LOVE POEM FOR A BILLY GOAT

Posted on February 7, 2015 by

A Short Story by Joe Wilkins

Randy Watson was confused—but he also felt good, because he figured he must be in love, or at least what he imagined love must be like. After all, what did someone like him know about love, except what he had read about it, or seen in the movies. At age thirteen, these were all new feelings he’d never had before.

As he sat in the swing on his front porch, his attention was temporarily diverted by the widow Andrew’s squeaking grocery cart, as she pulled it down the sidewalk across the street. She looked very tired, and Randy thought about helping her, but she didn’t like him much because of his pet billy goat, so he let her trudge on down the street.

It was a very hot and sticky day in his hometown of Riverside, Florida, with the late afternoon, July air hanging like the limp Spanish moss on the overhanging live oak trees that lined the street in front of his house. But Randy paid little attention to the heat, because he was wondering about all this love business. In addition, his father was due home from a three-week business trip at any time now.

He looked out across the street at the huge, orange, late afternoon sun slowly slipping through the trees and dropping behind the Coca Cola bottling plant down the block. He wondered why the sun and moon always looked bigger as they got near the horizon.

As he swung back and forth, he looked next door over to the Henderson house to see if Lori had come back out of the house yet. She was nowhere around, probably up in her room, doing whatever teenage girls do after school in the late afternoon. He had started having some very strange feelings for her about two months ago, which surprised him, because she had lived next door for years and he had never given her much thought. He knew she liked him, because she was always asking him to play when they were younger, or coming over to visit his mother, or wanting to go to the movies with him on Saturdays. But he had never thought much about their relationship, just accepting their friendship mostly as two young playmates.

Then, about a year ago, she had definitely begun to mature into a young woman, and he did notice that. Her maturity—and his, later on—had kind of silenced their relationship, whereby he felt very different and awkward when she was around, so he had tended to avoid her, because he now knew that things would be different between them, and he wasn’t sure how to handle it. Then, about a month ago, he had had a very startling dream about her and him, where they were passionate lovers. Boy, did that change things.

Soon, though, Randy’s thinking drifted back to his mother and father. These were not good thoughts, because something was wrong between them, but he didn’t know what it was. When his parents were around each other, they avoided looking at each directly. And the words between were short and brief, as if they didn’t really want to talk. Something was definitely wrong. But what was funny about it was that they never argued or had harsh words. It was as if they controlled their anger so they wouldn’t disturb him. Boy, parents were hard to figure out .

Randy especially noticed that his mother was also growing more distant to him, but he didn’t know what to do about it. For a while, he had tried to be extra nice to her, behaving better so as not to give her any reasons to be mad at him, but that was not working because she would either cut him short in their conversations or seemed to be avoiding him altogether. As a result of this, Randy was getting tired of trying to figure her out just to please her.

However, his dad and he were still close, and he was anxious to talk to him about the whole problem, but not sure how to handle it.

He continued swinging and thinking, until he noticed that Lori had come out on her front porch. The sight of her excited him. She had suddenly gotten very pretty, and he wondered about that, because he’d never thought of her as especially attractive when they were younger. But, boy was she good looking now. She didn’t see him at first, so he continued looking at her intently, with a queer tightness forming in his throat, and he wondered that if he had to speak at that moment, would he be able to?

Then she turned and looked in his direction, seeing him sitting on the swing. “Hey, Randy,” she called across the hedges, unaware of the new feelings he had for her. “Have you fed Chester yet,” referring to his pet billy goat that both had fed and cared for since they were younger.

He sucked in his stomach and stood up, trying to stretch himself a few years taller. “No, Lori, not yet. I was going too soon, though. Want to help?”

“Yeah,” she answered gaily, tossing her head impishly, her long dark hair swirling provocatively. “Beat you ‘round back,” she challenged, jumping off her porch and running toward the back of Randy’s house toward the goat pen. He chased her briefly, she a slim, swift, flashing bird, and he stopped and watched her race to the pen, skimming gracefully in the twilight. He didn’t want to catch her—just watch.

He ambled up to the goat pen, trying to appear nonchalant, but certain she could hear his heart pounding. “Chester hasn’t had much to eat today, so he’s probably half starved,” he announced, brushing by her to open the gate, acutely aware of her perfumed fragrance and closeness. “He’s getting sort of rag-taggety and skinny. I think I’ll stake him out in Mr. Robish’s lot tomorrow. Got to fatten him up a bit.”

“Why don’t you bring him over to the field behind our garage,” she said brightly. I’m sure Daddy won’t mind. The grass is better there, and it needs cutting anyway.” Then she laughed, “Goats are good lawnmowers!”

Randy opened the pen gate, with Lori staying outside. “Okay, Lori, thanks. Maybe tomorrow.” He opened the large metal, feed-drum, pried off the lid, and scooped out some feed and put it in the trough.

They both watched Chester eat vigorously for a while, keeping an awkward silence, until they became aware of Lori’s mother calling her. Randy came out of the pen and closed the gate, sensing Lori’s closeness to him. When he turned, her face was close to his and her hair was framed around her face like a dark canopy that would envelope them with its intriguing cover and delightful fragrance. Then a distant look came into her dark eyes, and they looked at each other as if wondering what should happen next. Then, suddenly, she brushed her lips lightly across his, turned, and rushed home.

Randy was transfixed, wild new sensations leaping and charging through him. Was that a real kiss? He wasn’t sure, because he’d never kissed a girl before. His heart was throbbing, charging him to such intensity that he felt he would light up like a bulb. How beautiful she was!

He was uncertain how long he had been standing there, and was unaware of anything else, until his father placed his hand on his shoulder. “Hey, Randy, how’s it going? How’s old Chester?”

Randy had been so engrossed in his reverie with Lori that his father’s sudden appearance startled him. He had not heard his car pull into the driveway, and he quickly wondered if his father had seen him with Lori. “Gosh, Dad, great. Glad you’re back. Have a good trip?”

His father stood silent at first, watching the goat, before answering,“Hmm, not too bad—not too good either. Average I guess,” he mused, before turning to Randy. “It’s good to get back home though. You known, Randy, these long sales trips are starting to get the old man down…”

There was tenseness in his voice, which meant it was probably a worse trip than he was letting on. Moreover, the disappointing sales trips were getting more frequent lately, Randy had noticed. He wondered if it was all the business, or his relationship with mom.

His father cuffed him lightly on the head. “Come on, let’s eat. Mom’s waiting.”

They went into the house through the back door to the kitchen. His mother was setting the table, and Randy followed his father to the sink to wash.

Don’t you two wash in that sink,” she admonished them. “That’s what the bathroom’s for. You’d think a grown man’d know better. And you, Randy Watson, I’m not going to tell you again.” She looked sharply at her husband, and Randy felt very futile and awkward, suddenly feeling like he wanted to protect his father somehow. Bitterness surged into him, as he shuffled to the bathroom to wash.

When he came back to the kitchen, his father had his hands around his mother’s waist. “Now, honey, don’t be like this,” he said, as if trying to seek some unknown understanding about his wife’s foul mood. She stood very stiff, and then drew away, expressionless, and Randy couldn’t help feeling how different she was becoming.

Supper was eaten quickly, in painful silence. Randy’s food was tasteless, and he ate as fast as he could, while trying not to raise his parents suspicions that he was aware of the tension between them. He did not like all this family tension one bit.

After eating, Randy excused himself and went out to the swing on the front porch. It was dark now, and the tree frogs were singing their nightly song, light and cheerful. His spirits slowly brightened, and soon he was thinking of Lori again.

He wondered if he was in love. Boy, it sure felt like it! He had never been in love and he wasn’t sure how a person in love was supposed to feel. It certainly didn’t seem like his mother and father were still in love. Surely, he must be in love. Why else would he feel this way? Finally, after listening to the frogs a bit longer, he concluded that he was in love. That was for certain. And even better, Lori loved him—a little anyway, because girls don’t kiss boys they don’t love, do they? Well, it was fleeting kiss, he admitted. So, even if she didn’t love him, it was obvious she liked him a lot. But, why shouldn’t she. After all, he was a tall, good looking fellow, smart, a good athlete, who had known her practically all her life, had treated her well when they were little, and they had a lot in common. That was what love was all about it, wasn’t it?

Then, this strong, urging feeling came over him. He would have to let her know how he felt about her, then he could be sure if she felt the same. But how to do it? How do you go about such things. He doubted if he had the courage to tell her straight out, because he knew he would blush and stammer—and probably botch the whole deal. Maybe he could invite her to a movie, on a regular date, and they could talk later. But where could they go after the movie?

How was he going to let her know how he felt? A note? Maybe. Wait…how about a poem… No, that was too different and pretentious. And, gosh, what would happen if some of his buddies found out he was writing love poems to a girl? Anyway, who writes girls love poems these days? Maybe some of the poets in the old days did it that way, but these were modern times. Would Lori even understand him that way?

After a while, he recalled that she had liked Edgar Allen Poe’s poems—not the spooky stories, but the poems about women Poe had known. He and Lori had studied Poe in English class, and he remembered Lori paid close attention when the teacher read the poems aloud in class.

So, that was what he would do: write a love poem, nice and friendly, not too thick or mushy, just a nice, friendly love poem to let her know how he felt. Nothing wrong with that. Then he wondered if she would think he was a sissy by writing a poem; after all guys didn’t do things like that. But he finally decided he would risk it. He trusted Lori to see things the right way.

He went back inside to his room, and sat at his desk, full of a lover’s spirit, trying to write his poem. But nothing would come, and he soon realized that this poem writing business wasn’t easy. To stimulate his imagination, he went to his bookshelf and took down the volume of Poe’s writings that he had bought a while back. He scanned through it, hoping to get some inspiration to help him get started, but nothing would come. He quickly realized that what he liked best about Poe was his stories, with the poems appealing to him only through their rhyme and rhythm, but the romance part seemed somewhat lacking.

Discouraged, he paced around the room, but determined to stick it out. He’d planned on writing a long poem, as he felt he had a lot to say, but when he sat back down and finally got started he could see that writing poems was a tough business, so he decided to make it a short one.

Suddenly, his thoughts were interrupted by his parents having an argument. Their voices carried into his room from the kitchen, so he got up and closed the door, pushed them out of his mind, and started back to work.

When he finally finished about an hour later, he copied the poem very carefully and neatly on a piece of stationary paper, leaned back in his chair and read his handiwork carefully:

TO LORI

Lori, Lori, my sweet,

Your walk, your smile,

The way you toss your head;

Are all I’ve ever longed for;

To anyone who ever loved,

None could have been so dear

As you are to me.

I love you!

He was rather surprised by his efforts, because he had never done anything like this before. It felt so different. Not bad though, he thought, rather proudly. His English teacher might find fault with it, but that didn’t matter at all; this was a love declaration, pure and simple, and that was okay.

Then there was a knock on the door. It was his father. Upon entering he noticed Randy sliding a paper under a book. “What are you doing son?”

“N-Nothing, Dad. Just writing.”

“Well now, another one of your stories?”

“No, not exactly,” Randy answered.

“Mind if I see it. Like to see what you’re up to these days. Like to know what your talents are.”

“Well—I don’t know, Dad. It’s kind of personal.” Randy was now in full panic.

“It’s not something you’d be ashamed to let me read, is it?”

“Gosh, no, Dad. It’s just that it’s personal. You know…”

“A girl?” his father asked knowingly.

“Well—yes.”

“Okay, enough said. In fact, I used to do this sort of thing myself when I was your age.”

Randy looked intently at his father and was aware that this was a crossroads moment. He could sense that he was growing up and becoming more like his father. He was entering the world of grown-ups. After a painful pause, he asked “Dad, what’s it like?”

His father smiled, “What’s what like?”

Randy lowered his head. “You know…love—sex…”

His father looked at him, somewhat surprised, knowing that he needed to handle this moment carefully. “Well—well, Randy, that’s a tough question. We’ve never talked about this–but I guess it’s time.” After an awkward pause, he continued, “Randy, my son, it’s hard to explain such a subject. You do know the physical side of sex, don’t you?”

Randy felt embarrassed answering, as if he had been hiding something from his parents. “Yeah, sort of…”

His father looked at him, wondering how much he did know and where he had obtained his information. “Well the physical side of sex is much too complicated to go into now, and I don’t think I could do a good job of explaining. I”ll get you a good book that goes into all the details and it will explain it like a doctor.”

Randy had already read several such books, but had not let his parents know, so he didn’t say anything about it now.

His father continued, “But that’s not what you want to know about, is it? What I mean is, I guess you want to know about sex and what it means with someone you love. Right?”

“Yes,” Randy answered a little too eagerly, “that’s it.”

His father rubbed his chin. “Well, that’s tough to answer, too.” He gazed out the window, wondering what to say next. “Very difficult, but let me put it this way. Sex and love are different things, and can be kept separate between a man and a woman—very easily–sometimes too easily. But they can be combined together—and that’s the ideal. Now, it’s easy to start off in a marriage the right way, but after a while love and sex can drift apart—which is not good! Keeping sex and love combined might be the toughest job in the world. It’s something you have to keep working on all your life, because if you don’t, all your efforts can slip away, with sex on the one hand and love on the other. Sex is incomplete by itself, and the happiest people I know are those who can blend them together—and keep it that way. Sex becomes an act of love, rather than just a physical thing. Understand.”

“Yes, I think so,” Randy answered, not quite convinced if he did or not.

“Good,” his father sighed, much relieved. “Try hard, because if you do, and succeed in someday finding a woman who believes about this like you, then you’ll never lack for happiness—never. But, on the other hand, if you marry someone who doesn’t know this—and don’t assume all women do—then sex will only torment you.”

Randy noticed that his father’s voice had a strange longing as he finished. It seemed in some strange way as if he was talking about himself and his mother.

His father rose from the bed. “Well, that’s enough of that for a while. This old boy’s getting tired. It’s been a long trip.” He walked to the door and turned. “You think about what I’ve said.”

“Okay, Dad, I will.”

After his father left, Randy sat staring at his desk. Boy, that was a lot to think about. His father really surprised him, being able to talk about sex and love the way he did. That was a part of his father he had never known.

Soon Randy realized he was hungry again, so he went out to the kitchen. He found some crackers, then went back on the front porch and sat in the swing, munching the crackers and listening to the tree frogs.

What a complicated business love was, he thought. He looked over to the street lamp, watching the moths hovering beneath the light, and wondered what sex was like for them and all other animals. Was sex just sex to them? Surely, there wasn’t any love. And what about his mother and father? What was sex and love like for them? Did they still love each other the way they used to? He remembered looking through their family album at their wedding pictures and their early days of marriage. There was one special picture, where his mother was holding Randy as a baby, and his father was standing right beside her, with a palm tree in the background, and they looked like they were the happiest people on earth.

Randy continued swinging. When he stopped and silenced the squeaking of the swing, he could hear his parents talking upstairs, but their voices were muffled. Since he was now feeling tired, and he had a baseball game tomorrow, he headed for bed. After taking a shower, he went to his room and crawled into bed.

He began again to think about Lori, but was soon interrupted by his parent’s voices, which were faint but clear, with the still night air carrying their voices down through his open window. “Rose, I wish you wouldn’t keep harping about my job. So, we’re not rolling in wealth. So what? Who is in this town? We’ve got a decent home, good friends, and a fine son. Actually we lack for very little.”

