Latest NEA Outrage-"Dumbest Report"

I was directed to NETSCAPE for a "report" on the Smartest and Dumbest states.

First thing that struck me was that most of the first third of the states were "Blue" or mainly Liberal-Democratic voting states.

This smelled fishy. Actually, there was a whiff of horse apples.

So I searched and searched, burning out my poor eyeballs to find out what the criteria were for stacking the deck so purely and with such oleagenous joy.

Sure enough, S A T scores were NOT a factor in the deciding of the "smart" and "dumb" students in these states.

Here's an wxact quote from the criteria: " States were graded on a variety of factors based on how they compare to the national average. These included such positive attributes as per-pupil expenditures, public high school graduation rates, average class size, and pupil-teacher ratios. States received negative points for high drop-out rates and physical violence.

Also, there were no private schools included. applied.

The criteria included "class-size-to-teacher-ratio", of course!

Another was "per pupil annual expenditure in dollars"--which is always inflated in those schools which employ three administrators for every instructor--all public "government" schools, of course. Salaries, too, were considered as a corrolary.

This is all teacher union (NEA) stuff.

Students do not receive salaries....

But the actual performance of the students? How much weight was given this? Who knows? Does anyone care? Do you care?

How about the increase in performance and IQ revealed in the testing required by the "No Child Left Behind" funding?

Nope, that was not a consideration.

Massachuesetts was listed at the top of all the states. Iowa, which has ALWAYS been on top in legitimate information-retention schools, was relegated to second tier.

I wish there were some other way to say it.

But this "smart-dumb" survey stinks. It smacks of conspiracy and trashes fair evaluation of student achievement, at best. At worst, it favors deceit.

Given that these "criteria" are obviously and impossibly unquantifiable I judge the report to be ill-intentioned..maybe criminal in nature.

Our chuldren and grandchildren and great grandchildren apparently are prisoners of a pack of slavering, selfserving mindkillers.

Lick My Toes !!!...I'm Enemy Number One !!!!

Just as June begins and schools shut down for the summer, the government (public) schools in my beloved home sttate of Georgia produced two new arguments for private school vouchers, home schooling and the elimination of teachers' unions.

In Greene County, a principal kicked a Marine Iraq war veteran sergeant off a middle schoolcampus before he got a chance to talk to the students who had been corresponding with him and his buddies for eight months...

Even though permission had been sought for the visit and said principal had ignored the written request.

In Carroll County, a Temple school teacher forced a ten year old student to kiss her feet, lick her instep and suck her toes.

Carrol county authorities said there was nothing "criminal" in this, since the female teacher "received no sexual gratification" from the act.

How do they know?

As a matter of fact, who, in the government schools knows ANYTHING ?

This may be the norm for Beverly Hills or Westchester County, N.Y.

But Greensboro and Temple in Georgia?

Makes you wonder if the Associated Press is on the job in the wilds of Kansas and Nebraska !

If a gay citizen walked in and asked to speak on the danger of AIDS / HIV, would the reaction of the Greene County schools be the same as for the Marine?

If the teacher had forced corporal punishment on the ten-year-old, how different would the reaction have been in Carroll County???

Well, in Florida where I lived for 25 years until 2002, the state vice-chairman of the teacher's union (FEA) was a janitor from Lake City.

It's the massive PeeCee Power--- the ideological imperative of the Democrat Party. Its the plantation mythology that also imprisons African American voters. The teachers---and especially the government school administrators-- have a few Skinnerized knee-jerk Axioms:

*- Hate the military

*-Express disdain, if not outright disgust with Christianity and its Holidays

*-Endorse the United Nations without regard for breach of ethical values

*-View patriotism with distaste

*-Choose "the newest, latest" over the Traditional in ALL things

And so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

It reminds me of one of the old Bessie Smith, Leadbelly and Jimmy Rushing Blues Lyrics....

"She wake up in th' mornin'...
With her hair all down in her face....
What the poor fool don' know----
She done rount th' Human Race....

(Chorus)

She a bad-actin woman...
An' she don' mean NO man no good...."

Welcome to the Teachers' Union and Government schols..Our Nations' most dangerous enemies.

The "Told-Ya-So" Game....

Majority leader Bill Frist has already announced he will leave the U.S. Senate when his present term is up.

Reporters and TV talking heads INSIST that he is running for president in 2008.

I think he'd rather go home and operate (actually and literally) on the hearts of Tennesseans in hospitals than to to continue to try to operate on the hearts and souls of U.S. Senators.

I can dig that.

But, here's a notably strage occurrence. The Friday, May 27 morning edition of the LATimes, (hidey-hole suzerainty of socialist Michael Kinsley), carried a DEMAND that the Surgeon-Senator resign from the Senate...supposedly because of his "ineffectiveness" as Republican leader.

This is a setup, of course, so that next year when Frist does not stand for re-election, the LATimes and Kinsley can say:

"WE Baaaaad! Looky whut WEEEE done !!!!"

