

I hear America bitching, the varied noises today I hear,

Those of media commentators of every chordless type, each singing and underestimating the good sense of folks who don’t see the world and its myriad issues splattered against a black-and-white canvas,

The well-paid extremists from right and left who who swarm in to condemn a drunk-driving cop who kills an innocent biker, yet remain light years away and mute when a decent officer is gunned down dead,

The minions of a Kansas maniac professing God’s hate of gays, Catholics, Jews [for that matter everybody] and who show up at military service members’ funerals merely to grab sound bites for the news media,

The benign bleatings of career politicians, whose melodies of promise and pledges are shorn swiftly with such sheepish ease,

The warped arias of pin-striped, corporate cowboys on whom so many livelihoods depend, falling safely and richly beneath canopies of gold in the aftermath of their misdeeds and mismanagement,

The song of the lazy and those who don’t give a damn who thrive on a sense of entitlement and  whose misguided measures seek full harvest without sowing one seed,

Perhaps soon we shall hear new tunes, each measure robust and hopeful,

Singing with open mouths a similar lyric echoing 1776 and stretching for future harmony.

When all else fails -- just shut up!

We are bombarded more than a Syrian suburb each day by an endless barrage of stupidity, absurdity and blather from every direction. Talk radio, TV commentators, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and so forth. The “truth” machine guns us from every direction.

And even the trusted guardians of “public trust,” the nearly dead news media – gasping its last breaths of what the Fourth Estate once was and should be – cannot resist the urge to pile on to the heap. Shall we begin with what some people are saying and doing?

“It seems to be, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, it’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”  Rep. Todd Akin (Missouri), a U.S. Senate candidate.
Yeah, I know, he claims he “misspoke" himself and it was misconstrued. He must have consulted with Drs. Frankenstein, Mengele and Kevorkian to make such a claim. I think many would take issue with "legitimate" rape and the notion it prevents pregnancies. But I think we can all agree that treating such such haunting psychodrama and all other aftermath is so simple. Let this learned lawmaker spend a few days in the gen-pop of  a state penitentiary and he might gain a better understanding of the issues -- from an illegitimate perspective. Nonetheless, his campaign for the Senate is virtually aborted. To that end, just shut up, Todd. We'll try to forgive because you apparently have no clue as to what you have said.

F-bombs and flexitarians -- Merriam-Webster tells us so

Our language continues to evolve. I know it’s true because the bright folks at Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary have just announced new words and their definitions to be included in their latest edition. Well, I say right on!  to you righteous lexicographers in Springfield, Mass.

Many of these words have been in use for quite some time; others somewhat foreign to many of us unwashed savages. But among those making the list and their definitions.

F-bomb (noun): Used metaphorically as a euphemism. That’s a nice way of saying the four-letter word somehow slips out at the most inopportune time and is heard by an audience.  Remember Biden whispering into Obama’s ear when the health care bill passed a couple of years ago, unaware his adjective use of the word was picked up by media microphones? You can hear this expression while visiting any Wal-Mart at any hour or location merely by listening in to some angry couple bickering over who should be pushing the kids in cart. Anymore, sorry to say, this commonly used term seems no more explosive than a water-soaked Fourth of July sparkler.

Energy drink (noun): A usually carbonated beverage that typically contains caffeine and other ingredients (as taurine and ginseng) intended to increase the drinker’s energy.  I might be wrong, but haven’t there been a few beverages available called Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Mountain Dew for more than a few years. Granted, they aren't  laced with ginseng and other natural additives; however, there’s no doubt some energy boost is realized.

'Pried' and prejdice when needed

My granddaughter is on the cusp of that magical age of thirteen. She is involved and seems most happy with her overall environment, particularly her love for the excellent Catholic school she attends, the many sports in which she participates, and her ever-evolving circle of friends beyond family and her experiences.

Surprisingly, she still likes to “chill out” with me on most weekends; challenge me to card games; and hit the local Subway on Saturdays. She politely laughs at my dumb jokes and howls at my occasional PG-13 expletives. And she endures occasional “boring” and “un-cool “excursions with me, my girlfriend and our worlds

But understanding that misty, mysterious transition between girl and young womanhood is something males never fully fathom. At any age, including geezers like me.  I have lived long enough to recognize what those rolled eyes and tight-lipped expressions mean. I do my best to avoid prying and poking too much and playing the friendly grand inquisitor.

The brief journal entries and stuff she writes about and leaves following a weekend visit with me are sacrosanct and not for mine or anyone else’s eyes. I trust it and leave well enough alone.  

God: How about uploading a bit more decency to one another?

Aloha:

How goes it with all of you? Just wanted to check in again – as I continually do, and thought I would try my hand with this new demo tablet Steve Jobs wanted me take for a test drive. Far cry different than the tablets Moses used back in the day, but if there’s one thing I have learned it’s that you have to write things down sometime so that others remember.

My previous message was fairly lengthy, and if you forgot what I had to say, just click here.  I promise to keep this message shorter. I like that line Shakespeare crafted for Polonius in “Hamlet”, and I believe it to be true: Brevity is the soul of wit. Billy occasionally violated that axiom in his writings, but on balance, he kept it fairly consistent.

All in all, I’ve been doing pretty well. The universe and vast galaxies keep me pretty busy, and it’s sometimes hard to get in decent round of golf. Fortunately I have plenty of help to tend to those things. Still can’t figure out what I should do with the wormholes I placed out there. What in My Name was I thinking back then?

Finding a wave for an endless summer

Many American generations are defined by their music. The tunes, melodies and lyrics that spoke to their hearts and hormones at a younger age. My parents had Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Hoagy Carmichael and a very hip Cab Calloway. Their younger siblings  had Bill Haley and the Comets and the trio – Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper – whose short-lived legacies live on beyond a plane crash.  

Growing up in Evansville, Indiana, in the mid-1960s there was so much music exploding we embraced because of their newness and variety: Beatles, Dave Clark 5, Rolling Stones, Hollies and novelty bands such as Sam the Sham and The Pharaohs and Paul Revere and The Raiders (featuring Mark Lindsay on vocals).  A few guys named Hendrix and Clapton were slowly evolving.

Running on empty

I could hear the situation long before I pulled into growing the left-turn lane. Late afternoon and the scramble was on with motorists to get home or wherever they were going after work. Horns were blaring and I could hear some of the angry comments coming from the open windows of the three inpatient drivers’ ahead of me.

A battered Buick Century was in the lane, its bumper and backlights held together with Duct tape and bungee cords. The tailpipe was dangling maybe six inches above the ground and the emergency flashers weakly warned a timeout. When the driver stepped out of the car, he held a one-gallon milk jug in one hand and was jiggling change perhaps he had found beneath the front seat or ashtray.

The Speedway gas station was less than a football field away, but the Buick’s gas tank was empty.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Dreama

I woke up laughing. It wasn’t a high-pitched giggle that middle-school girls explode with when they observe manly 13-year-old “boy-hunks” in the hallway at school. .Not that polite chuckle that weakly acknowledges a public speaker’s dull, predictable unfunny punch line. 

No, I woke up with a genuine gut-busting, thigh-slapping get-the-hell-outta here laugh. Funny thing about dreams. The real converges with the unreal; fear sometimes forges a quirky alliance with courage. The past oddly stitches itself into the fabric of the present. When you dream, anything is possible.

For you see, I had just taken the early morning train back Z-ville, a trip which had taken me back through the matted cobwebs and wormholes of time to Ft. Jackson, S.C.. Good old 3rd Platoon, “Echo” Company, 6th Battalion, 2nd Training Brigade.