“It’s not just the material things, Bill. It’s just that you’re capable of so much more. Why I remember when we were in college, some of people had grand visions of your abilities, that someday you’d be a big success—and in those days you even believed it yourself. Whatever happened to that man? You were so visionary and enthusiastic, but since working as a salesman you’ve changed. I just don’t know how you could have become a salesman. You’re just not suited for it—and you know it.”

There was a long pause. “Look,” his father snapped back with a voice that was mixed with anger and fatigue, “be quiet about it—okay! I never made any big pretenses to you! You just assumed too much. Sure, I wanted a big job in a fine company, with plenty of chances for advancement, but the economy has made those jobs rare. I’m doing the best I can, and this job isn’t all that bad—except for the travelling. But we’re doing okay and I am making decent money. What I don’t understand is why what kind of work I do is all that important to you, as long as the necessities are provided for.”

“Well, it’s just that everything seems like such a waste.” His mother’s voice sounded hurt.

‘’And you dreamed that you would be my inspiration to balm all of mankind’s ills. Nonsense! As a matter of fact, I wonder what it is that you want to do with your life. Do you want more kids, or do you have some dreams to fulfill when Randy’s grown and gone? Do you plan to write the great American novel on the kitchen table, and seek fame and fortune. After all, you did study English Literature in college, so I always figured you’d do something with that. Or teach!”

There was a long silence, with neither saying anything further. Finally his father spoke,” Baby, I’m sorry about any broken dreams you may have had about me, but I’ve got to be me and do certain things the way they need to be done. Life sometimes demands we do things just to survive. Come here, sweetie, how about a little loving.”

“No, Bill, not tonight. I’m exhausted and I just don’t feel like it.”

“But, Rose—“

“No, Bill, not tonight. No, don’t.” Her voice got very stern then. Then she was adamant. “I said no!”

“Come on, honey. I love you. I need you. For me, then.

Randy listened to all this with a hard lump in his throat. Was love having to beg for sex, or what? It didn’t seem right. He began to feel anger toward his mother.

His father continued imploring, and finally his mother said, “Oh, all right, or neither of us will get any sleep.” Her voice was now detached and matter-of-fact in tone.

There was silence for a time, and Randy wished he hadn’t heard any of this, but he couldn’t help listening further. He could hear their love-making sounds faintly, and he was strangely disgusted. Then everything was quiet.

“You see, Bill,” his mother finally said, crying, “it was no good for me. I feel simply terrible. I don’t know why you make me do it when you know it’ll be like this. Just a little consideration…”

Randy could listen no more. There were tears in his eyes and a huge, painful knot deep in his throat. His tears soon turned into soft sobbing. He slowly got out of bed, and grabbed his love poem from the desk, looking at it and thinking how pointless it was. He stumbled his way out of his room, through the kitchen, and out the back door, unmindful of the noise as he slammed the screen door.

What’s happening, he thought. What’s wrong with his mom and dad? He looked up at the full moon. What’s the point about all this love business?

He unfolded the poem. He could read the words clearly in the moonlight, but they no longer seemed good and beautiful–only stupid and meaningless.

He stumbled back to the goat pen. Chester stood by the fence looking at him with his head cocked to the side, as if trying to figure out what was wrong with Randy. Randy hesitated a moment, then without thinking, he thrust the poem through the fence to the goat. Chester grabbed it immediately with his mouth and began chewing it up. Soon it was gone and Chester just stood there looking at Randy like he always did when he was hungry.

THE END

THE MISSING KEYS

Posted on January 18, 2015 by

There is a current ad on television about a woman who has misplaced her keys and can not locate them. After a diligent search, her husband finds them in the refrigerator, where she absent-mindedly had misplaced them. Ostensibly, she is in the beginning stages of Alzheimers disease, which is sad, to say the least.

However, “the case of the missing keys,” or the misplacement of other items, of which most adults are victims on occasions, are rarely symptoms of the beginnings of Alzheimers. Among my many friends, most of whom are ages 50 to 90, with some younger folks also, this phenomenon of misplacing everyday items, is quite common. And none of us have Alzheimers. Rather, these instances are usually cases of inattention to the details at hand, while the mind is preoccupied with larger tasks.

The other day, after a round of golf, with conversations among several older golfing companions–who are always complaining about misplacing their keys and other items–I noticed that everyone’s memory was quite good at recalling trivia from past experiences, sometimes in excruciating detail. And they could give us detailed analysis of every shot made during that day’s round of golf! Yet these same people complained of suffering from the “missing keys syndrome.”

From all this, it seems to me that this phenomenon is caused primarily by 1) having a major project or event going on, which in certain situations– such as doubt about doing the job, will it be too expensive etc.– can “leak down” and interfere with 2) the actual activities necessary to accomplish the main goal, which can also be interrupted by outside interference, unfocused thinking, and internal mental distractions–not keeping one’s mind on the job at hand! For example, recently my washing machine broke down, and I decided to repair it myself, since I am handy at such tasks. After obtaining all the needed new parts, I began the work, with my mind focusing on fixing the machine; but soon I was distracted by thoughts of wondering if I could do it, then debating with myself as to whether I should have called a serviceman or not.

Soon, I noticed I couldn’t find a special wrench I had used a short time before, but was needed to complete the job. I searched for a half hour in my basement, but could not find it. I then gave up for the day, hoping I would remember later. The next day, as I went to answer the phone, there was the wrench by the telephone, where I had casually placed it when my work was interrupted by an emergency phone call from a friend. I picked up the wrench and completed the repair job. In this case, losing track of the wrench, was caused by pre-occupied thinking and the phone distraction.

From all this, I have recommendations to help us all with this “missing keys” problem. 1) Whenever you are placing an object somewhere, verbalize the action, such as, “I am placing my keys on the counter next to the refrigerator.” You can repeat the verbalization a time or two, making the memory trace stronger. 2) Have a specific place to put keys and other items when you are through with them. One lady has a special rack in her kitchen where she hangs all her keys as soon as she is through with them. She said that’s the only place they will ever be, if they’re not in her pocketbook. Professional mechanics tell me they have specific places to put their tools after use, such as tool belts, tool boxes, or tool cabinets. They can’t afford to misplace tools, because time is money, and they don’t want to waste it looking for tools. 3) Keep your mind on what you’re doing at the moment and try to prevent interruptions.

Readers may have other suggestions, and I hope they will share them with their friends!

HAPPY REMEMBERING

SPIRITUAL ISSUES OF ABORTION

Posted on January 18, 2015 by

In thirty years of counseling clients with varying types of mental disabilities, the abortion issue often came up, often presenting as an agonizing issue with the women involved. These women had many deep-seated psychological problems, which were the reason they were in mental health treatment, but their past behavior in terminating the lives of their fetuses would often gnaw at their sub-conscious psyches. However, not all women were so tortured; some were able to handle it quite matter-of-factly, so generalizations about this issue could not be made. Those who were raised in religious settings seemed to be the ones most affected with guilt and doubt.

Over the years, I attended several abortion-related, training seminars, usually conducted by psychiatrists, physicians, or psychologists, who never brought up the religious or spiritual aspects of abortion behavior. Information was usually presented in an abstract, scientific, and statistical manner, which would leave any concerned religious attendees with rather empty, incomplete feelings about the whole business. The political correctness attitudes among us therapists inclined us not to dwell into the religious aspects of this behavior.

Gradually, however, after many one-to-one counseling sessions with women who had had abortions, several issues began to arise in my mind.

1) First, most of the clients felt that if the baby was going to be defective in some way, and many of these women had abused alcohol while pregnant, with fetal alcohol syndrome on their minds, then aborting the baby was the sensible thing to do. They reasoned that life even for a normal baby would entail enduring considerable pain and suffering, as most of them had experienced, so deformed or defective children would be even worse off. In their minds not to be born at all meant nothingness, so aborted children endured no physical or psychological suffering.

In addition to addiction problems, many of these women had suffered physical, mental or sexual abuse as children (an estimated 70% to 80%), thus they were likely viewing this whole issue through cloudy lenses. On the other hand, they knew things about pain and suffering that most others do not, so I concluded it was important to listen to them. What had to be determined was how much of their reasoning was obscured by their own personal suffering—or had they really learned something from it.

2) Next, several clients stated that if a life is terminated before birth, then there is no consciousness, thus the fetus is unaware whether it was beginning a life or not—no consciousness, no existence! They said that they remembered nothing about themselves before they were two years old or so–no consciousness of life itself at that early age, therefore an unborn fetus certainly would be unaware of whether it was beginning life or not. Thus, they didn’t feel guilty about stopping life at that early stage.

3) Finally, religious and spiritual clients wondered, when does a human develop a soul? For these believers, this was the major question that gradually arose in their minds—usually after the abortions were performed. Was the soul present at conception? Is the soul there before conception, half in the egg and half in the sperm—or what? On the other hand, does the soul enter the body before, during, or after birth? Indeed, does the soul gradually evolve in stages with the physical growth of the body, or does it enter somehow from the “outside?” Many clients, when they began to explore and think about these things, often for the first times in their lives, wondered how all this applied even to the rest of the animal kingdom! One man in a group counseling session wondered if plants had some sort of souls, and he would likely feel guilty about cutting down a tree!

Some of these clients had gone to ministers, priests, rabbis and chaplains to discuss this soul issue—with mixed results. They reported that some clergy were uneasy about all this and gave them incomplete answers. One woman specifically asked her minister at what age was the soul present, and she said, “He was damn well ready to tell me in the greatest detail all the other aspects of my religious life, but he was real wishy-washy on this soul issue!” After considerable discussion about her remarks, the group concluded that he could not give her a definite answer about something he wasn’t sure of himself. The group concluded that most religious faiths have not dealt with the specifics of the soul issue in abortion, and science is of no help, so individuals are going to have to make up their own minds. Religious leaders are then forced to take up positions based on religious doctrine or personal opinion.

Thus, it is the position of this essay that abortion has strong spiritual dimensions, and at the core it is not even a legal problem, except to the extent that we foist it into the laws and courts, which is about all we know to do.

Then, one day at the mental hospital, a patient whom we shall call Sally walked into my office, crying and very upset. She had no appointment, but my secretary convinced me that I should see her right away.

Sally was a young woman of twenty-three, living in a halfway house with other recovering alcohol and drug addicted women. She came from a Southern Baptist family, but reported that the family wasn’t really all that religious. I had seen her several times before and she had impressed me that she was serious about staying clean and sober, turning her life around, and going to work. She initially came to me for career and job counseling, but we found that her addiction behavior was intertwined with her work life, so we had to do deal with the pain caused by her past behavior in order to free her up so she could adequately deal with her current problems. It was obvious if her past behaviors were not resolved she would not be able to stay clean and sober. And we quickly discovered that the problem she was now agonizing over was her feelings and thoughts about having an abortion right after high school.

“I got pregnant my senior year in high school because I lost control of my life while using alcohol and drugs,” she said. “The first thing I had to decide was whether to have the baby or not. I wasn’t married and my family would have disowned me if they found out. Believe me it was a hard decision—so hard that I resented that such a monumental thing as having a baby or not would boil down to be the result of a decision! It was either/or! There was no in-between. But believe me there was plenty going on in my guts. It just wasn’t fair. Besides, it didn’t do any good to talk to anybody about it, because all they were going to do was come down on one side of the fence or the other, and I didn’t know which side was right—or the best for me or the baby.”

Taking a quick clue, I responded with my best counseling demeanor, “The pressure of having to make this decision nearly tore you apart, other people weren’t much help, and you’re still struggling with the consequences of what you’ve done.”

“Exactly!” she perked up. “I knew what the preacher would say, so I didn’t even bother with him. And my dad would have killed me, and my mother is a vacuum-head who does whatever Dad says, so I was trapped.” Then, after a pause, “You know what I did?”

“No,” I responded. “What?”

“I went to a doctor who does abortions, thinking he might know something. He was very matter-of-fact, but non-committal, if you know what I mean. He gave me lots of scientific info, but it wasn’t of any help to me. So I went home and started praying about it long and hard. Then, suddenly, the answer popped into my head: go get an abortion. But frankly I’m not religious enough to believe the answer came from God. Actually, it came from the fear in me caused by my chemical abuse, so in a sense the liquor and drugs made the decision for me. Now isn’t that a hell of a note!” Then she began crying.

Over our next several counseling sessions, as I further gained her trust, Sally talked more about her abortion and presented some ideas that stirred my thinking with things I hadn’t given much thought to previously. The issue was foremost in my mind at that time because the Supreme Court was soon to decide whether to overturn the Roe vs. Wade decision.

It was apparent from Sally’s conversations that once a woman was pregnant and considering abortion, her decision was a spiritual one—not a legal one. As Sally said, “Once the sperm fertilizes the egg, a unique form of life is created: a human being. But what I wonder about is whether the fertilized egg has a soul. I believe people have souls, but if we don’t have souls, I wouldn’t have a problem aborting babies. But we do have souls, so the problem for me is when does the soul enter the fetus. Does it float down from Heaven and go in, like some reincarnation people believe, or does it just come up in the fetus itself? I didn’t know then and I don’t know now. But I need to know that!”

She and I then had long talks about the possible origins of the soul for believers, but we never got much further than her orginal thoughts. Science, we concluded, was of no help, because it could deal only with those things that are of substance, that can be measured and experimented with—and the soul was beyond that. Sally’s Christian belief was that the existence of the soul was an absolute fact, that she had a soul, but there was no answer as to how it came into existence.

“What I finally did,” she continued, “was to figure that a soul somehow evolved after about the sixth week of pregnancy—but don’t ask me where I got that six week figure from; just one of my drunken stupors, I guess. It answered my doubts and fears at that time, so if I aborted before then it would be all right, because I’d be killing something with no soul, sort of like squashing a bug. Of course it would be sinful to abort after the six week period…”

From Sally’s struggles we can see that the abortion issue is a spiritual one at its deepest level—not a legal one. So why did we let the Supreme Court make a spiritual/moral decision such as this? Logically, these decisions would seem to be the province of our religious leaders, but because they can’t prove the existence of the soul, the decisions transfer over to our legal system. What other choice do we have?

However, the various religious demonitions have taken positions on abortion, which logically should be followed by their congregations, or like believers, but the problems arise when one religious ideology tries to impose its position on non-believers and the rest of the nation, thus forcing the legal system to take over. But the legal system doesn’t have enough verifiable information on the existence of the soul, so it is forced to decide the issue based on non-spiritual reasons: 1) all life is to be protected from conception, so there will be no abortions 2) abortions are arbitrarily allowed on certain periods during the nine month pregnancy period, based on certain criteria 3) all abortion issues are to be decided by the individual, based on personal belief sytems. Due to the complexity of the human condition, there can be other non-religious justifications for abortions, which all thoughtful readers will have to reason out for themselves.

Is there a final answer? It doesn’t appear so. All of us have our opinions, based on incomplete facts. So we are forced to defer to the legal system, while still trying to impose our religious and moral reasoning onto those who make our legal decisions, which is our situation today.

A TALE OF BUREAUCRATIC EXCELLENCE

Posted on January 12, 2015 by

Dreadnought Castle

Jan 12, 2015

Dear Friends,

Recently, while perusing through many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, I came upon the following little tale. After reading it, it occurred to me that it might have application to recent events in our national government, especially in the mazes and complexities of our federal, bureaucratic agencies, which seem to be intruding into our lives ever increasingly. I thought you might enjoy it.

I remain yours, most apocalyptically,

The Gray Ghost

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A TALE OF BUREAUCRATIC EXCELLENCE

Once upon a time, in a land far away, in a quiet corner of the world, there lived a King who viewed himself as a kind and sincere man. All the neighboring kings said he was very bright and energetic– after all, he had a degree from Harvard Law School! However, behind his back they also said he was too ambitious. “After all,” they said, “you’re already king of an entire country! What else could you possibly want?”