What horse apples !

The dirty little secret is that the LATimes has lost 10 per cent of its circulation in the past year, according to Editor and Puiblisher.

What blind fools these retro-journalists be !!! Huh ???

What great respect they have for us...the citizens.....

The "Told-Ya-So" Game....

Majority leader Bill Frist has already announced he will leave the U.S. Senate when his present term is up.

Reporters and TV talking heads INSIST that he is running for president in 2008.

I think he'd rather go home and operate (actually and literally) on the hearts of Tennesseans in hospitals than to to continue to try to operate on the hearts and souls of U.S. Senators.

I can dig that.

But, here's a notably strage occurrence. The Friday, May 27 morning edition of the LATimes, (hidey-hole suzerainty of socialist Michael Kinsley), carried a DEMAND that the Surgeon-Senator resign from the Senate...supposedly because of his "ineffectiveness" as Republican leader.

This is a setup, of course, so that next year when Frist does not stand for re-election, the LATimes and Kinsley can say:

"WE Baaaaad! Looky whut WEEEE done !!!!"

What horse apples !

The dirty little secret is that the LATimes has lost 10 per cent of its circulation in the past year, according to Editor and Puiblisher.

What blind fools these retro-journalists be !!! Huh ???

What great respect they have for us...the citizens.....

Will "Reid-ism" Replace "McCarthyism" ????

"I personally witnessed him taking a bubble bath with his pet female kangaroo in his back yard !!!"

"I actually witnessed her walking into a dark room with her sturdy male German Shepherd!!...Guide dog for the sightless? I don' care!... It's kinky !"

Those, my friends, are the types of affidavits and judgmental comments contained in any FBI background report.

Trust me on this. I know.

So Senator Harry Reid, the Democrat minority leader took the flor Thursday, May 12, to announce that a peek at Michigan Appeals court justice Saad's FBI background check file contained information that would prevent any senator from voting for Saad's elevation to the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnatti.

(This is the same Reid who told Navada high schoolers President Bush is a "loser", remember?)

Just any senator is not privy to such FBI files. Only Judiciary committee members may see them, I am informed.

So did California's Beloved Barbara Boxer, the pseudo senator who probably thought Dubya was speaking in Atlanta last weekend, give Ole Harry a heads-up? That's illegal!

I was alive and sprightly, in the "Fifties" heyday of Senator Joe McCarthy. I watched him very carefully because I was in an continual conflict with my kin in Wisconsin about him. I despised him.

We all should have learned from him.

But I do not remember Tailgunner Joe ever divulging an FBI file---though he had access to all of them. He used AP and New York Times, Newsweek and TIME reports lavishly. He also twisted words for disinformation and demagogy.

But Harry Reid is not just Joe McCarthy "Lite".

Joe McCarthy was an alcoholic and was destroyed by his malady and his obsession.

Harry Reid, I predict, will ---like his predecessor Tom Daschle---be destroyed by his hubris and his flamboyant imbecility.

He and Howard Dean just don't get it. With their DNC fundraising efforts about 65% in toilet-shortfall, they race, like lemmings, to the ocean cliff of obscurity.

Run, Boys, Ryn !!!!!

Just Slow??? Or Corrupt?

ADD: Some things that the younger generation will see on the Internet that you will not see in the MSM (mainstream media):

I. Al Qaeda is organizing covert teams to enter Angola in southern Africa to obtain a strain of Ebola or Marburg hemhorragic fever virus to spread against enemies of fundamentaist Juhadism.

II. ABC News, in reporting that President Bush warned "obstructionists" they would be "held accountable" in elections for their "opposition without offering an idea", referred to this statement as "promising punishment".

Bush can't "punish" anyone. But voters CAN and WILL launch an accountability assault.

III. A boy with a two foot-long burrito, filled with sliced steak, jalapeno peppers, salsa and avocado wrapped in aluminum foil so undid Government School administrators that they locked the school down, and put snipers on surrounding rooftops. This was in New Mexico. The Silly Century is HERE!!!

IV. NBC will soon change the name of its cable news purveyor, MSNBC to "NBC CABLE NEWS". This will, of course, give it momentum to take it from an average audience of lass that a half million PAST Fox News Cable's two million average.

WARNING: (Do NOT hold your breath !)

V. Newspapers, in general, and the LATimes, Dallas News, Chicago Tribune, continue to lose readsership at the rate of between 2 % and 6 % annually.

The New Your Times is discounting (giving away) subscriptions to illegal immigrants and teenagers to inflate its numbers. Several newspapers have already been caught falsifying circulation figures, in 2004 and 2005.

The advertising income of a newspsaper is based on it's certified circulation. See??!!

VI. Canada's PM, Paul Martin, and his guru, Maurice Strong will be investigated for possibly having benefitted from Saddam Hussein's largesse in the "oil for food" scandal in the late 1900's. They join Chiraq and his henchmen in this regard.

