We owe it to our kids and the guys in powdered wigs

I don’t know what the weather was like on the 2^nd day of July 1776, but I am sure the fellows gathered at Independence Hall in Philly were sweating a bit. 

Young Thomas Jefferson earlier had written the first draft of document, then it was turned over to the older guys Ben Franklin and John Adams for edits. Seems that any time you write anything to go on record, there’s always going to be somebody to change a word here and there. Editing is the world’s second oldest profession, though it pays less.

But on that day, the Declaration of Independence was signed by members of the Continental Congress. John Hancock was the first to step forward and place his large, well-known signature on the document. The irrepressible Massachusetts stalwart is reported to have said, “There, I guess King George will be able to read that.” Eventually the cagy monarch would and so would others around the world.

Though the document was signed, there was much political wrangling and deal-making behind the scenes among the colonies. It wasn’t until two days later this bold statement was a done deal. They didn’t have e-mail or authorized PDFs back then. But they had enough to make it public.

And that’s when the proverbial writ hit the fan.

A rock named Matthew

I wield an ax once a week.  Not the kind you see lumberjacks slinging to bring down timber, or what Mr. Lincoln would swing to hone his rail-splitting skills. We’re talking a piece of wood with polymer and metal and strings, thus allowing me to play guitar in my church’s praise band, Upon This Rock.

And it’s been a fun, exhilarating and fulfilling ride. There’s no bigger kick than sawing those strings or playing the occasional lead on songs geared to make you think, to feel and to tune into your faith or some aspects of your beliefs.

Along the way, I like to sneak peeks at the congregation while making chord changes, sometimes freelancing funky lead riffs or bowing out while my guitar gently sleeps and the listeners politely sleep. Especially spying my oldest granddaughter, my youngest daughter and my two grandsons; and more recently, my girlfriend and her grandchildren. I wink at them and they return with finger-wave acknowledgment.

There’s another spectator out there for whom I always keep an eye peeled. A young man, who along with his older brother and his parents (Mom being our band's keyboardist and lead female vocalist), I have been fortunate to watch grow up for nearly 13 years.

Life and going live in the ER

When the alarm began its high-pitched bleating this morning at an ungodly time shortly before 3 a.m., I hauled myself up from bed and already forgotten dreams and went through a ritual than I do most mornings. Finished sipping the water from the cup on my nightstand, slumped down the hallway with my furry roommate, Patrick, to let him out the back door to do his business, then hit the shave-and-shower routine.

I rarely glimpse into the mirror in the morning, particularly so at this hour, because I fear I’ll see some visage of Dorian Gray leering back at me or a bald clone of Linda Blair’s noggin’ turning 360s at warp speed. Suffice it to say, I am an early riser most mornings, but not at an hour when drunks, stoners and disappointed barflies are starting to flock to Denny’s for a nightcap of greasy eggs and oozing meatloaf.

But there I was. On assignment to help with live remotes for our local ABC affiliate, WRTV-6, beginning at 4:30 a.m. and running at the top and bottom of each hour until 6:30 a.m. It just happened to be with reporter and cameraman I have worked with several times in the past. Good folks and always on top of things.

Their news truck’s microwave tower was up and linked to their downtown Indy station.  We chatted a bit about our families, the horrible weather and how TV meteorologists had pegged this latest hellish spell. Then they met some of our great crew working the overnight shift in our Emergency Room (ER ) – the people who treat others’ pains and illnesses and keep them alive while the rest of the city sleeps.

There is an unspoken word you never use when talking with ER staff. You never ask if the shift has been “quiet.” Maybe it’s a superstition or just a tradition, but you just find other ways to ask it. An emergency room is a world of mixed-bag experiences. I always have admired the way our teams operated. And this just happened to be a blessedly q---t night.

  

'A hurtin' kind of day'

I had just passed the "Home of the Big Peach" near Bruceville off U.S. 41 North and was anticipating the next landmark of Wabash Valley Correctional Facility. That's when it happened. That’s what I get for surfing FM stations in southern Indiana, constantly changing the dial from the Doobie Brothers to John Coltrane; from daily grain sales in Princeton to syndicated screeching preachers warning that Jesus is coming back soon and isn't going to be in a great mood.

But there it came. A big, salty drip from the corner of my left eye halfway through Mercyme’s “I Can Only Imagine.” Another one. Then another. Not wanting to be left out, my right eye decided to get a piece of the action.

Just a few hours before, my family and a multitude of others had said goodbye to my uncle, Patrick A. Henry. A bon voyage party to a man whose best journey began last Friday afternoon. It was an emotional gumbo seasoned with a deep dash here and there with respect, sadness and occasional silliness.