However, the King did want more. You see, his was a special kind of country, one where all the sick and disabled people, and wayward immigrants from around the world, came for help to start a new life. As a result, the King and his Court welcomed all these people with great enthusiasm; for, you see, they had a special mission: they really believed that they could help all of these unfortunate people. The King further believed that he could help them so much, that they would all be able to get good jobs and work! Oh, how wonderful a king he was!

But, alas, the King’s country was too limited to accomplish these goals; the government was burdened with a national debt of $17,000,000,000, and the borders were being flooded by endless streams of new immigrants, while all the poor, indigenous citizens were depleting the Federal coffers even further. Soon, the King noticed that very few of these people were going to work. Moreover, that worried him—as kings are wont to do in such situations. Finally, after much thoughtful deliberation, the King concluded that his Royal Management Techniques weren’t working After all, the current techniques, which he had inherited from his father, were outdated. It was time to update them!

So, off the King went to Soothsayer University to consult with Merlin, his great, liberal advisor. Merlin listened to the King’s lamentations for days on end, and pondered laboriously over his ancient books of awesome lore. Finally, in an obscure and ancient tome, In Search of Excellence, he found the answer.

“What you must do,” Merlin announced to the King, “is to adopt the most modern management techniques. Your problem has been that you are trying to run your royal government like a fiefdom—whereas you should be running it like a business! What you need to do is to implement a new management system that I—in all my wisdom—have devised for you: the Management Troll System. With this system, you can’t fail. It incorporates all the latest technology. And better yet,” Merlin added with a wry grin, “it will cause the people to love you!

The King was immensely pleased, because he so much liked being loved. So, he immediately implemented his new Management Troll System, which he was sure would gain him many warm fuzzies from the people

Now, the key to this whole system, as you can well imagine, was the Trolls, little people who lived under bridges and such, and needed jobs themselves. They were assigned the duties of assisting these disadvantaged people by counseling, and getting them welfare benefits and government jobs. Each Troll was assigned a yearly quota of disadvantaged people to work with and was expected to get a certain percentage of them settled in and on the job.

Supervising the Trolls were the Troll Watchers and the Gnomes. Ruling over all of them was the King, who watched over everything from his palace balcony, using the most modern technology: a telescope and carrier pigeons. In addition, the King declared that all these people they were helping should henceforth be called Customers, because he didn’t want them to feel bad about all the unearned help they were getting.

Now, the Troll Watchers lived in the villages with the Trolls, so it was not hard for them to see what was going on. However, the Gnomes lived in the palace dungeon, so they had to use periscopes to see what was happening in the outside world. Moreover, it was the Gnomes job, under the new Management Troll System, to take orders from the King and tell the Troll Watchers what to do as they went about helping all these people they were assigned.

Thus, the king and the dungeoned Gnomes devised the bureaucratic specifics of the Management Troll System. Then they published these procedures on 436,856 scrolls of sheepskin parchment (which, incidentally, caused a severe shortage of mutton) and distributed the scrolls throughout the kingdom. Then, on October 1^st the complete Management Troll System was implemented with great expectations.

At first, everyone was happy, because they all had great hopes. At the very least, the Trolls hoped for some workload relief. But it was clear that the system wasn’t working like it was supposed to. The Customers began screaming louder for their rights and wanted increased benefits. Before long, the harassed and overworked Trolls began quitting and getting jobs in neighboring countries–if they were unable to wrangle a Troll Watcher or Gnome job. However, the records that they were required to keep on all their activities with the Customers had gotten more complicated and burdensome. For example, whereas the Trolls initially memorized important information about their Customers, the King, for some unaccountable reason, became fearful that the Trolls would forget all this precious information, so he required them to write out all their actions on sheepskin parchment (further depleting the flocks). Further, to protect the Customers’ confidentiality, this recording had to be done in invisible ink, which was lemon juice. Thus, if a Troll wanted to read his own parchments he had to send a message to the palace by carrier pigeon, to ask the Royal Furnace Stokers to come around to fire up the file ovens so the parchment could be heated and the invisible ink writing made visible. After reading the files, the records had to be re-copied in new invisible writing and then re-filed. Then, the remaining legible files were burned

Now, the Furnace Stokers were scheduled to go to each Troll’s office once a month, but they kept getting so many carrier pigeon emergency calls from the over- burdened Trolls, that they couldn’t keep their regular schedules. On those rare occasions when they did get to a Troll’s office for a regularly scheduled visit, invariably the Troll in question would be out to lunch, or working in the community somewhere. Further complicating this delicately balanced communication-service-delivery system, were the numerous outlaw, pigeon hunters who roamed the land, killing the birds for their dinner tables. Said one pigeon hunter, when captured by the King’s game warden, and asked why he was killing the pigeons, “Where’s the mutton?”

Well, the situation got worse and productivity dropped even more. So the King decided that to get increased production of improved Customers, he would offer a Troll Incentive Pay Plan, something that had never been done in fiefdom before. Therefore, he formed a task force committee of Trolls, and told them, “Trolls, I want you to get together and figure out a system that will reward the energetic and bright Trolls who helped the most Customers. This way we’ll get our production back up, I can be proud of you again, and you Trolls can earn a few extra shekels!”

A timid Troll in the group was puzzled and stammered, “But your Excellence, why don’t you just go ahead and give a modest cash bonus to each Troll who gets a Customer a job?”

The King, unaccustomed to being questioned, suppressed his anger, and smiled in benevolent, condescension saying, “My son, you don’t seem to understand. Such a simple solution will never work in my increasingly complex kingdom. Haven’t you read Megatrends, written by my teen-aged son, Prince-Know-All? If you had, you’d know that solutions to today’s and tomorrow’s problems must be, what I call, forecasting solutions, whereby we take into careful consideration past, present, and future events, whilst carefully considering the physical, social, psychological, and spiritual ramifications, integrating all these variables into our Management Troll System. Then we cross check all this with our learned Astrologer, Starman, to see if it’s going to work… Further, I want to make sure that all Trolls are an integral part of this decision-making process. This is what I call participative management.” The King paused and looked at the Troll benevolently, then finished his oration with, “See how just and democratic I am!”

So the King’s task force went forth to work, spending a year devising a good, behaviorally-oriented incentive pay system. When it was finished, it was presented to the King and his Court (during the royal softball game). And everyone was pleased. However, his personal aide and counselor, Killery Hinton suggested that it needed to be field-tested in a remote part of the kingdom, where few would know what was happening, just to make sure it would work, because if anything dysfunctional happened, his Excellence would be blamed, putting his excellent reputation at great risk.

The King agreed, so the Troll Incentive Pay System was field-tested in a remote part of the Kingdom for three years. However, by that time, everyone had lost interest in the project, and the King himself forgot about it because of more pressing problems.

The King and the Gnomes had recently noted that the people pouring into the kingdom were more disabled, sick, or poorer than ever before. Moreover, more and more of them did not want to go to work. Instead, they preferred to remain on the royal “welfare robes.”

Now, the Trolls knew that these people were never going to go to work—ever. However, the King, in his excellent vision, felt otherwise. “To get these sicker people off the royal welfare robes, we must improve our Troll’s job performance.”

However, nothing was done about Troll salaries, workloads, labor relations, working conditions, public relations, employee attitudes, or the quality of the newly hired Trolls and Troll-Watchers.

“These are all problems, of course,” the King agreed, “but everyone has these problems, so we mustn’t be crybabies. To improve our efficiency, we must bite the arrow! We must become more excellent.” So the King initiated a new campaign to make all the Trolls more excellent.

At the core of the plan was a scheme to retrain the Trolls to work faster, and to re-train the Troll-Watchers to better plan their jobs. The King assigned this training to a specialized group of Gnomes who were off in a corner of the dungeon, and they were called the Neo Royal Trainers. They were ex-Trolls, who, after beginning their Troll work, found they could no longer bear to look upon the pitiful Customers. Since they were no longer any good at direct service delivery, the King in his usual benevolent, understanding excellence, took pity upon them and “kicked them upstairs” into jobs where they had to teach those below what they didn’t know how to do themselves. The King said, “Those that can’t do, should teach.”

Now, when the Royal Trainers got the call from the King to initiate his newest plan, they were ecstatic, because they had been in the dungeon for years, with nothing to do. Finally, they were onstage!

So, the Royal Trainers went forth into the kingdom full of enthusiasm—and other things—trying to train all the working Trolls. However, the Trainers were puzzled when all the Trolls kept falling asleep in the training sessions. This deviant behavior was reported to the King and his Court, and they concluded that all the Trolls must either be coming down with the sleeping plague, developing alcohol and drug problems, or bringing their personal problems to work!

“What we need is a Troll Assistance Program, “the King declared. So he designated I. M. Ugly, a Gnome in the north castle tower as the person who would work with these troubled Trolls who fell asleep. Mr. Ugly had been in the tower twenty years, doing highly specialized work for the King, counting the number of daily carrier pigeon flights. Therefore, the King considered him eminently qualified to be a counselor to the Trolls.

But, alas, no one ever came to see Mr. Ugly for help with his excellent assistance, because the Trolls knew that if anyone saw them going to his tower for help, then everyone would know how dysfunctional they really were, and they might get fired. Because of this, the Troll Assistance Program was also soon forgotten.

Predictively, the King continued to note the increasingly, lowered production from his Trolls. He pondered mightily what he should do. Then one day, as he sat naked in his bath, it came to him. Excited, he jumped out of the bath, ran naked throughout the castle, shouting, “Eureka, I’ve got it!” Well, the Queen did not like that behavior at all, and scorned him mightily for exposing himself before all the innocent young maidens entrusted to her care.

But the King, as usual, was unfazed. It was simple: to get more production from the Trolls, all that was needed was to have them work longer. The King’s Court was sore amazed at his excellent brilliance when they hear his new plan.

Thus, the King issued a new decree throughout the land. Each day was hereby increased to 32 hours, with an additional eight hours added to the Trolls workday, bringing it up to 16. Even better, the Trolls still retained the same number of hours as always for their own personal lives and activities.

As the King thought about his latest management achievement, he thought, “Now that’s the way to achieve EXCELLENCE!”

THE END

A WESTERN STORY

Posted on January 8, 2015 by

A WESTERN STORY

Joseph S. Wilkins

(The following remembrance was written by my grandfather, Joseph S. Wilkins, when he was 82 years old. It is a recounting of his early years in west Tennessee and his and my grandmother’s pioneering excursion to Colorado at the beginning of the 20^th Century)

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In America, trailblazing is part of our democratic way of life. In my youth, we seemed to have no more frontiers, but, being restless, and wanting to do and have things, my young wife and I decided to go pioneering anyway. Basically, we were fed up barely existing on our old, eroded west Tennessee farm.

We were excited and animated by the traditions and tales of the thrilling adventures of Daniel Boone, Sam Houston, and our beloved Davy Crockett, whose last Tennessee home, before he took off for the Alamo, was nearby. Crockett’s crude politicking, fighting Indians, and bear- hunting exploits I had read about, but most information about him was given to me when I was a boy by his younger companion in all his adventures.

This companion was a young Negro named Albert, and he was Crockett’s slave. Albert went everywhere with Crockett. Albert was with Crockett at the Battle of the Alamo, and was the only survivor. Albert’s capture and final escape from the Mexicans, his loss of a leg, and his 3-year long trek back home gave me thrills and the spirit of adventure.

As was the custom in the South, older slaves were known as “uncle” or “aunt,” so he was Uncle Albert to me, being in his 40’s at the time. He told me of his thrilling adventures related to Crockett and Sam Houston.

Uncle Albert told about the large beech-nut tree near our home where Crockett carved the letters “Where Crockett kil a bar.” He told about Crockett running for Congress and getting drinks for voters by paying for them with coon hides.

Most interesting was his hiding in the canopy of the Alamo during the fighting, watching the small band of overmatched fighters throwing back the Mexican hordes initially; but, when the ammunition gave out, the Mexicans broke through and there was hand-to-hand fighting, with Colonel Travis, Jim Bowie and Crockett being the last to go down. There were dead Mexicans by the score lying around.

Being a colored man possibly saved Albert’s life. He was made a captive, but escaped in less than a year and immediately set out for home, which was five hundred miles away through uninhabited, barren waste country. He had no shoes, few clothes, and was starving.

At one point he came to a large river. He swam across and soon noticed a large animal carcass on the shore, with several buzzards feeding on it. Now there were eats—but how to get it. He waded out and submerged alongside the carcass. Soon the buzzards returned. He grabbed a large cock buzzard by the feet and brought it to shore. He ate most of that buzzard raw.

Soon he built a head-high pen with drift poles around the carcass and the left-over buzzard. He made a trap door on top of the pen and hid himself nearby. Soon, several young wolves came sniffing around and sprang through the trap door into the pen. Quickly, with rocks he pelted the wolves until they were dead. He then skinned them and cut off plenty of wolf mutton. From their hides he made two pairs of moccasins and a suit. Resting overnight, he trekked on.

Early one day, he saw some riders. They were scouts of General Sam Houston’s Army of Liberation. Brought before Houston, he told him his story. Houston knew Crockett and of the fateful Alamo massacre, so he made Albert his handy-man. Soon, the big, decisive battle of San Jacinto was fought, with the Americans driving right through the much larger Mexican army under Santa Anna, who was the president of Mexico, and was captured. Albert had seen Santa Anna when he was a Mexican prisoner, and related this to Sam Houston. Albert had previously hurt his leg, and it had become infected, so the army doctor had to amputate it. The doctor also had to treat a slight foot wound Houston received in the battle.

Houston became very fond of Albert. In their talks while lying around getting well, Houston told him many of his tall tales. One in particular, characteristic of Houston, possibly is worth relating.

While governor of Tennessee, Houston was aroused too early one morning by his wife and told by her to bring an armful of stove wood to cook breakfast. He did, but ate no breakfast (probably to show who was boss). Soon Albert could travel, so he “peg-legged” the long distance back home.

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After a brief time of marriage, and enduring poor farm land that did not produce, my wife and I decided to take Horace Greely’s advice and “Go West!” We went via the prairie schooner, as the Conestoga covered wagon was known. On our long roll west we saw many interesting things. A few I narrate.

One day we stopped for lunch in a smart town—Hominy, in the Osage Indian Nation. Oil had been discovered on their land and, at that time, they were said to be the richest people per capita in the world. They were the first Indians we met, wearing blankets over and around them, with the squaws carrying papooses on covered boards on their backs. They amused my wife and me, and more so when those who could speak English would point at our beautiful three-month-old daughter in my wife’s lap, grin, gesture, and say, “White man papoose!”

In Stevens County, Kansas, the Cimarron River makes a sharp bend, and our best route further west was to cross it there, twice. The day before we got to the east crossing, a downpour of rain fell. I had read how treacherous Western rivers were, with their quicksand bogs after a heavy rain, and how stampeded herds of Buffalo would plunge into them, sink and die. So, a mile from the river crossing we asked a man how the river was. He said it was bone dry, which was confusing, because on a rise a short distance from the crossing I saw water coming. It was passing the ford crossing as we arrived. I looked across. The river had sloping banks, and upstream there was no avalanche of water coming. But I knew the swift current and crawling sand would take us downstream a bit, yet the sloping banks would enable us to cross safely.