A simple Google search will substantiate any or, or all of this.

Join the Literate Informed Modern web browswes. You have nothing to lose but your nescience !

What IS........IS!!

What is.....IS !!!

My son looked at me and announced, in his inimitable quirky logic:

"You know...a Zebra doesn’t go to sleep at night planning how to change his spots......"

"Wait, you mean.." I interrupted, "you mean..."

"And, ," he continues, paying my squeak no mind, "The Leopard does not dream of changing his stripes...."

"OH !!!.....Oh, yes. You got me again "

"You remember what Momma used ro say?" Keith Allen continued.
(He knew very well I remembered EVERY thing Betts EVER said. )

"What you’re talking about is her answer to the former president’s grammatical query, huh?"

And then we quoted our Source of All Time (in Unison !):

"What is.......IS !!"

That was my Sweetheart-Spouse’s way of saying that one may try with all of one’s might, but horse manure garnished with whipped cream does not make apple strudel...or even scrapple.

Nowadays, in America, what Is, is denied, camouflaged, stuffed away under circumlocutionary political corrected editorial blathering and self-flattering bloviation by
men an women who read others’ words from a teleprompter.

I notice, however, that these TV people are losing the present and immediately prior generations coming of age.

These young men and women, over 18 and under 35, are not slaves of Big Media and Broadcast TV.
As a matter of fact, they have quit the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the other mainstream print journals by the hundreds of thousands.
They have quit Katie Couric, and now that the hallmark anchors of the three broadcast networks are gone, the youngest generations are deserting the sinking flagships.

A very recent survey by a nonpolitical thinktank puts the average age of CBS / NBC / ABC news watchers at 61 years of age. Perky is not perky any more. These younger, brighter citizens, who can read Al Jazeera, Xinhua, The TIMES of London and the Jerusalem Post on the internet any time they want to, cannot be fed drivel and propaganda with impunity. They have found out that the "free" press in the United States has been kanoodling them.

They know, for instance, that French voters may be on the verge of scuttling the whole EURO union thing by choosing not to participate. They know Germany is in very poor financial and unemployment trouble.

They know that Canada’s prime minister, Paul Martin has been found out as being the direct beneficiary of Saddam Hussein’s kickbacks in the oil-for-food scandal.

Now, did YOU know any of this? Did the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, or the New York Times, or the Dallas News report these things?

Well, the great majority of the 18-35 pie-slice knows and thinks about these things. More and more, THEY are beginning to live in the world of What is, IS! And less it the world of wannabe feelgood.

I am very excited about this.

I just pray that Bill Gates gives away millions of more computers to the young, so they can kiss government teachers goodbye and lead this country out of the horse manure jungle and into a thriving harvest of absolutes: Good and Evil, Clean and Dirty, Loyalty and Treachery. Truth rather than Relativism. Smart versus Dumb. Honor rather than Political Correctness. What’s Really Happening rather than "Conventional Wisdom".

IS ... instead of Ain’t!!!

Are You Ready?

What IS........IS!!

What is.....IS !!!

My son looked at me and announced, in his inimitable quirky logic:

"You know...a Zebra doesn’t go to sleep at night planning how to change his spots......"

"Wait, you mean.." I interrupted, "you mean..."

"And, ," he continues, paying my squeak no mind, "The Leopard does not dream of changing his stripes...."

"OH !!!.....Oh, yes. You got me again "

"You remember what Momma used ro say?" Keith Allen continued.
(He knew very well I remembered EVERY thing Betts EVER said. )

"What you’re talking about is her answer to the former president’s grammatical query, huh?"

And then we quoted our Source of All Time (in Unison !):

"What is.......IS !!"

That was my Sweetheart-Spouse’s way of saying that one may try with all of one’s might, but horse manure garnished with whipped cream does not make apple strudel...or even scrapple.

Nowadays, in America, what Is, is denied, camouflaged, stuffed away under circumlocutionary political corrected editorial blathering and self-flattering bloviation by
men an women who read others’ words from a teleprompter.

I notice, however, that these TV people are losing the present and immediately prior generations coming of age.

These young men and women, over 18 and under 35, are not slaves of Big Media and Broadcast TV.
As a matter of fact, they have quit the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the other mainstream print journals by the hundreds of thousands.
They have quit Katie Couric, and now that the hallmark anchors of the three broadcast networks are gone, the youngest generations are deserting the sinking flagships.

A very recent survey by a nonpolitical thinktank puts the average age of CBS / NBC / ABC news watchers at 61 years of age. Perky is not perky any more. These younger, brighter citizens, who can read Al Jazeera, Xinhua, The TIMES of London and the Jerusalem Post on the internet any time they want to, cannot be fed drivel and propaganda with impunity. They have found out that the "free" press in the United States has been kanoodling them.

They know, for instance, that French voters may be on the verge of scuttling the whole EURO union thing by choosing not to participate. They know Germany is in very poor financial and unemployment trouble.

