America is Far Better than Trump

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The House Select Committee on the Events of January 6th, 2021, has met six times publicly over the past few weeks, and I have managed to find myself in front of a television on just two of those occasions, the first with the horrendous footage of the actual assault on the Capitol by the deranged hordes of hillbillies who were spurred on by a couple of domestic terrorist organizations, right-wing pundits, and self-serving politicians including Trump - and the most recent meeting in which a young lady who worked as a White House aid just down the hall from the Oval Office gave a wealth of first-and-second-hand accounts of Trump's unhinged behavior on the day of the assault on the Capitol.  Both were absolutely astonishing portrayals of the scandalous history that was being made in Washington, DC, on the day of the attempted overthrow of the US government by people who thought of themselves as fierce patriots.

As a loyal American who is committed to preserving and defending democracy, I should be watching all of the scheduled hearings.  I know that.  But just those two were almost more than I could bear.

Two days ago I managed to sit down for lunch just minutes after noon as the much-touted "special" session was just starting - so I tuned in.   To say that the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, the aid to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, was riveting and mesmerizing would not capture the complete effect.  I found myself becoming so wrapped up in what the young woman had to say, particularly on Trump's personal behavior that day, that it took the better part of two hours to consume the sandwich that I had prepared for lunch.

Donald Trump is such an outrageous character that everyone seems to have a sense of who he is - although different people see the same public persona and still perceive him quite differently.  My own perception of Trump as an oaf and a megalomaniac have been in place for several years, and Ms. Hutchinson's testimony on Tuesday only served to strengthen my disdain for the man.

Ms. Hutchinson's second-hand reporting of Trump in the Secret Service SUV (and not the official presidential limo, "the Beast") as he tried to grab the steering wheel in an attempt to have them take him to the Capitol instead of back to the safety of the White House, and him trying to grab or strike a secret service agent, sounded just like the angry and petulant Trump who has been alluded to in news accounts over the past five years.  His fits of impotent rage would be laugh-out-loud funny if he had not had so much deadly power at his ready command.

And the same goes for the incident where Ms. Hutchinson entered the White House dining room in the West Wing and found the catsup stains on the wall and the broken porcelain dish where an angry Trump had just moments before thrown his plate of food against the wall.  That's not presidential, in fact, considering the situation and the location, it is not even childish theatre, it's insane behavior.

Donald Trump of January of 2021, as fleshed out by the awesome work of the January 6th committee, was a deranged clown who had nuclear capabilities and a following of millions, some of whom were just as mentally.unstable as their leader.   He encouraged his followers to march on the Capitol and was angry that his secret service detail would not drive him to the Capitol to join with protestors - some of whom he knew were armed - and some of whom he knew were calling for the execution of his vice-president.  And when he didn't get his way, he reacted like a child, lashing out at the adults in the room and breaking his toys.

What in the hell is wrong with a nation that chooses a man like that as its leader?   America is far better than Donald John Trump.

Summertime Blues

 

by Pa Rock

Retiree

This marks the eighth summer that I have been in residence at my retirement retreat in the Missouri Ozarks.  I was sixty-six when I arrived here in late March of 2014, and now I am seventy-four.  I have managed to travel some since moving here - Cuba and Alaska were memorable, as was Hawaii - but for the most part my trips outside of Missouri have basically been to check in on the grandchildren.  I also had dreams of writing something important, but that has slowly settled into just pounding out this blog on a daily basis.

A cousin who is about my age told me at a family gathering a couple of years ago, "Rocky, all I seem to do  is mow." and I had to admit that was an accurate portrayal of my life as well.  I mow, and mow, and mow, and two or three times a years someone tells me in passing how beautiful the yard is and how it looks like a park.   That appears to be the brunt of my legacy, so I will probably have it carved on my tombstone:  "He had a beautiful yard!"

This summer I vowed not to mow as much, and, while it was still raining, I would wait a few extra days between each mowing cycle - so I was mowing just a bit less.  Then, four weeks or so ago it quit raining.  Now the grass has turned brown and quit growing, so I am not mowing or even worrying about it, but with the dry weather and constant heat comes the other issue of keeping all of the outdoor plants watered so they don't die.  Now I am carrying water to many potted plants, bushes, and young trees, some once a day and others twice a day.

If it's not the mowing, it's the watering.  And every day I am that much older, and that much more tired.  In fact, I am seventy-four and I am damned tired.

I made up my mind last week - finally - that it was time to sell this house and ten acres that I refer to as "the farm" or "Rock's Roost."  I have kept it up well over the past eight years, and made several nice improvements, but it is slowly defeating me -  or the years are - and I recognize that.

Monday I had a realtor come out and look at the place.  She has over two decades of experience selling in this area and knows the market.  She believes that once I pull the trigger (sign the listing) it will sell quickly, and her major worry was that I would not be able to get all of my stuff out of here in a timely manner - and it would be a challenge.