We plunged in with our waterproof, Conestoga wagon. The water was a foot or so deep. However, our splendid team of horses did not like such dirty, foaming water, full of drifting tumble weeds and other trash. By the time we reach the other side—100 feet or so—the water was nearly up to our wagon bed.

We camped overnight at a settlement a mile on the western edge of the Cimarron Valley. The next morning the floodwater was nearly out to us. A man there said he had never seen the river that high in his twenty years there. Telling him where we were going, he said it would be a week or 10 days before we could cross the river on the west.

Broomcorn was their money crop there, and they were harvesting it then. He asked me if I wished work. I did, and he phoned a friend near the western crossing. He was sending a helper. This farmer was about my age, with a wife and year-old daughter. He payed me a dollar a day and our board. The next day he showed me how to pull dwarf broomcorn. We put big handfuls between rows to dry 3 or 4 days, put it in ricks, then later seed and bale it (400 lbs. to the bale) for market. We traded some goods nearly every day and eventually didn’t work much. I then spent an hour or more each morning and evening in his grain fields shooting prairie chickens that came in thundering droves. He would laugh at me for not getting many chickens. I told him he need not expect a tenderfoot Easterner to shoot like Westerners.

At noon one day, after we had mopped our guns, I held his gun skyward and looked through the barrel. I had never seen before or since such a bore of golden rings and glow. I wanted that gun, and used it a few days hunting. A few days later, he said he might give me an even trade for my fine looking double- barrel gun. Just what I wanted him to say. He said he had used his gun against many competitors, and always outshot the other hunters. We made the trade, and afterward I got my chickens.

In a few days, he phoned his friend at the Western Cimarron crossing to ask when I could cross, and to help me. They said I could cross with help. We reloaded the wagon, and early next day arrived at the crossing. Cowboys awaited us on their ponies. I wondered how they could be of much assistance. Two of them tied their lariats to the end of my wagon tongue, the third one led the way, and away we went safely across. I never knew before how a horse, with a rope tied to a saddle horn, could pull so much. However, later in our winters when so many cattle froze, cowboys with their lariats would drag full grown cows away on the frozen ground.

Soon, we crossed the old Santa Fe Trail, bringing back memories of tales of the old West that I had heard in my youth. Not being able to water my team, late in the evening of the third day, we saw some men building a rock house nearby. They had water in barrels, and, taking buckets, they helped me water my team. The higher altitude had winded one of my horses and he was lying down, exhausted. Given water, he eventually arose and recovered. I later learned to my sorrow that some eastern horses did not become acclimated to the altitude change, and soon died.

These people seemed pleased when I told them I intended to homestead in that section. One of them pointed to a windmill three miles west, saying one of his eight brothers lived there and that he would show me around and help me find what I wanted. His brother not being home, his wife, Mrs. Craddick, mother-in-law, and her gangling son took care of my team of horses. They gave us plenty of good eats and an overnight welcome. Early the next morning we set out for Springfield, twenty-five miles away. All those brothers later became our dear friends.

Halfway to Springfield was Villas, a big trading post and post office. I drove up front to the main store. Several cowboys were out front and began gazing bug-eyed at our baby daughter. (I afterward learned she was the only baby in that area.) Western style, they wanted to know my mission, so I told them we were homesteading.

The merchant, Mr. Wheeler (who sold everything from toothpicks to automobiles) pointed to a house three miles north across the prairie, saying it was unoccupied, and to move in and stay until I got located. A dry, sandy, Bear Creek was about halfway. The cowboys, seeing I was heavily loaded, said I would likely get stuck crossing, and to wait and they would soon be along to get me across. Just like our crossing the Cimarron River.

After crossing the creek, we arrived at the house about noon. I fed the team, ate lunch, unloaded some, and fixed up the house. Then I took off on horseback for Springfield for my mail.

Early next morning we saw two people coming in a surrey. I recognized the boy from where we had stayed the night before. He told me they had come for us. I stated I had a place as long as I wished. The man, Mr. Craddick, said he was sorry he wasn’t at home when we arrived, and that we must return and stay with him. So we returned, with the boy driving my team, with my wife and me riding with Mr. Craddick in the surrey. Arriving at his home, the boy again took care of our team, with the family again giving as a welcoming return.

Before I left the East, I had received valuable government plats and descriptive literature about Baca County, Colorado—its climate, soil, what they grew and how, the rainfall, and altitude. I told Mr. Craddick I wanted a valley with blue stem grass that grows two to three feet high, and a two to three mile slope into this valley. A gradual slope was necessary because when it rain there it pours and flooding is a concern. This slope had Grammer grass that grows three or four inches, and as it seldom does rain in late Fall and Winter, cures and remains succulent—which is so fine for the buffaloes and now the sheep and cattle. It also has thick, matted, root sod that sheds water like a duck’s back. The annual rainfall was twenty-one inches. One needs floodwater to prevent crop failure. Mr. Craddick said he knew just the place, six miles north and in the section I wanted.

We went the next day. Two miles away was a slope of Grammer grass, leading down into a beautiful valley. We stopped at the southwest corner of the half- section. Looking down that valley was beauty beyond compare. I had him drive through it. Twice I took a posthole digger and dug down four feet or so, striking blood-red subsoil. At about a foot down I struck moisture, so I knew one could grow crops every year.

We then drove to the northwest corner of this 320n acres (half section). A Dutch rancher 20 years before had settled there, built a nice 18 x 36 foot rock house, with a like-sized, partitioned basement. The government found out this Dutchman was a claim jumper, so he had to skip. All but the basement of the house was gone, though the hundred square-foot, rock corral was intact. Mr. Craddick said that with a little rock repairing, which his father could do, one could roof the basement, plaster the rock wall with gypsum (plentiful near the creek), making beautiful white walls, and have a cheap, warm, temporary home.

Looking north a mile was Horse Creek, with timber on the banks. Two and one-half miles north were Blaine Post Office and school. Twenty-five miles northwest was Two Buttes Mountains—two hazy peaks that stood 500 feet high right out of the prairie. Blue and sparkling mirage lakes were seen every way one looked. What scenery! Our dreamland. The rainbow’s end.

The next day Mr. Craddick took my wife and me to Lamar, 60 miles away, to file on our homestead. He sent one of his brothers with a team to get us some lumber, roofing, wire, some coal, and sundry supplies. Later, his father and brother started working on my house while he and I went 40 miles west into some cedar breaks to get some dead cedar fence posts. We loaded our wagons with enough seasoned cedar posts to fence my 320 acres and a line of posts through the center, making the north half for pasture and the south half (valley) for crops. When we arrived home our house was habitable and comfortable. These dear people would take no pay for all this.

We soon moved in. I had left the effete East with malaria, chills, and fever every few days—also with some bunions on my feet. In a year I had no more bunions, and I was not sick a day in that glorious country.

Later, the teacher at Blaine was resigning at Christmas. Learning that I had taught school in Tennessee, the school directors asked me to finish teaching the remaining four months term. I had to walk two-and a-half miles daily to and from the school house.

On Horse Creek, I soon noticed spring water coming out in places in the rocky, high bluffs on the north side. The water in Horse Creek was two inches or so deep, and in places twelve feet wide, eventually sinking into the sand. But large rock boulders had fallen into the creek, and in several places had backed up the water, making several large, deep holes, good for duck shooting and catching the limit of mountain trout. The limit was all you wished to take home! The breaks also made good covers to hide and shoot antelopes and other game.

At school one day in mid- February at recess, the children called my attention to a dark, hazy cloud in the northwest, saying a blizzard was coming, and that teachers always let them out to go home. Hurriedly we all left. I got a mile from home when the blizzard struck. I was in the creek breaks, protected somewhat, yet I was blown around, half blinded by pelting snow and sleet. Visibility was nil at times. I was well-clad and made it home about dusk by following our neighborhood pasture fence that ran near our house. Numb, half- blinded, and frozen, I stumbled home. I had been told to watch for such blizzard clouds and seek shelter soon. I had heard of people feeding stock, getting lost, and freezing, trying to find their house not a hundred yards away.

When school was out, I began plowing. The first year that one turns the sod, you let it remain, then drill the grain. No cultivating. If fact, one never cultivates there. I only ran a weeder once, to keep out weeds. This was new, easy farming to me. Cultivating in the east was our pain. What crops! Milo, maze, Kaffir corn, broomcorn, and cane that grew so thick and high. An agricultural forest primeval. Such rich, enduring soil. A rancher showed me plots planted to crops for twenty years, with no apparent deterioration. We had one half- mile row of watermelons, cantaloupes, pumpkins, and several kinds of squash. There was enough rain to make fine crops, with sunshine galore, for the finest flavor. Twice snow fell before a freeze. I have gone to my field and scratched snow off delicious watermelons and cantaloupes—after Christmas.

Early in the spring, the postmaster at Blaine became very sick. The people asked me to take the position and move the post office over to my place. This suited me because I wanted to meet people and trade with them. The mail carrier came thrice a week, at noon when I was at home. Then I soon had the mail up and the carrier on his way.

That winter, working week-ends, I fenced my 320 acres with three-wire, and put a fence through the middle, separating my pasture from the valley-crop part. After planting my crops (no cultivating being necessary) I started our new rock house. Rocks and gypsum were plentiful near Horse Creek. Its location, midway on a slight rise east, was better to look over my domain and see those beautiful mirages. I told the old timers I intended to have a spring bubble up. How they would laugh at me, calling me a green bumpkin roller, who knew more about the country than those who had been there a lifetime.

I had to haul water for my stock a mile from the creek. I let my stock out one day, thinking they would return with our milk cow whose calf was in the corral. When the cows didn’t return, my wife, astride the cow pony, went for them. I told her not to cross the creek, as we lately had a freshet. She soon returned, saying the cattle were on the north side of the creek. I filled my pockets with throwing rocks and went after them. I began pelting the milk cow, Miss Daisy. She re-crossed the creek, and all started home. My horse hesitated crossing a nearer way. It looked safe, so I put spur to him and in– and nearly under– we went. The creek was not very wide. I jumped onto a boulder near the other side. Holding onto the bridle reins, strongly pulling and tugging, my horse muddled through and out. The laugh by my wife was on me.

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The early homesteaders tried to farm like they did back east with non-acclimated seeds—with disastrous results, becoming as “Sour Grapes of Wrath.” Some built nice stone houses and dug large community wells for water. A mile south, half a mile north and one mile east, there were several such wells—5 feet in diameter and 50 to 60 feet deep. All had loose boards over them because they were dangerous. Over time, they had deteriorated and were now about half-covered and half-filled with windblown dead grass and tumbleweeds. These weeds were the size of a wash kettle, and grew all over the prairie, and dried up round-shaped. Our prevailing breezes and strong fall and winter winds snapped the tumbleweeds loose from their roots and sent them rolling and tumbling by the hundreds over the prairie. I have seen them piled up against wire fences, fence high, and with accumulated snow, break fences down.

I did not know of an east well until out hunting early one day, when I shot and wounded a badger. While chasing him, I dashed onto the half-covered well-top, and fell 30 feet into the well, taking several broken boards with me. The 30 feet or so of tumbleweeds and trash cushioned my fall and saved me from being badly hurt. I was winded, scared, and had a few body bruises and a severe head bump. I lay there for a time, recuperating and regaining my senses.

Was I scared! Thirty feet up, and a dry, straight wall: 15 feet of rock, 10 feet of tough red clay, and 5 feet of humus, loose, rich soil. My wife would be expecting me home by noon, but she and neighbors wouldn’t start looking for me before night. Would they ever look into these wells? They would first look into the breaks and water holes north on the creek for a day or two—but into these wells…maybe never. And no one could hear me holler very far.

I resolved to get myself out—but how? I had only a large pocketknife. I cut four fallen-in boards, slightly longer than the well’s diameter. Then I reached up as high as I could and peaked a notch between two rocks. I fitted one end of my boards in the notch, with the other end slightly up on the opposite wall. I did the same thing twice more, arriving at the red clay formation. I then cut a notch in this tough red clay twice, and fitting the boards in, I swung up and onto the top of the red clay. The five feet or so of loose soil would not hold my board notch, so there I was, so near the top—and yet so far. I started hollering, but got no answer. I then cut a short paddle digger and started digging this crumbly soil. As luck was again my way, I immediately struck an old badger hole—or was it my hurt badger in his large sleeping room?

Badgers are bad medicine when wounded. Should a hot or cold war flare, badger or bear, I was coming in feet first, and no appeasements. Soon I dug and cut with my knife a firm handhold in matted grass sod, and was up and out– and safe! After a long rest, I returned home, arriving before dark. I related my going aground, go-down, and critical picking up escape to my wife. However, this time my wife did not laugh.

_____________________________________

By fencing a few gaps, we soon had a neighborhood pasture, nine miles across, with plenty of water for the stock of interested neighbors. By Christmas I had my house habitable, 16 x 32 feet, with plastered white gypsum, including the same sized basement. I partitioned a third of the house for the Post Office, and the same size in the basement to store and keep produce from freezing. I also built my wife a large rock and plastered chicken house. Chickens did well there, and we always had a plentiful supply of chicken and eggs. By spring, I also had a rock corral, 8 feet high and 100 feet square. People began to settle in this country rapidly.

After a time I wanted an additional quarter section to the east. So, I had my father, aged 70, come from Tennessee to also homestead. He needed to retire and come to a more healthful climate. He homesteaded his 160 acres next to mine. This isolated another 160 acres, nearly as good as mine. This isolated 160 acres I could buy at $1.25 an acre.

I have previously narrated I wanted a deep well drilled. The ranchers said I had better have a shallow well (60 or 70 feet) and a windmill like everybody else. One day at noon, a Mr. Marsh took dinner with us. He said he was a deep well driller, and he would drill me a well to any depth I wished, at a dollar a foot, and room and board. We traded, and I furnished the 6-inch casing, which he ordered. He started drilling in a week.

I had previously surveyed a homestead for one of my old Tennessee friends, and he paid me by helping scrape out and level a big reservoir for my well. How the old timers riled my for doing all this before I even had a well.

Mr. Marsh drilled two weeks through stratified rock 120 feet. One day at noon, he said the rock had changed to a tough, waxy, black rock. He was another two weeks drilling 100 feet through it. Then again at noon, he said he had struck a porous, white rock. He had set the 6-inch casing into this tough black rock to cut off the surface water and drilled inside the casing. The sign was good for artesian water and we were elated. Mid-afternoon, drilling in this white, porous rock we heard a roar, and yelled. My helper and I looked up and saw a stream of water shooting into the air. Mr. Marsh screwed the last joint of casing into an elbow for the water to flow into our complete, big reservoir. I set a post near the center of the reservoir and put a bow with salt in it, so my cattle would trample in it and help the reservoir hold water.

For a month or more, my wife and I would ride a horse and lead another to trample and make the bottom firm, so as to make our reservoir hold water good. When full, we began irrigating a big garden. You could sell, at good prices, all kinds of garden products and we grew much of all kinds. We then irrigated around the house and corral to grow trees for added beauty and windbreak. When my old-timer friends came for their mail the day after our well came in, they shook their heads and gazed, bug-eyed.

Information of this, the first steel-cased artesian well in Baca, Colorado, was published in the Two Butte Sentinel (a weekly paper) in July or August, 1913. People came from afar and near to see it. Many began putting down artesian wells, some flowing 1000 gallons a minute. All vacant land was soon taken. A new town, Artesia, sprand up nearby. A land rush, grab and boom, was on.