They know that Canada’s prime minister, Paul Martin has been found out as being the direct beneficiary of Saddam Hussein’s kickbacks in the oil-for-food scandal.

Now, did YOU know any of this? Did the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, or the New York Times, or the Dallas News report these things?

Well, the great majority of the 18-35 pie-slice knows and thinks about these things. More and more, THEY are beginning to live in the world of What is, IS! And less it the world of wannabe feelgood.

I am very excited about this.

I just pray that Bill Gates gives away millions of more computers to the young, so they can kiss government teachers goodbye and lead this country out of the horse manure jungle and into a thriving harvest of absolutes: Good and Evil, Clean and Dirty, Loyalty and Treachery. Truth rather than Relativism. Smart versus Dumb. Honor rather than Political Correctness. What’s Really Happening rather than "Conventional Wisdom".

IS ... instead of Ain’t!!!

Are You Ready?

Not My Last Mea Culpa

At my age, it is not a good thing to lose a friend.

One must really work at it, you know?

The way you do it is to deliberately invade and pick at a scab, and release the hidden corruption, which usually spurts forth vigorously. And sometimes it hits one right in the eyes.

This requires either the recklessness of youth and anger, but can be achieved with the languid and officious boredom of stolid and incurious firmness that suffers ignorance poorly.

When one knows a great deal about something–or believes he does–and another intrudes to make a mocking statement about a relevant person or occurrence of which he has no knowledge, the trigger is pulled... and the primer ignites the powder and the scattershot burst from the barrel of the weapon in pelll-mell, but shocking force.

I don’t know whether this can be unlearned or not. Obviously, it is too late for me.

Walking down a street near the University of Padua once, Betts and I wondered, giggling, what it would be like to be soooooo old that we could walk aimlessly around and poke people with a stick with impunity...if not with fervor...when they displeased us.

I guess that time is come for me, and though I can not afford to lose a friend at my age, I no longer find it as exhilarating to be "right" as I find it blissful to be "kind".

But, sometimes, one must be superhuman to remember.

And, Angelic, I am not. Yet.

PILGRIMAGE TO PHIL'S

Here is a prescription for folks who are approaching or already IN their eighth decade, (or, even their sixth or seventh deacde) and who may be rusting or dulling out or just frazzeling at all the edges in gloom.

Find an old friend you have known for 50 years, who is 93 years old. Get him into the driver’s seat of a brand new Ford pickup.

Then, allow him to tear-ass all over 175 miles of South Carolina’s Savannah River Valley paved and dirt roads and two track paths with green already showing in the thatched middle.

I guarantee that you blood will run hot and gurgly again...and, cold, too at times.

Phil Brousseau was a trainer of pointing dogs I met somewhere around 1950. He quit training and handling pointers in the field trials I wrote about in about 1968, then took up Beagling, and made four AKC field champions in three years. Then he went back to pointers as an amateur.

But this Attleboro, Massachusetts native has never turned his back on his beloved Palmetto State, and now lives in a rural setting in Edgefield County, the “Home of ten governors”. That would include “Strom” of course.

All the wide open fields that Phil used to train on, and which I visited and rode and shot over (all 17,000 acres) are lost to training dogs and quail, now.

The broom sedge, vetch, beggarweed, partridge peas and row crops have been replaced by pine trees. Both the U.S. Forest Service and the private landowner / lessor use a method of girdling and injecting lethal juices into all the hardwoods, and planting pines in their place. The pines now mature in about 15 years due to DNA selective recombinant engineering.

Only God and mother Nature will deal with that, eventually.

BUT ( sp Bit ) , in just a few hours, back in the pond bottoms and hillocks where Phil’s 1939 home still stands (A “shack” no more), we saw three deer, two droves of turkeys and the biggest black and tan fox squirrel I have seen since 1975. (Well, I haven’t “seen” much of anything in eleven years, so THIS was something thrilling for me.

Edgefield is the center of Wild Turkey hunting. The International Wild Turkey federation museum is there, and it is much more impressive than the Bird Dog / Field Trial museum in Grand Junction Tennessee.

There is no “ego” or appeal to some sort of aristocracy in the Wild Turkey museum. It is all historical, ethnically and ecologically authentic and correct.

But it is definitely where it should be. There are more wild turkey sign here than I ever saw in Alabama or Texas, the other two states which lay claim to “saving Ben Franklin’s choice for our National Bird”.

Phil made it a remarkable trip, and I want to state, honestly and unequivocally that an ole 93-year-old Frenchman can still teach an 80 year old a few things.

I am not done with my education yet. And, I’ll write some more about this, too.

At night, after pouring over Broiusseau’s soon-to-be-published memoirs, we went to sleep listening to Mozart, Debussy, some Bach, and string and woodwind ensembles.

Not very many people in the bird dog business ever knew, over the40 years he trained and handled, that Phil was an accomplished woodwind virtuoso–clarinet and oboe maestro. But we only drifted off to sleep with the music piped in via a satellite dish.