Emotions mix with goodbye to first newspaper, daughters

Nearly 30 years have flown and fluttered away like November leaves in an aimless incoming winter wind. But there it was; a transition escalating me from the first leg of my journey as a reporter at the aggressive daily in southwestern Indiana, The Mount Vernon Democrat, to the tantalizing Mecca of Hoosier journalism of Indianapolis.

I had been offered a job at United Press International, which, at the time, had a solid reputation of fierce competitiveness against the Associated Press, yet in the not-so-distant future of financial fiasco. I took it any way, deciding it was just another way to punch the ticket.

For more than three years, I cut my teeth in virtually every capacity as a reporter, news editor, columnist, night-time editor (a constant friendly battle with anxious press guys) and the always looming deadline of getting the words into ink.

I had a great respect for the guy who had hired me, Bill Brooks, but he earlier had counseled me: I wouldn’t hire a writer who didn’t have the ambition to leave me.

So I did just that.

And then there came the most crucial confession to my daughters, Two young ladies who spent weekends with me and nudged me lovingly along after the divorce. It was bittersweet, all of it, to explain and prepare to experience. Here is the last thing I wrote, word for word:

Sex, death and life in the colony

Amazing things, those little critters ants. 


They have many attributes. For example, your average ant can lift more than 20 times its body weight. If you could run as fast for your size as an ant can, you could keep pace with any contender for the Kentucky Derby. 

Your typical ant has two stomachs. One stomach holds the food for itself and second stomach is for food to be shared with others. God forbid that gastric bypass is ever required.


Some worker ants are given the job of taking the rubbish from the nest and putting it outside in a special trash dump. Environmentally conscious they are.

An ant colony is virtually Amazonian in nature. The larger colonies consist mostly of sterile wingless females forming castes of "workers", "soldiers" and other specialized tasks. There are "male" drones who basically are buzzing around waiting to die. 

Male and female ants are both born with large wings. When the ant matures, these wings are used so that it can fly into the air to mate. Once they are done doing the deed, something strange happens. The male ant's wings fall off. Then he dies. 


Bummer if you're a dude ant. But that's what happens when you have unprotected sex. 


Meanwhile, the female ant immediately searches for a place to start a new colony as a fertile "queen," ready to make new conquests and kill again. Her sole job now is to be everybody's mother and lay eggs which soon become larva then pupa then adult. She gets to live an estimated 10 years.



Then one day she croaks and one of her progeny takes her place. Kind of the way it's been operating for centuries in England, with the exception of there being no male heirs to the throne.

And ants are smart, too. At night, the worker ants move the eggs and larvae deep into the nest to protect them from the cold. During the daytime, the worker ants move the eggs and larvae of the colony to the top of the nest so that they can be warmer. 

Scientists say an ant's brain may have the same processing power as a Macintosh II computer. But who really owns one of those ancient things any more?

King Solomon once wrote, “Go to the ant, consider its ways and be wise.” I think one of the things he might have meant is consider the source of the ant's strength. Each ant has a specific role or pursues a particular task. And  helping others. 


In the end, they are working to make their colony more productive and sustain it for future generations. 

When you have an average life span of about 90 days you don’t want to waste much time. Your mother has high hopes and expectations of you. God save the Queen.

Unexplained lights in a Hoosier night sky

I haven’t thought much about it over the years, much less shared the story either in spoken word or print. After all, most things we observe which defy a clear explanation, much less understand, eventually tend to get filed into the misty realm embedded deep into our memory banks.

It was late summer of 1978 and me, my then-wife and first-born infant daughter, were driving to her parents’ house in rural Vanderburgh County, Ind. It was twilight and we made our way over the meandering road when we noticed three objects glowing and blinking in the sky over farmers’ fields. They didn’t appear to move much, yet, the closer we got to our destination, their collective illumination seemed to intensify.

We didn’t think much of it; it seemed likely these were the lights of National Guard choppers, or perhaps some reflections making final approach to Dress Regional Airport in Evansville. As we got out of the car, the mom-in-law met us in the driveway and gestured off in the distance. Did you see those on your way in?

The three of us looked at the spectacle, shimmering perhaps a mile or so away. We were transfixed as the objects appeared to be arranged in a slight pyramid shape and their lights were rhythmically alternating colors of red, green and white. Never moving and holding their place in mid-air. I don’t know how long we watched this go on, but after a while they disappeared one by one. And we went into the house.

I vaguely recall thinking, Well, that was pretty weird and something you don’t see every day in southwestern Indiana.  It felt weird, neither good nor bad.