Near disaster struck the third winter. Local hail nearly ruined our fine garden and crops. February was a month of incessant snows. I lost nearly half of my ill-fed cattle. Many others lost more, but I had my stock up and protected from the blizzard somewhat by my corral. Fuel and food became scarce with many. I was lucky, having a supply of cow chips and driftwood hauled from the creeks north. I made me a hand-me-down meal mill, attached an old coffee mill spindle to the top, then rocked and spun it around, making meal.

We also had plenty of ducks and chickens. I shot ducks in the reservoir from my door. There were plenty of jackrabbits that I shot in the late evenings in the moonlight, while they were out eating around the corral.

During a lull in a storm, a neighbor and I went 45 miles to Holly, mostly for cattle feed and flour. The snow had melted and the ground was frozen, so we went fast. Late evening, within 10 miles from home on our way back, the ground thawed and we had to rest our weary team every half-mile or so. We arrived at my neighbor’s house at midnight. I stayed over-night. That night the ground froze and I started the two and a half miles home. Horse Creek ford had a foot or so high ice abutment on both sides. I would have to cut that ice away or get stuck. A near blizzard was coming, so I didn’t have time to cut both sides. I looked upstream. Close by, a big boulder had previously backed up melted snow water that was level with both creek banks. It had frozen, but shallow water was running beneath it. I decided the ice was thick enough to hold my load, and over that bridge of ice we went. I fed my team and was unloading my wagon at home when the blizzard struck.

All ranchers and homesteaders were much afraid of prairie fires, so they were careful with matches and campfires. The grass was very inflammable. Prairie fires were often set by rainless electrical storms, common in semi-arid countries, with their constant strong breezes.

One such prairie fire came roaring our way five miles south. The cowboys and ranchers fought it by dragging wet blankets, sacks, even bedding, when other things were not available. They would shoot a cow, quickly pull off the skin, tie it to the end of their long lariat, with the other side of the skin tied to the lariat of another cowboy, and speed along both sides of the fire, gradually narrowing the burning area until it was out. This prairie fire was nearly pin-pointed before it reached us and was stopped by our mile-long cultivated valley on the south side. This saved our house, out buildings, and stacked feed. We were also concerned about prairie fires ruining our fall and winter grazing for our cattle, horses and sheep.

One wild thing I was never able to harmonize. It was smaller than a coyote and pale red in color. One night, north on Two Butte Creek, looking for driftwood with several neighbors, snoozing in a draw, a light snow fell. We were crawling from under our blankets, when right near, up jumped one of those creatures. Before I could get my gun and run to the edge of the narrow draw, I sighted a red blur two miles away. Returning to my companions, I asked, “What was that?” they said it was a swift—and swift it was!

Your neighbors were those near and thirty miles away. I would not sell flour or feed, but loaned both to our neighbors until this unusual cold spell abated. The next two years I made fine crops, bought some more cattle, raised and sold some hogs. Our local garden sales were exceptionally good. I sold a bit of grain and a big crop of broomcorn, paying for my well, some cattle, and more land.

Then, in the fifth year, disaster struck our family. My wife naturally had a weak heart, and the higher altitude and lighter air was making her weak. I went for the only doctor in the county, and he said I would have to get her to lower and more humid regions, giving me 60 days, or her heart would be damaged.

So, there we were. Our bright looking future (moonlight and roses) was now “gone with the wind.” Therefore, in a few days, I put my wife and now two lovely daughters, 3 and 5 years old, on the train to take them back to our old nest in Tennessee. A short time later, I had a sale of all our property. Those dear people bid in and paid more for my things than they seemed worth.

Physically, I was hale and fit as a fiddle. My father, who was living with us, had been ill, but was now recuperated. He lived to be 92, and went back east with us. Financially we had not done too badly. I had come to that fair land in Colorado with around $800 and I left with $10,000 in cash and real estate. A neighbor drove my father and me to the train forty-five miles away. I took a sad, longing, last look across the rolling prairie at our dear homestead, basking in glittering mirage splendor. The boy within me cried, stilling the song in my soul.

In this democratic country, which is especially good for the aged, I can hardly believe—and am distressed—to read that the scenes of our homestead, honeymoon country can now be called a Dust Bowl. Oh, that Man, the most remarkable, and perhaps most admirable of God’s creatures, could and would mar and abuse this beautiful earth.

THE END

Epilogue—It will be noted from my grandfather’s account of his homesteading days, that life on the prairie could be quite dangerous at times, and life was risky. But, the prairie offered more freedom and opportunity for those willing to risk it. However, the reader will note that much of that danger was offset by the help and kindness of neighbors. Granddaddy got assistance that is somewhat uncommon today, without which he might not been able to survive his days on the prairie. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that spirit of helping our neighbors could be increased today.

THE MEANING IN GOLF

Posted on December 30, 2014 by

“I don’t know why anyone plays such a silly game! All you do is knock a little ball around in a field until you get it in a hole. What’s the big thrill about that?”

Sound familiar, golfers? If your spouse has never sung that tune, then likely some of your non-golfing friends have—even if they have not said it to you personally. Most non-golfers have trouble seeing the passion we golfers have about the game. Pars, birdies, tees, bogies, drivers—these terms are as obscure as Sanskrit to them. That first Scottish shepherd who obsessively whacked rocks around the pasture with his shepherd’s crook, trying to knock them into rabbit holes, probably caught hell from his wife for ignoring her and the children and being late for his suppertime haggis.

Even today, many golfers suffer that shepherd’s plight, having difficulty explaining to outsiders the true significance of the game. Non-golfers often view golfers as a strange breed of masochists—trudging around hilly fields, carrying heavy golf bags on their backs, riding in funny looking vehicles, whacking balls, and cursing when their shots go astray. At least the professional golfers they occasionally see on television have a bit more credibility, because they are paid for their efforts.

What many do not know is that most pros play the game for the same reasons that amateurs do—they love the game! Touring pro, Hubert Green, has said he would rather practice than play—and they do not offer prize money for practice. Ben Hogan said in his book that he could not wait for the sun to come up each day so he could get to the practice tee. And Arnold Palmer has exalted how thrilling it was to get on the course to break in a new pair of golf shoes! After five decades of competition, long after he was regularly winning tournaments and the cash window was closed, old age had to drag Sam Snead out of competition. Like our Scottish shepherd, these men obviously played for reasons than ran deeper than money alone. Moreover, the “fresh air-sunshine-beautiful scenery-companionship” theory of why people play golf is an incomplete explanation. There is a principle of psychology that recognizes that people engage in activities they are good at, but, paradoxically, golf attracts people of all degrees of skill.

Thus, psychology might offer some answers for golfers’ persistence for the game, but we are seeking reasons that are more satisfying—rising into the rarified airs of the philosophical and somewhat spiritual realms of this great game. Since most serious golfers are homespun philosophers anyway—especially at the 19^th hole—the following discourse should not prove alien.

This leads to the central point: People play golf because it helps them find meaning in their lives. Golf continually affirms them as suffering, struggling, striving humans, who are pulled back to the golf course time after time in efforts to complete themselves as human beings. Through the playing of golf one can feel—like viewing a dramatic movie or play—what it is to be an active, participating person in the game of life in general. A round of golf is like life in miniature, condensed into eighteen holes, during which one will run the gamut of difficult, life-like experiences, with many opportunities for each golfer to “test one’s self by fire.” Though all sports offer these dimensions, it is reasoned that golf does it best.

In this essay, we will look at five areas covering our discussion: Simplicity, Rules, Etiquette, Difficulty, and Suffering. When one plays a round of golf these concepts combine into a complete physical/mental/social/spiritual experience, which each player subconsciously interprets as meaningful, even when the results are not pleasant. Non-golfers are unaware of this experience, and most golfers are not conscious of it, so there is always the mystery of the game hovering over both sides. However, the 19^th hole usually alleviates the resultant ambiguity.

SIMPLICITY

Golf is a simple game—USGA rules notwithstanding! You take a club—ill designed for the task, according to Winston Churchill—and hit the ball into the hole in as few strokes as possible. You need no other players, officials, or observers: just a club, a ball, and a piece of ground. This simplicity minimizes outside distractions and excuses, forcing the player to focus inwardly on one’s thoughts, feelings, and expectations. If our golfer misses a one-foot putt, it’s hard to blame any outside forces—though some try, which is a special form of denial.

In games such as baseball and football, the player’s attention is constantly directed outward onto other people and objects: there are opponents to beat, officials to argue with, fans to please, managers to impress, and moving balls to handle. Players can easily excuse their poor performance as being caused by things beyond their control. Such excuses as “He’s throwing spitters!”, “That umpire is blind!”, “Ref, that guy was holding!”, “He missed the tag!” are all soothing excuses to players trying to escape individual responsibility by trying to blame others for their poor performances. Bad backs, not feeling well, rotten luck, bad weather, and out-dated clubs are standard excuses also. Nevertheless, the game makes such excuses difficult to justify, because the game’s simplicity offers little rationale for self-deception. A baseball player, who watches a called third strike with the bases loaded, can blame the umpire for missing a close call, but who is Tiger Woods going to blame for a missed two-foot putt to blow the U.S. Open? Simplicity forces the realization that players cause their own failures, leading to struggling and suffering. Thus, golf “offers” a unique opportunity for wrestling with one’s own psyche.

Critics might say that we have no justification for calling golf a simple game when it has the most extensive body of literature of any game. Just look at today’s golf magazines and instructional books, with their countless, differing theories and opinions on the complexities of swing mechanics. Indeed, when physicists analyze the golf swing scientifically, it is shown that the combination of golf shaft flexibility, club head design, ball cover and dimple design, impact dynamics, tempo and timing, among a myriad of other factors, does make the game appear complicated. For example, recent discoveries about sub-atomic particles make for more complexity that we used to know, but even with ignorance of these realities, scientists still invented the atom bomb years ago! So, even if golf does have its complexities, it can be managed by emphasizing those simple factors that matter the most.

There are golfers whose heads are so full of these distracting complexities that they suffer from “paralysis by analysis,” and the pro instructor will usually try to get the student to focus on just a few things that are manageable. From this we can see that the perceived complexity of the game is a reflection of the complicated perceptions and thought processes of the individual’s mind.

RULES

In the beginning, the rules were simpler: put the ball on a pinch of sand, hit it, and do not touch or pick it up until it is in the hole. Such strict rules once made golf a more difficult game than it is today, because it made more demands on the player. This is what some golf purists would have us return to today, but this would not be popular and would hurt participation in the game. In recent years, many exceptions and new rules have been added, with specific drops, relief from casual water, and other compensations, which allow some limited touching of the ball between the tee and the hole.

However, despite this trend of liberalization, golf’s rules still present a firm challenge. First, they are difficult to read and understand. Even many pros do not understand them as thoroughly as they should, so they occasionally have to get help from rules officials during their rounds. But most of the time the golfers are their own referees, with no one checking up on them, the honor system being in full force. If the golfer hits it in the woods, out of the sight of other players, and moves the ball to a better spot, no one will ever know. So each player must decide in such situations whether to be a person of honor or not. The behavior that players follow regarding the rules will reflect what kind of persons they are. Whatever reputation one develops will quickly be known to all concerned.

ETIQUETTE

Golfing etiquette extends the player into the social world of other golfing companions, usually in a foursome, with all players struggling and equally stressed by this difficult game—all doomed to fall short of their golfing hopes and dreams. Despite this, they are expected to maintain a high level of courtesy and decorum at all times—often when they would rather let the beast in them rage when their game goes astray. Woe be it to the golfer who loses control or cheats on his companions. All will know that there’s a long way to go for that golfer to become a better person, and we will not be far off the mark if we conclude that similar behavior will likely follow in other areas of life when the “heat is on.” Conversely, the golfer who feels like berating an inept caddy or boorish partner, but restrains himself and does not do so publicly because of the code of etiquette, is resolving an internal struggle within, which strengths character. In effect, golfers will then have suffered, endured, and transcended the inner pain of their psychic worlds, making golf a game of personal self-improvement, giving it tremendous meaning to the player.

DIFFICULTY

The intrinsic difficulty of executing a good shot—where the clubface being open or closed just a few degrees at impact can cause a huge error down the fairway—making perfection impossible. That supreme technician, Ben Hogan, said that only one or two shots per round came off exactly as planned, making most golf shots near misses at best. Thus, it’s easy to see that we have a forceful dilemma: golf asks for a perfection which is not possible—but most golfers expect it of themselves anyway, guaranteeing ongoing frustration and anguish. This extreme difficulty of making excellent shots is a constant test of one’s inner strength, and golfers show this inner mettle to themselves and others by the way they handle the struggle. Players must deal with varying degrees of failure on every shot, struggling continuously. I recall a friend who complained vigorously after his first hole-in-one, “But I hit it on the toe of the club!” he yelled. Though the result of his swing was perfect, his swing was not, so he could not fully enjoy what he had accomplished. Then, years later, when we were playing together, he made his fourth hole-in-one, and was quite satisfied when he said, “I hit that one perfect!”

Though this is an unusual example, it shows that one can choose any attitude toward the game, and this is part of the challenge.

SUFFERING

As we have seen, golfers are going to suffer. They are playing a simple but exacting game, showing all how they function under stress. Golfers have to constantly test themselves against strict rules and behave in formal, prescribed manners. Under these conditions, a certain degree of mental anguish is inevitable.

In his book, Man’s Search For Meaning, psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, asserts that we all have one ultimate freedom that cannot be taken away: to choose our attitude in any situation, no matter how desperate. The attitudes we choose while in our individual states of anguish with our golf games, will determine the degree of meaning the game has for us. Like few other sports, golf offers the player many situations in which to suffer—with total freedom to choose one’s attitude in response. It is this opportunity to succeed or fail in choosing the proper attitude in each challenging situation that makes the game so compelling. If golfers choose growth-promoting attitudes, and struggle with their shots as best as possible, and are able to “forgive” themselves for not being perfect, they will then judge themselves as responsible sports participants. This constant struggle to seek the proper attitude, while still enjoying the game, is what repeatedly pulls the golfers back to the course. Selecting a good, clear positive attitude helps one rise above the suffering and become a better golfer-person.

As a added bonus, this examination of suffering helps us to understand that particular form of stress seen in serious competitions with the pros and amateurs: the “yips.” For those familiar with certain psychological principles, the yips are seen as mild phobias, which are learned fear- responses to those situations it golf where failure was traumatic. Usually the yips occur because of missing too many shiort putts in serious competitions, when the golfer believes there’s no way one should miss such putts. This pressure usually arises in individuals driven to perfection in their golf games, which, paradoxically, is the reason they tend to be golfers in the first place! These yips are nervous afflictions, which cause muscular twitches and spasms, rendering it difficult to deliver a smooth, accurate stroke on a short putt. Imagine the anguish and turmoil in those pro golfers who have allowed the yips to drive them from the tour. Tommy Armour has spoken of the terrors of short putts placing greater pressure on his nervous system than did the rigors of wartime combat. Moreover, what is not generally known, the immortal Bobby Jones quit serious tournament competition at age 28 because he became afflicted with the yips and other nervous afflictions related to golf. During the later years of his golfing life, Ben Hogan was a pitiful sight to his golfing competitors as he jabbed at short putts in competitive situations.

In his later golfing life, Sam Snead became afflicted with the yips, or at least his putting prowess tumbled into such despair that he began putting the ball from beneath his legs, croquet style. Later, that method was outlawed by the USGA, so he changed again and began putting “sidesaddle,” with the ball off to his right side while he faced the hole directly. This method worked for him, and he was able to play very good golf through his sixties. I have attended golf tournaments and looked Sam Snead in the eye, and was impressed with his determined look, yips or no yips! Snead was not going to let his nerves stop him. He accepted the challenge of the yips, changed his style of putting to one that made him more comfortable, thus rising above his old, dysfunctional style of putting. I have known many people like that, so never bet against them. If they can’t beat you they’ll probably outlast you!