Mostly, we told lies (a few) and chewed looseleaf tobacco (a lot).

Pilgrimage For the Birds.....

Here is a prescription for folks who are approaching or already IN their eighth decade, (or, even their sixth or seventh deacde) and who may be rusting or dulling out or just frazzeling at all the edges in gloom.

Find an old friend you have known for 50 years, who is 93 years old. Get him into the driver’s seat of a brand new Ford pickup.

Then, allow him to tear-ass all over 175 miles of South Carolina’s Savannah River Valley paved and dirt roads and two track paths with green already showing in the thatched middle.

I guarantee that you blood will run hot and gurgly again...and, cold, too at times.

Phil Brousseau was a trainer of pointing dogs I met somewhere around 1950. He quit training and handling pointers in the field trials I wrote about in about 1968, then took up Beagling, and made four AKC field champions in three years. Then he went back to pointers as an amateur.

But this Attleboro, Massachusetts native has never turned his back on his beloved Palmetto State, and now lives in a rural setting in Edgefield County, the “Home of ten governors”. That would include “Strom” of course.

All the wide open fields that Phil used to train on, and which I visited and rode and shot over (all 17,000 acres) are lost to training dogs and quail, now.

The broom sedge, vetch, beggarweed, partridge peas and row crops have been replaced by pine trees. Both the U.S. Forest Service and the private landowner / lessor use a method of girdling and injecting lethal juices into all the hardwoods, and planting pines in their place. The pines now mature in about 15 years due to DNA selective recombinant engineering.

Only God and mother Nature will deal with that, eventually.

BUT ( sp Bit ) , in just a few hours, back in the pond bottoms and hillocks where Phil’s 1939 home still stands (A “shack” no more), we saw three deer, two droves of turkeys and the biggest black and tan fox squirrel I have seen since 1975. (Well, I haven’t “seen” much of anything in eleven years, so THIS was something thrilling for me.

Edgefield is the center of Wild Turkey hunting. The International Wild Turkey federation museum is there, and it is much more impressive than the Bird Dog / Field Trial museum in Grand Junction Tennessee.

There is no “ego” or appeal to some sort of aristocracy in the Wild Turkey museum. It is all historical, ethnically and ecologically authentic and correct.

But it is definitely where it should be. There are more wild turkey sign here than I ever saw in Alabama or Texas, the other two states which lay claim to “saving Ben Franklin’s choice for our National Bird”.

Phil made it a remarkable trip, and I want to state, honestly and unequivocally that an ole 93-year-old Frenchman can still teach an 80 year old a few things.

I am not done with my education yet. And, I’ll write some more about this, too.

At night, after pouring over Broiusseau’s soon-to-be-published memoirs, we went to sleep listening to Mozart, Debussy, some Bach, and string and woodwind ensembles.

Not very many people in the bird dog business ever knew, over the40 years he trained and handled, that Phil was an accomplished woodwind virtuoso–clarinet and oboe maestro. But we only drifted off to sleep with the music piped in via a satellite dish.

Mostly, we told lies (a few) and chewed looseleaf tobacco (a lot).

"Flying! With a 93-Year-Old Buddy !

Here is a prescription for folks who are approaching or already IN their seventh or eighth decade, and may be rusting or dulling out or just frazzeling at all the edges in gloom.

Find an old friend you have known for 50 years, who is 93 years old. Get him into the driver’s seat of a brand new Ford pickup.

Then, allow him to tear-ass all over 175 miles of South Carolina’s Savannah River Valley paved and dirt roads and two track paths with green already showing in the thatched middle.

I guarantee that your blood will run hot and gurgly again...and, cold, too at times.

Phil Brousseau was a trainer of pointing dogs I met somewhere around 1950. He quit training and handling pointers in the field trials I wrote about in about 1968, then took up Beagling, and made four AKC field champions in three years. Then he went back to pointers as an amateur.

But this Attleboro, Massachusetts native has never turned his back on his beloved Palmetto State, and now lives in a rural setting in Edgefield County, the "home of ten governors". That would include "Strom" of course.

All the wide open fields that Phil used to train on, and which I visited and rode over (all 17,000 acres) are lost to training dogs and quail, now.

The broom sedge, common lespedeza, vetch, beggarweed, partridge peas and row crops have been replaced by pine trees. Both the U.S. Forest Service and the private landowner / lessor use a method of girdling and injecting lethal juices into all the hardwoods, and planting pines in their place. The pines now mature in about 15 years due to DNA selective recombinant engineering.

Only God and mother Nature will deal with that, eventually.

But, in just a few hours, back in the pond bottoms and hillocks where Phil’s home still stands (A "shack" no more), we saw three deer, two droves of turkeys and the biggest black and tan fox squirrel I have seen since 1975. (Well, I haven’t "seen" much of anything in eleven years, so THIS was something thrilling for me.

Edgefield is the center of Wild Turkey hunting. The International Wild Turkey Federation museum is there, and it is much more impressive than the Bird Dog / Field Trial museum in Grand Junction Tennessee.

There is no "ego" or appeal to some sort of aristocracy in the Wild Turkey museum. It is all historical, ethnically and ecologically authentic and correct.
But it is definitely where it should be. There are more wild turkey sign here than I ever saw in Alabama or Texas, the other two states which lay claim to "saving Ben Franklin’s choice for our National Bird".

Phil made it a remarkable trip, and I want to state, honestly and unequivocally that an ole 93-year-old Frenchman can still teach an 80 year old a few things.
I am not done with my education yet. And, I’ll write some more about this, too.

At night, after poring over Brousseau’s soon-to-be-published memoirs, we went to sleep listening to Mozart, Debussy, some Bach, and string and woodwind ensembles.
Not very many people in the bird dog business ever knew, over the40 years he trained and handled, that Phil was an accomplished woodwind virtuoso--clarinet and oboe-- maestro. But we only drifted off to sleep with the music piped in via a satellite dish.

Mostly, we told lies (a few) and chewed looseleaf tobacco (a lot).

Good Friday Stirrings

Good Friday and Easter have always been very solemn, thoughtful hours for me.

I was cast, as a young man, into the relative havens of Leroy Loemker's and William Hockings' brains from a churning maelstrom of Southern Baptist, Pale Methodist and Proper Episcopalian conflicts.

I was really quite content to arrive at Immanuel Kant and Blaise Pascal fairly unscarred. Kant parapohrased the Golden Rule and Pascal offered the best odds in the history of thinking.

But I was 22 years old when the full meaning of Easter threw coils around me that have never loosened. There is no struggling to escape the captivity of the solid truth that evolved from editing a book that year.

It was written by Georgia's first "liberal" governor, Ellis Arnall, titled The Shore Dimly Seren.

In the book, there was a scene where Ellis was chewing the fat with an old circuit-riding preracher, drinking well water from a gourd near Ringgold, Georgia.

The old preacher said something like tis:

"I ai't as smart as Alfred North Whitehead, but I kinda feel like Space is a submarine, and Time is all around it, like an ocean...and we COULD, if we knew the trick, see backward as well as sideways and behind, into ALL of time....

"Now, you take Palm Sunday, and all those people who were putting flowers and palm fronds under His donkey's feet and wrapping palm wreaths around His head an all....

"The next Friday, they were all hollering for Barrabas, a rebel and Terrorist oif his day, to be freed. They asked for Barrabas' freedom, and they asked for...for HIS bloody death....

"Well, governor, they were the SAME people !!!

"And, you and I could have been in either crowd...or probably both crowds....."

***______***

And so , were truly were in both crowds, weren't we?

I mean, we need to be very careful, every day, every hour, every minute...Don't we ? We're here together, see ???

One Hand Clapping

Moderation. The Middle Way. Serenity.

Those are the touchstone words of the survivor...usually.

They were never my lodestones until after my fiftieth birthday. Until I had wrecked a European sports car, made hamburger of my physiognomy and broken three vertebrae in my neck. A long time after, in fact.

Because I was on fire, and plunging ahead to...whatever....as the youth say nowadays.

Lookung back, I see myself as a waterbug skeetering around the tentative, tensile surface of a stagnant pool, driven by thoughts, nightmares and rude empty awakenings.

Through it all, I had a Guide, who had at the age of 15 the wisdom of the Ancients, and for 59 years, she, my Betts, husbanded me. She saved me from a hundred deaths, and never forbade me. Never curbed me. Just loved me.

How did she know I would survive...and survive her, too?

Now, to me, "moderation" is not just a word on the Great Seal of Georgia. The Middle Way is the subject of my sermons to grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

And, Serenity (which is really liking what you get and liking what you got) is not foreign to me as it once was.

I can even recognize it in others. My sons and blessed daughters in law. There is no provocative issue in our lives today..except illness.

The one who calls herself my "daughter-in-love", Jeannie Malinda, saved my sanity today, with her serenity and her tungsten will.

These days, suffering bitter pain most hours of the 24, Jeannie makes scented designer soap when she has what she calls "a window through the pain" of sarcoidosis. But she was a software specialist when she could work. She taught Calculus at Georgia Tech, too.

Last week, AOL suspended service to me because I had emailed more than 50 people at one time---a breach of AOL guidelines. They thought I was a commercial "spammer". When we got them straightened out about that and the service was restored, something had happened and I could no longer send email.

That lasted four days. Then I could no longer reach my template to post a Blog. As some readers here know, I am legally blind and somewhat deaf. There was little aid and comfort, and no progress. Both my sons and Jeannie could post on my Blog. (I gave them the credentials. This family is, well, CLOSE.)

But, until Jeannie, in great respiratory and ambulatory distress came over and dove into my I E, my browser settings, my "cookies" control and reestablished my creative connection with my Blog dashboard, I was without much more than a somnambulant relationship with moderation, the middle way or Serenity.