As an aside, there is a therapeutic technique that can cure the yips and other phobias; it is called systematic desensitization, and is almost 100% effective. Counselors and psychologists are well versed in this process, and just a few sessions will do the job.

Therefore, the human growth that golf promotes by the individual handling suffering explains one of the challenges of golf. We now see why Ben Hogan climbed out of his near-deathbed just months after his terrible auto accident, and climbed his way back to the top of the tour in the Los Angeles Open of 1950. He went on to even greater success the next few years, despite significant physical challenges.

Beginning golfers soon learn they will experience both joy and suffering in their golfing lives, but they also learn howkpoorly equipped that are able to handle this difficult game. So, they either cope with it or quit. Those who persist develop internal strengths that flow into all aspects of their lives.

SUMMARY

All non-golfers reading this are either yawning or are puzzled. Many may think I’m making a lot over very little, but my experience over 60 years of golfing has convinced me that those who enjoy the game the most are those who have dealt with these issues, placing their golfing lives into better perspective.

Happy golfing!

THE MEANING OF SUFFERING FOR MODERN PEOPLE

Posted on December 28, 2014 by

Joe Wilkins

Why do good people suffer? This is a universal question over which great philosophers and religious leaders have pondered since humankind developed consciousness. Past societies have attempted to explain suffering primarily through their religious beliefs by searching for explanations as to why their God (or Gods) has imposed this earthly burden on them. A primary reason they have developed is that if you do bad things then God will punish you. This explanation appeals to most people’s sense of justice.

The problem arises when we try to explain the suffering endured by good people—especially when there seems to be no good reason why they should be so punished. Everyone knows of some poor soul who has lived an exemplary life, doing the best possible, when unexpectedly some terrible calamity hits. Conversely, history is full of some nasty people who seem to coast through life with few problems and minimal suffering—and we wonder where the justice in all this is.

Over my career I have worked with some of the most unfortunate, suffering people in our society: the mentally ill, addicts, alcoholics, paralyzed people, the blind, the deaf, birth defective adults, disease infected folks, etc. Moreover, most of these people did nothing to deserve these fates. The suffering they endured seemed to have fallen on them in an arbitrary fashion, leading others to ponder that there, but for the grace of God, goes me!

People who believe in God, or a higher power, typically have difficulty understanding why their God would allow such things to happen. Those who have a deep, intimate relationship with God seem best able to compensate, but even some of them struggle at times. The arbitrariness of the suffering is most difficult to endure, and it implies that God is withdrawn from the human condition on Earth, and allows the suffering to occur randomly, according to his will. Most people handle it by simply not thinking about it, or accepting such bromides as “It’s God’s will and we cannot possibly hope to understand; we must accept his will.”

This satisfies many people at a conscious level, but deep in their inner feelings, they think it is an incomplete answer. One woman, who lost her beloved husband at a young age to a heart attack, leaving her alone to raise three young children, became severely depressed and overcome with her burdens. She began drinking to relieve her misery, became an alcoholic, and dropped deeper into her suffering. After many treatment experiences, she finally achieved lasting sobriety, and went to a preacher and asked why she was being punished so. The minister told her to have faith in God, that God had a plan for her, and things would get better. Then, years later, when things had not gotten better, she decided in her naive way, that her minister had not known his Bible sufficiently. Thinking the answer to suffering had to be in the Bible somewhere, she began studying it thoroughly, looking for the answer that would relieve her pain. She loved God, so she needed to get an answer to keep her faith. And since the Old Testament’s Book of Job specifically deals with the issue of suffering, she concentrated most of her efforts there. Later, she came back to me for more counseling.

“But it was an awful journey,” she said. “When I finished with my study, I felt worse than when I started.”

“Why was that?” I asked. Not being a Bible scholar, I very interested to find out where her studies had led her.

“Well, Job was a very good man—a perfect man in the eyes of God. He was the best man on Earth. God was especially pleased with Job because he did all that God expected of him. So, for his reward, God blessed him with a wonderful life– kind of heaven on Earth. That’s what I had before my husband died.

“So Job had it made!” I added.

Her eyes narrowed at me, critically. I didn’t know whether she was angry at me or God.

“Not for long. Soon God caused Job to endure the most horrible suffering you could imagine. Compared to him my life’s been a stroll in the park. Want to know why?”

“He was punishing Job for his sins?” I answered blindly.

“No… God had a bet with the Devil. Now fancy that! God and the devil were engaged in a power struggle as to who would reign supreme over us poor souls down here on Earth. God was claiming how wonderful a man Job was, as evidenced by the fact that he went to great lengths to please God. And in return, God blessed Job with a rich, worldly life.” She paused a while, then continued, “Then the devil pipes up, saying all this didn’t prove anything, because Job, of course, would keep on pleasing God as long as he was being rewarded. But just go ahead and throw some pain and suffering on him, and see how quick he would swing over to the Devil’s point of view.”

None of this was totally new to me, because I had studied the Book of Job in a literature course, when it was presented as a great work of art, but the suffering aspects of it were not emphasized. “So God agrees to make Job suffer to prove his point to the Devil, but Job remained true to God through all his suffering. If you’ll pardon the expression, that’s a hell of a note!”

“Absolutely!” she countered. “That God would do something like that—make Job suffer so, just to prove a point to an evil being. It made me wonder about God.”

“Well…” I started.

She butted in quickly, “Now don’t you go defending him. The way I see it, if you take the Bible literally, like some folks do—and I used to—then God’s playing games with us. But I don’t like the idea of a God who’s so arbitrary and possessive, so I decided to start taking the Bible with a large grain of salt. It’s a good book, but it’s not the only book! So I quit looking for the answer to my suffering in the Bible or from preachers. I’ll find my answer somewhere, somehow, some day…”

This session was very disturbing to me, being a dedicated Christian. Never having had to endure the kind of suffering she had, I had always endured my suffering stoically—which suited my personality—and eventually things would get better.

I never saw this client again, but she was the one who started me thinking about suffering in depth.

Certainly, suffering is a central theme in the Jewish and Christian religions, as well as all the other major religions. However, I have not experienced many clients who got complete psychological relief through their religious beliefs. It always seemed that they needed some rational foundation that could support their beliefs. Trying to merge these two factors into some cohesive system that was easily understandable became a major interest to me as I pursued my counseling career.

An exception to this client were those who embraced their religion so thoroughly that reasonable alternatives were unavailable to them. Many times they were psychologically so obsessed with their religious beliefs and practices that it consumed their thinking and feeling processes so completely that they did not seem to have time to think about their suffering. I used to classify this process as the psychological defense mechanism of denial, but I have since concluded it is more complicated than that. In effect, they “buried” the suffering so deeply within themselves, and lived on the “highs” they got from their religious zeal. However, often this religious “insulation” would wear thin, and some would drop back into depression, addictive behavior, or other mental difficulties.

Soon I began to think that I needed to offer something more to my clients—at least to give them a sense of hope. Some of my colleagues criticized me for taking too much responsibility for my clients’ feelings. In a sense they were right, but being young and determined, I continued searching for the answer.

Then, one day, while discussing this problem of suffering with a colleague, she suggested that I read Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search For Meaning. She said that Frankl was a survivor of a holocaust concentration camp, and if anyone knew anything about suffering it was him.

Encouraged, I obtained his book and read it. I quickly realized this was one of the most important books of the twentieth century. In my view, Frankl has updated all that was previously known about suffering, and his philosophy most nearly reflects modern man’s struggle with it. And what I liked best about it was that it was a view from the bottom up, in that he had endured and been immersed in unimaginable suffering, the likes of which the rest of mankind were completely unaware, that is the hell-on-earth suffering that occurred in the Nazi concentration camps. To reinforce this, an older counseling colleague of mine, was a World War II army veteran, and he was in one of the units that first opened and entered one of the concentration camps. He said it was a defining moment of his life—worse than the combat in which he had been engaged. It was something that would haunt him forever. He was a strong advocate of Frankl’s views and encouraged me in my efforts.

Further reinforcing my efforts was the fact that Frankl was a well educated physician and psychiatrist, so it was obvious he had the ability to put the suffering question into terms that were relevant to other professionals seeking answers.

Frankl says that suffering is inevitable, that people are going to suffer in varying degrees throughout their lives. The suffering comes from God (for those who believe in God), in that He has “programmed” it into the natural laws that govern the Universe which He created. This is much like the philosophies of John Locke and Isaac Newton, in that they imagined that the Universe was like a clock, which God “wound up,” is letting it run according to certain natural laws, and He is not interfering with its operation. If one does not believe in God, that the Universe came into existence without supernatural help, then just believing in the order of the natural laws themselves is all one can do.

In any event, these natural laws govern our lives, but they sometimes “catch” innocent, good people into suffering that does not make sense. For example, if little Johnny slips and falls from the top of a tall tree, the natural law of gravity dictates that he will fall to earth, and flesh and bone will be damaged. Johnny, being a good little boy, doesn’t “deserve” this, but he will suffer nonetheless. In this sense, the law of gravity is very democratic, and applies to good and bad people alike.

All this does not explain why God has created a Universe where such suffering can exist, when an all-powerful God could have just as easily created a Universe without pain and suffering. A complete answer to this paradox is unknowable to us at this time, thus we are forced to accept God’s creation as we find it—warts and all. As one client remarked to me, “When I die and go to Heaven, I’m going to button-hole God on a lot of loose threads He left hanging all over the place. I want some straight answers, and I ain’t letting Him off easy, either!”

Thus, if suffering is inevitable, two questions arise: What’s the meaning of suffering? And, What can we do about it?

Frankl say we must endure our suffering—we have no other choice, anyway. However, he points out that the attitude we hold as we face our suffering, and struggle with it, is the critical issue for all of us. If we face the downfalls of our lives with a whiney, “why me” attitude, then the suffering will weaken us, perhaps eventually consuming us. This will further promote negative thought patterns, leading to depression and despair, making one less able to cope with later, unfortunate incidents, deepening our depressive tendencies in an ever-increasing downward spiral.

But if we stand up to our suffering with as much pride and dignity as we can muster, accepting and struggling with it as best we can, we will have the potential to transcend it and become stronger. We can then maintain a survivor’s mode in our inner minds. In this sense suffering then becomes a teacher, and to a lesser degree, a friend, by making us stronger and more capable of coping. People who have been through suffering, and survived by using their inner psychological resources, will know that it will be easier to endure such suffering in the future.

Frankl tells about his fellow Jews in the concentration camps, being herded into the gas chambers to die. They knew what lay ahead, and there was nothing they could do about it. This was the end, the cruelest coup de grace of life! Their lives would soon be over in the most demeaning manner possible: killed by evil people who had lost all concept of what it meant to be human.

Then, Frankl noticed a strange phenomenon. Here were these poor souls facing premature, cruel deaths, with all dignity stripped from them. All their choices were gone and there was nothing they could do about it. Then, miracously, he noticed he was wrong: there was one bit of dignity left, something that no one could take from them.

God had left one choice open to all humans, one that even God would not interfere with: the freedon to choose one’s own attitude toward one’s own death. As each person marched into the gas chambers, they held their heads high, indicating they were in control of their attitude–and they were going to die with dignity and with the attitude of their choosing. This happened almost without exception as he watched thousands die.

In my counseling career I have watched clients face certain death in nursing homes and other situations, and they too, without exception, chose to maintain a positive attitude toward their own deaths. Some were religious and some not. Even the most undesirable of people, murderers in their final hours before their executions, most often choose to die with calmness and dignity, according to reports.

Where does this leave us? Sure, most people die with dignity, we might say, but what other choice do they have? They are going to die anyway, so they might as well go out dignified. They could make their exits kicking, cursing, and screaming, but what is the point of that sort of behavior at a time like that?

My contention is that Frankl has established that we have only one absolute freedom regarding suffering: to choose our attitude about it. Further we possess this freedom our entire lives, and the scorecard of our existence hinges on the summation of which attitudes we most consistently choose.

This translates down to the following scenario: Use our intelligence to avoid all the suffering we can, but when it eventually hits us, do not whine about our misfortune. Endure and overcome it as best we can, and try to learn something from it. If we are able to learn lessons from the suffering, when we emerge from the darkness, we will be stronger than before, because we will be better able to endure and avoid it when it faces us again. This will then produce feelings of strength within, elevating self-esteem. In effect, we are then more responsible to ourselves in a challenging world, building a suit of psychic armor around us.

So strongly do I believe in this process that I often did not overly protect my children from many daily sufferings that confronted them. While my wife and I did not let circumstances overwhelm them with severe suffering, if it was something we thought they could face and struggle through without much parental intervention, we would supervise their efforts, praise their efforts, and help them learn something in the process.

Make no mistake, children want to avoid all the suffering they can, often trying to get Mom and Dad to do it for them, or to bail them out of their misery. Good parents guide them through it, encouraging the children do those things that they can reasonably do for themselves, while poor parents either ignore their children’s’ needs, or rush in and rescue them all the time. This usually results in children who enter adulthood not knowing how to cope with the suffering that will eventually confront them. And these ill-prepared adults are very prone to seek quick fixes through alcohol, drugs, and other forms of escapism that have developed to escape pain and suffering in our quick-fix societies.

Let us look at a practical example of how all this prevails in our everyday lives. First, I will give you a visual image as to how this works, and then show a specific example how a client used it to work himself out of his anguish and suffering. And every client of mine, who re-oriented themselves in the following manner, reported that it was helpful. Consider the following graphic:

POSITION A , WHERE AN INDIVIDUAL IS IN PAIN AND SUFFERING AND DESPERATELY WANTS RELIEF

(Let’s use an example where the person is very overweight, to the extent it is affecting health, self image, socialization, and job options. The individual must face the following:)

FACTORS THAT HAVE TO BE ADDRESSED AND ACTED UPON TO LOSE THE WEIGHT AND TO GET IN GOOD PHYSICAL CONDITION

(This can be viewed as a “swamp” that must be crossed to get to the “other side” where the desired goals lie. In this case the factors that must be addressed are: 1) engage in a proven weight-loss program 2) give up old habits of eating 3) increase exercise levels 4) give up the psychological reinforcers that support obesity

POSITION B, THE PLACE WHERE THE PERSON WANTS TO BE: THE GOAL

(To get here the person has to “cross” or wade through the “swamp.” The goal demands that the factors above be addressed and accomplished. To achieve them will be difficult and painful, meaning lifestyle changes, new thinking, physical effort, etc. They will require much work.

As we can see, the “swamp” is an obstacle course between the desire and the goal. The moment a person sets a goal to accomplish a wish or desire, there are certain obstacles to be handled to accomplish the goal. Obstacles in the “swamp” can be emotional, educational, physical, social—anything. But they all require taking risks, and work to overcome them to accomplish the goals. The person has to wade into the swamp, deal with the obstacles, eventually coming out on the other side where the goal is located. Obstacles always require work, and humans are quite clever in devising ways to avoid work. In the above example, many people will try to use the fad-diet of the moment to circumvent the obstacle course to lose weight without much effort. I call this making an “end run” rather than “bursting through” the center of the line.