She shared hers with me. She restored my sense of absolute confidence without which life is difficult. For some, unliveable.

In such a mundane exercise as tap-tap-tapping keys and searching a monitor screen it is obvious to me that, as Betts Allen used to quote "we are spirits pure, making a pilgrimage through a physical interlude....Not physical specimens isolated from a far off Great Spirit. It is all One...."

Gifts of self surmount all other efforts. To receive these gifts with grace is tumultuous restoration for a soul.

One Hand Clapping

Moderation. The Middle Way. Serenity.

Those are the touchstone words of the survivor...usually.

They were never my lodestones until after my fiftieth birthday. Until I had wrecked a European sports car, made hamburger of my physiognomy andbroken three vertebrae in my neck. A long time after, in fact.

Because I was on fire, and plunging ahead to...whatever,...as the youth say nowadays.

Lookung back, I see myself as a waterbug skeetering around the tentative, tensile surface of a stagnant pool, driven by thoughts, nightmares and rude empty awakenings.

Through it all, I had a Guide, who had at the age of 15 the wisdom of the Ancients, and for 59 years, she, my Betts, husbanded me. She saved me from a hundred deaths, and never forbade me. Never curbed me. Just loved me.

How did she know I would survive...and survive her, too?

Now, to me, "moderation" is not just a word on the Great Seal of Georgia. The Middle Way is the subject of my sermons to grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

And, Serenity (which is really liking what you get and liking what you got) is not foreign to me as it once was.

I can even recognize it in others. My sons and blessed daughters in law. There is no provocative issue in our lives today..except illness.

The one who calls herself my "daughter-in-love", Jeannie Malinda, saved my sanity today, with her serenity and her tungsten will.

These days, suffering bitter pain most hours of the 24, Jeannie makes scented designer soap when she has what she calls "a window through the pain" of sarcoidosis. But she was a software specialist when she could work. She taught Calculus at Georgia Tech, too.

Last week, AOL suspended service to me because I had emailed more than 50 people at one time---a breach of AOL guidelines. They thought I was a commercial "spammer". When we got them straightened out about that and the service was restored, something had happened and I could no longer send email.

That lasted four days. Then I could no longer reach my template to post a Blog. As some readers here know, I am legally blind and somewhat deaf. There was little aid and comfort, and no progress. Both my sons and Jeannie could post on my Blog. (I gave them the credentials. This family is, well, CLOSE.)

But, until Jeannie, in great respiratory and ambulatory distress came over and dove into my I E, my browser settings, my "cookies" control and reestablished my creative connection with my Blog dashboard, I was without much more than a somnambulant relationship with moderation, the middle way or Serenity.

She shared hers with me. She restored my sense of absolute confidence without which life is difficult. For some, unliveable.

In such a mundane exercise as tap-tap-tapping keys and searching a monitor screen it is obvious to me that, as Betts Allen used to quote "we are spirits pure, making a pilgrimage through a physical interlude....Not physical specimens isolated from a far off Great Spirit. It is all One...."

Gifts of self surmount all other efforts. To receive these gifts with grace is tumultuous restoration for a soul.

Out of Proportion ??

Over last weekend, the Italians paid a huge sum in ransom to save the life of a woman journalist held by Iraqi thug-terrorists.

That is fine.

Not the greatest move of solidarity, because no one in Italy or connected with the negotiations for the lady's release told anyone in the Iraqi government, or the U.S. command about the deal.

As a result, when the ransom payers--cum rescuers-- sped through a checkpoint barrier and the rescued journalist was hit by flying shrapnel, the whole world erupted in horror, indignation and accusations of "mindless militarism gone amok."

Sunday, in the parking lot of an apartment complex in Palm Beach County Florida, a woman ice cream truck driver ran down and killed a two year old girl, and left the scene of the killing.

Why didn't you read about THAT on the front page? Or hear Katie Couric and her ilk mewling over it on the morning shows?

Good question, huh?

Just a matter of perspective. Mainstream media perspective, that is

Puzzle: Find the "Jerk" !!!

In a very important address to the elite "Blue Pencil" group at the Columbia University Observer precincts in Manhattan, William Keller, the lofty minded and celebrated pollysylabbic executive editor of the New York Times said of Blogs :

"Somtimes an internet Blog is just a one-man circle-jerk."

You shocked ladies and old twentieth century laggers may need to ask a high school sophmore about the term.

But I can guarantee you one thing.

It ain't in the N Y T stylebook.

Incidentally, you can check this online at the Columbia Observer website!

These elite mainstream media types are so much in shock that they have lost their Ivy League bent for circumlocution and are stooping to Rap Lyric language to make their (faint) points.

The demise of Dan Rather and CNN's Eason Jordan on th guillotine of Blogger Truth Reporting has outraged the "jornalist" in Mr. Keller.

He also said that Bloggers are always biased and that their posts are filtered through ideology.