Suffering people often make non-productive, feeble attempts to stop their suffering. Their attempts may be constructive or not, but eventually lead them to a crossroads where they will be faced with a choice between 1) avoidance, 2) doing nothing, or 3) struggling. If they choose to struggle, then the suffering becomes the fuel for their engine, impelling them to do something constructive. If they choose to do nothing they remain in a chronic state of suffering—sometimes for their entire lives. Many try to avoid what the suffering demands of them by trying to achieve the goal without going through the obstacle course. Examples of this are the alcoholic who tries to stay sober through will power alone and not attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, or getting a college degree by paying money to a diploma-mill college, or getting through a course of study by cheating rather than studying and burning the midnight oil.

But if the person accepts the challenge of the suffering, they automatically do what they must to get through the obstacle course. And if they get through the obstacle course a psychological “miracle” usually occurs, which is an increase in psychological and spiritual strength. Persons who have faced difficulty, and dealt with it in the manner I am proposing, will find that the struggle has strengthened them, because they now know they are able to handle such adversity. Confidence in this and similar matters increases physical and mental attributes tremendously. And it is easy to see that those people who make an everyday practice of this type of behavior are usually confident and accomplished persons. Conversely, those who constantly avoid the demands of the obstacles, become weak, unhappy people, and rarely accomplish their goals.

Next, it is clear that the particular kind of suffering dictates the type of obstacle course that must be crossed. I once had a middle-aged client who had never learned to read, and he had spent his entire life doing nothing about it. He had developed several methods to compensate, usually relying on other people to help him when needed. He had avoided learning earlier because he was fearful people would then know he could not read, and would think less of him. I set him up in an evening reading class, which to him was the fearful obstacle course, but he ultimately decided not to attend, and remained in his state of suffering. I saw him occasionally at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, where he nervously tried to avoid me. The look in his eyes told all: he knew he should confront the suffering (fear of going to school) and learn to read, but he did not do it because the anticipated fear of school was a greater state of suffering than was his chronic state of despair of not being able to read. So he stayed mired in his misery. Most people who remain in a chronic state of suffering are emotional cowards, as was this client.

In summary, it is clear that we humans are condemned to suffer as we go through life. Some of the suffering is the consequence of our own behavior, and some is not. However our lives are judged by how we handle the suffering and our attitudes toward it. Going a bit further, Frankl said that one’s mission in life is to do good deeds; experience the positive values of art, beauty, and love; and to be responsible to our suffering. Suffering descends upon us when we do not do good deeds and cannot experience the positive values of life.

We must be responsible to our suffering and get the meaning back into our lives.

POSTSCRIPT: Years ago Viktor Frankl came to Atlanta, Georgia and gave a lecture to the public on his concepts about suffering and other therapeutic matters. I attended that lecture and recorded his words on tape. My secretary transcribed them, and I shall put them on this web site in the future for interested readers.

A SOOTHING CHRISTMAS PUN

Posted on December 22, 2014 by

Once there were two international chess masters who challenged each other to an all or nothing chess match, with $100,000 going to the winner. Like most chess masters they were big classical music fans, so they agreed to have music playing while they competed.

After much discussion, they agreed to hire a lyre musician to strum some soothing chords while they competed. However, after an extensive search they could find no lyre musicians. They soon realized that the lyre was an ancient instrument, not much in use in these modern days. But they noted that the lyre was similar to the modern harp, though somewhat smaller. After much discussion, they agreed to hire a harp musician, since the two instruments were somewhat similar. Thus, the harpist was hired in substitution.

On the appointed day, they began their match before a small, elite group of chess aficionados, with all listen to the soothing strains of the beautiful, harp music. Midway through the match, the two competitors were so impressed with the harpist’s playing, that they stopped their match and asked the audience to give the harpist a modest round of appreciative applause.

An observer in the audience noticed how much the chess competitors were enamored with the harpist. He quietly whispered to his companion, “How wonderful, chess nuts boasting over a token lyre!”

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL MY READERS

TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS?

Posted on December 3, 2014 by

THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS?

Author: I. M. Anonymous

12 /14/2014 My Dearest Love: How can I ever express my undying love in reciprocation for your exquisite gift on this our first Christmas apart. You have surpassed the gift of Life itself with the unique selection of the most unusual expression of our mutual love: a partridge in a pear tree!

12/15/2014 My Dearest: You are simply too much! I can hardly believe my good fortune in having such a thoughtful spouse. Imagine—two turtle doves! They compliment the partridge so well.

12/16/2014 Dearest: Ah, how beautiful. Three French hens. What can I say? They are exquisite and beautiful. The neighborhood children love them, but they have to be aware of the cats.

12/17/2014 Lover: Thanks for the four calling birds. Imagine my surprise when I arrived home and saw them on the doorstep. You’re too sweet—really! I spent the whole night building cages for all these birds in the backyard… Gotta get some sleep.

12/18/2015 Honey: Wow! Five gold rings! Now you’re getting with it; a great change of pace. To be perfectly honest, I was afraid the postman would be bringing another package with air holes in it. Ha! Ha! Anyhow, the gold rings are very nice and will come in quite handy should gold continue to rise in value and I have to visit the pawnshop after our usual Christmas spending splurge.

12/19/2014 Dear Mabel: Honey, I know you mean well—and don’t think I don’t appreciate you thinking of me through this gift-giving—but what’s with these six geese a-laying! Babe, we don’t need anymore eggs! And the geese won’t fit in the cages I built for the other birds, so they’re strutting all around the house, messing and laying more eggs everywhere. By the way, one took a swim in the toilet, got stuck, and the kids tried to get him out by flushing the toilet, which clogged it up, so I had to call a plumber in the middle of the night. He said he’d give me a Christmas discount, so his services only cost $999.99. Also, the neighbors are starting to complain about all the bird noise. The animal control people have been by twice and gave me a warning ticket.

12/20/2014 Mabel: Enough already! Seven swans a-swimming? I haven’t gotten the other birds’ situation resolved and in come these huge, nasty birds. Do you expect me to build a pond for them out back? Meanwhile they’re in the house, fighting with the geese, and there’s feathers and bird poop all over the place. Any more birds and you and I have had it!

12/21/2014 Ah Love: Thanks until the end of time for stopping the birds! I couldn’t have taken it any more. Now, the eight maids a-milking are very nice—and very pretty too. And one keeps making passes at me, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to remember my marriage vows. I keep thinking about harems. But pray tell, dear love of mine, where do I keep all those milk cows? I’ve got two in the front yard and six in the back. I tried to sell them first, but couldn’t find a buyer. Then I tried to give them away, but who wants a cow? Finally, I had to have our property fenced in at a cost of $12,398.99. The health department called and said they’d be here tomorrow.

12/22/2014 Woman: Nine ladies dancing? Nice idea—if you own a dance studio. Where, pray tell, can they dance around here without stepping in something. Of, course, they all needed dance partners, a dance hall, and a band for music, at $1500.00 per night. Babe, I’m beginning to doubt if you really love me after all.

12/23/2014 Dear Hopeless Stranger: I can’t believe it! Ten lords a-leaping! What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you send them with the nine ladies a-dancing yesterday, before I shelled out all that dough for escorts and the band? They all refused to stay in this messy house, so I had to put them up in the Ritz Carlton. And believe me, I’m not sure about those lords a-leaping. What kind of guys are they, anyway? What’s going on in that brain of yours? Have you become a man-hater? Do you hate me? If so, the feeling is mutual. Things got so out of control around here I had to call the vice squad, and they finally hauled them all off to the funny farm. I had to do some powerful talking to keep them from taking me too.

12/24/2014 Alien Woman: It’s Christman Eve, a time for serenity and reflection, and what do I get today: eleven, loud pipers piping. Not one Christmas Carol did they play—only Amazing Grace, over and over and over again! I finally got so exhausted with them that I filled all their fifes up with soapy water when they were on break, and you should have seen all the bubbles. It looked like Lawrence Welk’s bubble machine was out of control!

12/25/2014 Dear Ex-Wife: Finally, it’s over! With the twelve drummers drumming, in concert with the pipers piping, I could take it no more. You’ll receive the divorce papers soon. My lawyer says I have a foolproof case: I’ll keep the kids, and you’ll get the house and all this menagerie you’ve sent me. The only thing further I have to say is, “Sorry, Jesus…”

RACISM AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY

Posted on December 1, 2014 by

RACISM and CULTURAL DIVERSITY

Joe Wilkins

It is with some trepidation that I post this essay, because it deals with racism and cultural issues rampant in America, about which many of our citizens have strong feelings. In addition, there are many people who take various, strong positions on these issues, simply because they were raised to adulthood under different influences, and have had neither the time nor inclination to investigate and seek the facts. I hope this discourse will prod people to think in ways that can lead to enlightened pathways into the future.

The central thesis of this essay is that many cultural issues are being labeled as racial ones, and it is becoming difficult to differentiate.

In the 9/8/14 edition of the Atlanta Journal Constitution there is a front-page article about how the Atlantic Hawks basketball team owner sent out an e-mail two years ago, that is now being considered racist in tone, implying that the owner, Bruce Levenson, is a racist.

When one reads his e-mail it is clear that it does not meet the criteria for a racist missive. However, he has been dramatically traumatized by the public and media reaction, calling for his dismissal, prompting him to sell his interest in the team. It is apparent he would prefer not to do this, but the pressure to do so is enormous.

Before getting into the specifics of the e-mail it is useful to evaluate and define both race and racism.

For our purposes, we will use the Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary. The reader may use other definition resources, but in this matter, it is useful to use this one, because it is perhaps the best representation of what the greatest minds in language analysis have to say. The racism issue demands clear, logical, rational thinking. Anything else will most likely compound the problem, with which humankind has continually struggled.

First, the word “race” has a complex definition. Race denotes 1) “a group of people related by common descent or heredity; 2) a population so related; 3) Anthropology: a) any of the traditional divisions of humankind, the commonest being the Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negro, characterized by supposedly distinctive and universal physical characteristics: no longer in technical use. It is b)“an arbitrary classification of modern humans sometimes, especially formerly, based on any or a combination of various physical characteristics, as skin color, facial form, or eye shape, and now frequently based on genetic markers as blood groups. c) a human population partially isolated reproductively from other populations, who members share a greater degree of physical and genetic similarity with one another than with other humans…” 4) a group of tribes or peoples forming an ethnic stock: the Slavic race. 5) any people united by common history, language, cultural traits, etc.: the Dutch race.

Thus, we can see that race identification is a complex issue. Moreover, before one can cry “racism” we must understand what goes into race. In the early twentieth century in America, African Americans were called “ Negroes” or “colored people,” with “black” or “African American” now being the preferred terms. Many people believed that all people from Africa were the same, sharing the same physical characteristics, mentality, social behavior, cultural values, etc. However, that was not true, because the first African Americans slaves came from a large continent, from many tribes, with many different physical, social, and individual differences. They were conveniently lumped together in the minds of the African and European slave traders, who saw them only as commodities to be bought and sold in the Americas for profit. Their differing skin colors, height, facial features and other physical, mental and social characteristic were often ignored, probably to ease the consciences of the slave traders, and convince themselves that the slaves were all the same, and what they were doing was legal and moral. This was supported by the fact that slavery had been practiced by almost all cultures since humankind’s earliest times. If the early slave traders could “lump” all Africans into one category, then they could treat them all the same, as benefited their purposes.

Complicating this racial classification system even further is the work of molecular evolutionary biologist, Masatoshi Nei, whereby he has developed what he calls “The Neighbor-Joining Method,” which demonstrates that all humankind arose from the Negroid race initially, followed first by the Caucasoids, leading to the Australoids, the Mongoloids, and Amerindoids, in that order. His classification system is currently the latest that science has to offer, but further research will likely prove that even this will likely prove to be too simplistic.

Within Dr. Nei’s findings we find many subtle nuances of race. Representing Caucasoids are the fairer people of Scandinavian and the rest of Northern Europe; the “olive-skinned” people around the Mediterranean; Northern Africans who do not identify themselves as Negroid; people of India, who are Caucasoids, with often very dark skin, but with Caucasoid features. Then there are the Australoids, composed of the Aborigines of Australia and the New Guineans. The Mongoloid people of Asia, Polynesia, and Micronesia have varying degrees of Mongoloid features. Then there are the “racially mixed” people of Asia and Europe, some of whom are descendents of the Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan invaders, as they took liberties with the women they conquered. In addition, there are the Amerindoids–Native Americans, or Indians, as we are used to calling them, who look different from their Asian ancestors. And what about the racial mixing that went on with the Vikings, as they invaded areas all the way down to Turkey, then to Greenland and Iceland? Some Vikings even made it to Middle America and intermixed with Indian tribes from Wisconsin before moving out to the Dakotas.

Can anyone say that there is a “pure race” anywhere? It does not appear so. In fact, all humankind can be genetically traced back to tribes now living in lower Africa.

A professional counselor friend, who had 34 years experience working with disabled clients of all races, recently offered me a new conception of race that helps us take a more accurate view of the race issue. Using skin color only, he offers the following concept:

1 2 3 4 5

Darkest Skin Moderately Dark Lightest Dark White Lightest White

If we view the various peoples on Earth as having these skin colors—with varying degrees of color in between—then we have a continuum of skin color running from 1 to 5. The darkest will be some Africans and Native Australians. At number 2 we have some lighter-skinned people from northern Africa and India. Number 3’s will be Asians, Mediterraneans, Middle Easterners, and Native Americans. Number 4 will be most Europeans and white Americans. Number 5’s are Scandinavians. Of course, we all know it is not as simple as this, because all countries will have variations of skin colors. Additionally, over the centuries there has been extensive racial/skin color inter-breeding–to the point that these prehistoric differences are gradually disappearing. For example, anthropologists estimate that about 70% to 80% of so-called African Americans have some white ancestors–and sometimes Native American forebears. Many Caucasoids have all sorts of “mixes” themselves.

Thus, it is easy to see that this whole racial thing is almost complicated beyond understanding. Yet our modern social mores are inclined to reduce this complexity down to black-white-yellow-red. (One has to wonder where we got that box of crayons!) But, most seriously of all, upon what rationale are some people justified in placing some Negroids at one end of the above continuum and Caucasoids at the other end? In this world, there are many Caucasoids who have darker skin than some Negroids, with all sorts of skin color variations occurring within each category. Where does anyone get the authority to separate one group from another by “drawing a line,” saying that all on the left of the line are “black,” and all on the right are “white.” And where does one draw the line in the first place? Where is the line placed when you pass a law that says Affirmative Action applies to African Americans because they have dark skin. The question then becomes, “How dark do they have to be? Where on the continuum does black stop and white (or other color) begin? Or that Native Americans are entitled to certain benefits because of their race. What about those Wisconsin Indians who inter-bred with Viking explorers and moved to the Dakotas? What color are they?

Thus, we can see that “race” is a scientifically difficult term to use when viewing the diversity of humankind. And it is a fact that about 80% of African Americans now living in America have white genes—if they didn’t have some already before the were enslaved in Africa and brought to America. Confusingly, President Obama is half white, yet he claims to be African American. Does he defer his mother’s Caucasoid genes to that of his Negroid father? Why not the reverse? And Tiger Woods is half southeast Asian on his mother’s side, and Negro, Caucasian and American Indian on his father’s side, and has been known to call himself “Casblanasian!”

An interesting question about all this is why people tend to lump themselves and others into the concrete categories of Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Australoid, and Amerindoid, when we are all various mixtures of many races. This author is of Welsh, Irish and German descent, but heaven only knows what admixtures went to make up those ancestors. The reason we select these concrete categories for ourselves is because in the simpler times of the past people did not know—nor could they comprehend—these divisions of people, and it still suits our needs to cast people into simple categories.

Now that we have slain the “race dragon” and shown how spurious a word it is, let us examine the term “racism” and apply it to today’s situation in America. Our dictionary defines “racism” as: “a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or human achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.” It is “a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination. It often involves hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.”

So let us see what it takes to be a racist. First, we must have evidence that there are different races on which to direct our prejudices. But we have demonstrated that this is shaky ground in these days and times, because the race issue is so muddled. However, many political leaders and others continue to approach this issue as if it were cut and dried. People, like the Klu Klux Klan, affirmative action advocates, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, some congresspersons, and the general public continue to view humans in this fashion. Since they are obviously not scientific thinkers, they live out deceived lives and lump humans into these rigid categories. Also, the people in each category do it to themselves—often for individual psychological benefit—or detriment– to themselves!

Racism needs more than just skin color on which to activate itself. Historically, intelligence differences have been imagined. European whites thought that most Negroid Africans were deficient intellectually, because they were still living a relatively primitive existence, thus they were justified in making them slaves or using them for their own, more “noble,” purposes. Also, they were viewed as culturally deficient, as they had written no great operas, made little scientific progress, or developed “proper” religious systems. However, psychology has now demonstrated that intelligence levels in all races are equally distributed, and any differences are attributed to cultural and educational factors. A Bantu tribe in Africa has the same percentages of high IQ’s as do American citizens.

Also, racism requires hatred or unease with other races. Yet, discomfort or lack of understanding of the cultural differences of other is not hatred; it is usually dislike of different behaviors—therefore, it is a stretch to call it racism. We need another term to describe such behavior; perhaps discomfort with other peoples’ behavior and traditions is the real culprit. Could we all have varying degrees of cultural phobias?

What we are dealing with in America now are the cultural wars going on between the black and white cultures. To be sure, there are other conflicts: married with children vs. unmarried with children; poor vs. the rich; upper class vs. the lower class; the educated vs. the less educated; conservative vs. liberal; the sophisticated vs. the good old boys; eastern establishment vs. the heart of America; congress vs. the president. The list goes on and on.

But this essay was prompted by the Atlanta Hawks situation, which is a microcosm of the larger issue that is inciting Americans today, specifically the black vs. white culture war. And if you don’t believe such a thing is going on, you must have just arrived from the planet Mongo! The reality of this “war” is secondary to the perception of the conflict. However, to explore this further we need to try to separate the facts from opinions.

In his e-mail, Levenson makes the following points about the Atlanta Hawks franchise:

1) Attendance at games is 70% black.

2) The cheerleaders are black.

3 The music is hip-hop.

4) Patronage in the bars it is 90% black.

5) There are few fathers and sons at the games.

6) The after-game concerts are either hip-hop or gospel.

Knowledgeable basketball people that I know and respect, say that Mr. Levenson’s points are true to a large degree. There are other factors also, but these are the most pertinent There are certainly no after- game concerts featuring Bach concertos or country music, catering to people of white northern European extraction. How many black people would attend such concerts? How many white people will frequent a bar where black culture is foremost. (Why do most whites move to the suburbs?) Blacks and whites tend to avoid those social gatherings where they are in the minority, especially bars. Churches in America are among the most segregated institutions, and this is on a voluntary basis.

The after-game concerts are designed to attract attendees, but, culturally speaking, few whites will attend such concerts, simply because that is not their kind of music. However both races would attend outdoor fireworks.

Probably the most important point is the father-son issue. In America today, about seventy percent of young African American boys have no father in the household. While many of the African American males who attend Hawk games do have sons, they do not seem to be bringing them to the games. Historically speaking, a father taking a son to a sporting event is one of the most powerful motivators in engaging a son’s interest in that sport. How many African American fathers do we see taking their sons to golf tournaments, soccer matches, tennis tournaments, swimming meets, etc. For some cultural reasons these fathers are not taking their sons to see the Hawks; and whites, being in the minority, are staying away. Interest in sports among boys and girls usually starts at a young age, influenced by parents and peers, but black children do not seem to be a part of this at Hawks games. Perhaps economics is contributing to this; are Hawks game tickets so expensive that black fathers cannot afford to take their children?

All sports fans know that the NBA is now dominated by American American players, and apparently their affiliated culture has become dominant. Now, there is nothing immoral or wrong about that; it’s just that all concerned need to be open about this and recognize it for what it is. This is also happening in the National Football league. It is for complex social, economic, and cultural reasons why this division has developed, and I do not think that the African American community wants to see it continue to the extreme, for if it did it might increase racial tensions in our country, when our efforts in the past half century have been to successfully integrate our society. One basketball coach calls the NBA the new “plantation,” though a voluntary one—owned by rich white owners. As a counter argument to this trend, suppose the NBA, the NFL, or MLB were dominated by any “race.” What would that accomplish as we struggle to heal the racial issues that have been bequeathed to us by the blindness and avoidance of all those Europeans and Africans who started the slave business and brought it to Americas, and those who nurtured and used it to their own benefit?

Consider the following: Hispanics prefer soccer over other sports in America; African Americans have a strong affinity for basketball and fishing; America’s deer hunters are predominately white; golfers are mostly white, with Asian women becoming more prevalent on the LPGA Tour; Japanese like baseball and golf; most tennis players are white; shuffleboard players are mostly white and live in retirement communities in Florida; the pro bass tour is almost all white; how many black lacrosse players have you seen; ice skaters are white, as are bobsledders, skiers, and other winter sports enthusiasts; college girl volleyball teams are predominantly white. The list goes on and on, but the main point is that different racial groups select sports and other activities to engage in, based on complex cultural, individual, and economic reasons. If you are a black kid in the ghetto, seven feet tall, with excellent athletic ability, guess what sport you will most likely excel in. If you are a strong-armed white kid who can throw a baseball through a fence, I do not think you will pick golf as your main sport. All people select their sports in which to participate or watch based on their talent, opportunities, economics, interests, peer and parental influence, among other subtle factors. Moreover, as we have just seen, different races and groups gravitate to different sports. In America today, African Americans predominate in basketball.

So, what should we make of this, or more specifically what should the Hawks and other NBA teams do if the teams and their fans become predominantly black. Obviously, they must give their fans what they want. That is just good old capitalism. If black fans want black players, hip hop sound, black cheerleaders and other black cultural benefits, that’s what they should get, which would guarantee that most of the fans are going to be black. If Mr. Levenson wants a racially mixed crowd, reflecting the general population in America, then he should compose his team and cheerleaders with 13% blacks, and the rest with whites and others. However, I do not think such a team would be competitive in the NBA, and then no one would come to the games.

Basically, this dispersion of the different races in the different sports is a large social phenomenon, which is beyond anyone’s control. In our land of opportunity, individual choice is still the way we choose. And it looks like black Americans like basketball, so the rest of us need to accept this and factor that into our individual lifestyle equations.

It appears that Mr. Levenson is not a racist, but is simply a man who likes basketball, and was trying to figure out how to get more white people into the games—especially if the black folks are not selling out the games. I will bet that if each game was sold out with all black folks, he would be delighted.

Now, let me digress a little. When I joined the US Air Force in 1955, which was integrated in 1947 by President Truman, the percentage of African Americans on the bases at which I was stationed was about the national average: 10-12% black, and the rest white, Hispanic and Asian. While we worked together, the black airmen chose to socialize together. There was no overt animosity about this, as all considered this their freedom to choose. Some whites and blacks were assigned to room together, without any problems. I had a black roommate for about a year and we got along fine—except we did not socialize together during our free time, with both of us spending our time with those with whom we shared similar culture and interests.

Moreover, culture is the key here—and is the main point of this essay. For example, when I first came into the US Air Force in 1955 I noticed something that was very disconcerting to my white colleagues and me. Many of the African Americans would use the expression “mother fucker” when expressing anger about various things. This was very shocking to a southern boy from Florida, who was raised in a middle class household, where the worse curse word ever heard was an occasional “damn,” and that not very often. The “N” word was never used in my home. African Americans were referred to by their names, or as “negroes,” or “colored people.” So imagine my shock at his new obscenity. It made me seriously evaluate my relationships with my African American colleagues. Alternately, none of the white airmen—from all parts of the country–ever used this expression, and we secretly ridiculed them for using it. It was taboo to whites, and drove a small wedge between the two races. This was a part of their culture in which we could not participate. However, over the years, sadly, certain elements of the white culture have begun the use of this obscenity, which does not speak well for either group.

In his book, Coming Apart, The State of White America, Charles Murray proposes the thesis that America is subdividing into different classes and cultures, primarily based upon the former middle and upper classes incorporating the values and behaviors of the lower classes. Specifically, much of the white American culture is adopting these standards, and now both groups are becoming more alike in thought, word, and deed. Single parent, female- dominated families, with boys having little male influence in the family as they mature, is a prime generator of this division. In response, the whites that cling to their old values flee to the all-white suburbs, while African Americans tend to cling to the inner cities, with many young African American males over-identifying with sports, as opposed to academic achievements. This phenomenon is also occurring in other sports in varying degrees, with the exception of golf, where African Americans are very under represented.

In the past thirty years, Atlanta, Ga. has become a Mecca, for African Americans, giving anecdotal evidence of their desire to live together, showing how much they want to maintain their identity and control, similar to what whites, Asians and Hispanics strive for. All this suggests that the desire of different races wanting to live together is some fantasy concocted by certain progressive thinkers. Most large cities have always had their Chinatowns, Vietnamese communities, Hispanic sections, little Italys, as well as African American sections, and others. It is apparent that each racial group’s first inclinations are to maintain its identity and culture—until many generations have passed and natural integration takes place. However, history has demonstrated that the tendency is for like groups to ban together for as long as they can.

For example, in the 1970’s I met an African American couple who were living in a home in a southeast Atlanta, all white neighborhood. They confessed to me that they were hired by the NAACP to move into a white neighborhood, to “bust it,” so to speak, opening the door for the NAACP to begin the process of converting Atlanta into a primarily black city, with black political control of all aspects of the city. This couple said that, after their stay in Atlanta, they were being sent to Miami to repeat the process. I had no reason to doubt this couple, and what they were initiating has happened. Of course, this was perfectly legal, and only demonstrates how groups want to preserve their uniqueness. But the question is—if the black couple was telling me the truth—why would the NAACP have such a goal if racial inclusiveness was what they wanted. Of course, I accept that they may have overstated the mission of the NAACP for Atlanta, interjecting their own personal desires, but it still illustrates the tendency for most folks to want to live with their own kind. And that is cultural, not racism.

Once I attended a statewide rehabilitation training conference, where the participants were about 70 percent white and 30 percent black. We were all employees of a government agency charged with helping handicapped people go to work. We were thoroughly integrated, in both classroom attendance and sharing rooms at night. On the second day at lunchtime, everyone was eating in the large college cafeteria, sitting at large round tables that seated about ten people. As I left the serving line, I looked for a place to sit, and soon spied an empty seat at a table where all the diners were African American. They were very animated, talking and laughing together. Since I knew these folks, I decided to eat with them and enjoy our togetherness. Asking to join them, and getting polite but reserved permission, I sat down and began to eat. Suddenly it got very quiet and all the animated conversation ceased. Soon the silence got very awkward and I felt like an unwelcomed outsider. I attempted to engage in conversation, but it was clear I did not belong in the social context they had established for themselves. I finished eating and left as soon as possible. It was obvious to me that much of racial separateness was voluntary.

There’s another thing that most of us have noticed, but few talk about. When we look at married couples and those who are intimate among the different races, it appears that people bond with those of similar shades of color and features. An examination of educated, black couples shows they often marry those of similar skin color, certain facial and body features, and other aspects that are sexually attractive to them. And what’s wrong with that? White and Asian folks do the same. It is evident that most people are attracted to those of their own race, but within each race there can be wide variation. A white client of mine, when discussing his attraction to women, said that brunette’s “turned him on” the most, with blondes coming in second, light-skinned African Americans next—but he had no interest whatsoever with light-skinned, red-headed, white women! When I questioned him where those desires came from, he had no explanation, just that he had always had been that way.

Thus it is clear that while race and racism are still realities, the bigger issue we must deal with is the ramifications of the ramped up culture wars.

In recent years, diversity has been promoted as the means to handle America’s increasing cultural problems. With the millions of illegal Mexican immigrants and legal immigrants from all parts of the world, problems in handling the different languages and customs have prompted political correctness attitudes upon the established American public by forcing them to adjust to the new immigrants, as opposed to the immigrants doing the adjusting, as was done in the past. Spanish, French, German and other languages are often on new househol appliance manuals, whereas in the past English was the established language. For example, when one has problems with various consumer products, call-center assistance is usually located in India, where the assistants are often difficult to understand because of their thick accents. The increase in new immigrants is causing adjustment problems for everyone. However, the onus seems to be on Americans to make the needed changes, which many resent, leading to animosity—and sometimes racism—by the ones forced to adjust to the new people.

Good or bad, diversity is upon us. So how are we going to deal with it?

Getting back to the establishment of our government under the US Constitution, America had diversity and cultural problems even then. We had Torys and Whigs, city dwellers, frontiersmen, farmers, tradesmen, speaking the different languages of Europe. The difference was that eventually they had to adapt to English, which had become the established language.

Thus, there evolved a common American way of doing things: speaking and writing English, laws based on English common law, European architecture and business procedures, etc. Before the Constitution was developed, the founding fathers studied Greek, Roman, Viking, Jewish, Christian, and other philosophies and history, in an attempt to form a government that would benefit from all knowledge that mankind had gained up until that time. The Bible presented common ground that glued much of the country together. All of these factors were instrumental in forming a country that became unified around common values.

The exception to this was slavery, which had been introduced into the two American continents two hundred years before, mainly by our aforementioned European and African traders and developers. Thus, slavery was firmly entrenched, and was part of the fabric of the society, despite the fact that most people knew it was wrong. But many people were dependent on the economics of slavery, so it endured until our Civil War. Because of the sociology of slavery, the African American culture was slower to assimilate into the “common ground” than was the rest of the country, which was predominately of white, European descent.

Despite this impetus toward a cohesive country, the genius of the founding fathers was to develop a constitution that allowed all these diverse groups to be able to maintain their individuality and old ways, while also emerging to become a part of the new American system. Thus, a Chinatown was permissible as long as it adhered roughly to the general consensus. And all individual groups were like this. Each state could go its own way as long as it complied with the Constitution.

Therefore, America is a country made up of many different cultures of complex diversity, which are nonetheless recognized and accepted as long as the citizens follow the Constitution and obey the laws. This gives us a nation of wide diversity, continually struggling to become unified, and this diversity is to be tolerated as long as it complements the Constitution. We are a nation of laws and must remain so. But lately we have become too tolerant of lawbreakers, who break down the communion with our nation’s purpose.

How should we deal with all this? A good beginning would be for all sides to be open to discussion about the issues without crying racism. Just because I want to discuss the problems in the black community does not make me a racist. Moreover, if people want to discuss the sins of white America, that is fine. However, all sides need to do their psychological, sociological, and economic research, get the needed facts, then get to the core issues and determine viable positions and solutions. Right now “political correctness” seems to be the catchword that obscures solutions and promotes maintaining dysfunctional diversity. Human nature, being what it is, will continue to flounder along with hits and misses, as we strive for understanding and solutions.

Nevertheless, the racism wars need to end, and we must to get on to finding new solutions and building a country with which we can be even more proud.