That, of course, is NEVER the case with the Times' news pages. And there's a bridge across the East River for sale, too. !!!

Mr. Keller would have been better off talking about something other than a "jerk".

He are one.

And THAT ain't NYTimestye either.

Does This Make Sense ????

There is something wrong with this:

"Soldiers accused of abusing prisoners!!!"

"HIV patients abuse Crystal Methamphetamine (‘ice’, ‘glass’, ‘crank’) !!!"

OR:

"Substance-abuse a Problem..."

"Child abuse a growing scandal..."

Do you see?

I checked the dictionary. The definition and entry has CHANGED since the 1913 edition of Merriam Webster’s lexicon.

They cite a 1982 new entry that allows the use of the word abuse to mean mistreatment of "drugs" or "substances".

Since ‘way before that, since 1979, I joined the great Dr. Stanley Gitlow of Mount Sinai in Manhattan, in decrying the "beatification" of addictive drugs by claiming that addicts were "abusing" them. This was begun by some lily livered bureaucrats in Washington and has never been corrected.

It probably never WILL be corrected. It may remain "de rigeur". But that does not make it correct or "right" to demonize a hapless, dying addict to repristinate the image of a lethal inanimate object.

A substance is inanimate. It is NOT sentient. It "feels" nothing.

A child, or even a puppy or kitten or bird IS sentient, can feel pain and often dies in pain.

A person may be an "addict", "drug dependent" or an "illegal substance user".

But an "abuser" of "inanimate stuff" ??? No, I don't believe so.

I just wanted to register my objection. Bill Safire is gone. Buckley is ancient like me. There is no etymological expert extant in major print media. Mike Kelly would have been, but he died in Iraq.

But it is wrong for everyone to just "fall in" and shrug and allow the elevation of lethal substances to VICTIM status.

And, ironically, the sin is compounded when the illegal "substance" can be "abused" just as horribly as the legal ones.

I cannot see the syllogism. What would Aristotle or Kant say ????

Doesn't Make Sense....

There is something wrong with this:

"Soldiers accused of abusing prisoners!!!"

"HIV patients abuse Crystal Methamphetamine (‘ice’, ‘glass’, ‘crank’) !!!"

OR:

"Substance-abuse a Problem..."

"Child abuse a growing scandal..."

Do you see?

I checked the dictionary. The definition and entry has CHANGED since the 1913 edition of Merriam Webster’s lexicon.

They cite a 1982 new entry that allows the use of the word abuse to mean mistreatment of "drugs" or "substances".

Since ‘way before that, since 1979, I joined the great Dr. Stanley Gitlow of Mount Sinai in Manhattan, in decrying the "beatification" of addictive drugs by claiming that addicts were "abusing" them. This was begun by some lily livered bureaucrat in Washington and has never been corrected.

It probably never WILL be corrected. It may remain "de reigeur". But that does not make it correct or "right" to demonize a hapless, dying addict to repristinate the image of a lethal inanimate object.

A substance is inanimate. It is NOT sentient. It "feels" nothing.

A child, or even a puppy or kitten or bird IS sentient, can feel pain and often dies in pain.

I just wanted to register my objection. Bill Safire is gone. Buckley is ancient like me. There is no etymological expert extant in major print media. Mike Kelly would have been, but he died in Iraq.

But it is wrong for everyone to just "fall in" and shrug and allow the elevation of lethal substances to VICTIM status.

And, ironically, the sin is compounded when the illegal "substance" can be "abused" just as horribly as the legal one.

I cannot see the syllogism. What would Aristotle or Kant say ????

Blowin' in the Wind: REALITY

As I write this, Sunday, Februrary sixth is upon us and the mainstream media stands preoccupied with the anniversary of Janet Jackson's exposed flesh.

But there is a whole lot of other shakin' goin' on.A Toronto, Ontario, Canada daily paper is reporting today that Canada will agree, before the month is over to (Gasp!) join other NATO nations in sending troops to Iraq !

A report from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia announces that the "Kingdom" will hold historic democratic elections throughout the country for local and district magistrates and representatives to local councils.

United Nations poobahs are turning on one another to cover their backsides and point fingers at the rogues and thieves in the shadowy nooks and crannies. Poor old Boutrous-Boutrous Gali, the former secretary general of the U.N. (before Kofi Annan), has been singled out to take the rap for the largest Hijack (of Iraqui oil for food billions) in the world's history.

Egypt and Jordan are scrambling to broker a ceasefire between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Syria is scurrying to hold "No-No-Not-Me!!! press conferences for Al Jazeera and hastily leaving the Lebanese twisting in the winds of defeat.

German chancelloe Gerhardt Schroeder---facing the largest and growing unermployment problem in his country since 1920, is kissy-face with Condi Rice and looking to become our sweetest mainland European ally.

Soory, Gerry ! That spot is Poland's !!!

My question:

What do these people know that the Democratic Party in the United States does not know???