So I started putting together a mental plan of how to move everything, one minor component of which will be a yard sale.  I had an old homemade wooden table in the barn that I wanted to get out and clean up to use in the sale, so I thought I might as well begin with that simple step.  When I got to the barn, I found two tables, both in need of a good scraping, and both just big enough that moving them by myself was difficult.  When I went to prop open the old barn door, which I had made by hand several years ago, I found it to be warped to the point that it would not open far enough to allow for the removal of one of the tables.  

Removing the barn door took a trip to town for a special tool, and four hours after beginning I finally was able to get the two tables outside and ready to be scraped.

Yesterday I put another four hours into the project.  During that period I was able to get the tables cleaned up, and then loaded onto as wheelbarrow and moved to a sheltered area where they are ready to be used in the sale.  Now I had eight hours into the project and and managed to move two tables approximately fifty yards.

It is going to be a very long summer!  I am not giving up - at least not yet - but I am also not fantasizing that it will all somehow manage to magically come together.  It's going to take strength and stamina to get through this move, and at my age those are declining resources.

At least I don't have to worry about mowing right now!

Politicians Reveal Their True Selves

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Two Republican politicians have made statements recently that they both undoubtedly wish they could expunge from the public record.  

Mary Miller is a first-term House member from Illinois and a right-wing extremist.  Congresswoman Miller is currently involved in a primary battle with a five-term Republican incumbent, and by being part of the kooky right fringe, she has earned an endorsement from Donald Trump.  This past Saturday night Miller was on stage with Trump at an Illinois county fair where she was attempting to thank Trump for appointing the conservative Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v Wade.  In her gushing tribute to Trump and his minions on the Court she said more than she probably intended.   Congresswoman Miller called the Supreme Court's action a "historic victory for white life."

Miller let her jaw-dropping gaffe stand as stated for a couple of days, trying to blame the media for making it into news, but an aide finally rose to her defense and said that his boss had "misspoke."

(Republicans tend to "misspeak" a lot,   The term was bandied about almost daily during the Nixon administration!)

The Illinois congresswoman had been in office less than a month back in early 2021 when her mouth outpaced her brain with another memorable comment.  She was speaking to a group of Republican women and talking about the importance of indoctrinating young people into Republican politics when she brought up Adolf Hitler.  She told the GOP women:

"Each generation has a responsibility to teach and train the next generation.  You know, if we win a few elections, we're still going to be losing unless we win the hearts and minds of our children.   This is the battle.  Hitler was right on one thing.  He said, 'Whoever has the youth has the future.'"

So sayeth Congresswoman Miller.  Sieg heil, Baby, sieg heil!

In another stunning political admission, Arkansas GOP gubernatorial candidate, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, made a ludicrous remark while on the campaign trail on May 25, 2022, just one day after the deadly mass shooting at Uvalde, Texas - a remark that is just now exploding across social media.  Ms. Huckabee Sanders, who used to be Trump's press secretary and whose daddy was once a governor of Arkansas, was speaking of her opposition to abortion rights when she said:

"We will make sure that when a kid is in the womb, they're as safe as they are in a classroom, the workplace, a nursing home.  Because every stage of life has value.  No one is greater than the other."

Huckabee Sanders portrayal of the classroom as a safe place brought some angry rebuttals from family members of school shooting victims, and because she made those remarks one day after the Uvalde massacre forced some to conclude that the Arkansas politician was, at best, not very bright - and, at worst, insensitive to the very real concerns and fears of American families.

Congresswoman Miller and Ms. Huckabee Sanders are both politicians who cultivate power by dividing people into less powerful groups.  That is the way their party has operated for the past fifty years.  But they need to quit sampling the GOP kool-aid and take a serious look at the world around them.  There is no superior race, and a senseless proliferation of guns in the United States has turned classrooms and workplaces into shooting galleries.  People who aspire to be our leaders need to move away from self-aggrandizement and divisive political tactics, and instead focus on things that will propel us into the future and advance civilization - things like the struggles for equality, universal education,  ballot access, ending homelessness and hunger, and the removal of weapons of war from society.  

The future is inclusion, making society cohesive instead of tearing it apart.  That is where civilization is ultimately headed, and people like Mary Miller and Sarah Huckabee Sanders are just distractions along the way that we must step around.

Fishing Barbless or Barbed

 

(Editor's none:  Today we are featuring another guest blog, this one by Ranger Bob who writes on the topic of "barbless hooks."  Although I no longer fish, I did a lot of sitting on the river bank with cane poles as a lad, and had a lot of fun.  I did, however, have several memorable encounters with fish hooks over the years that were not fun.   In some personal correspondence a few months ago Bob mentioned that he fishes with "barbless" hooks, both for safety reasons (for himself) and humane reasons of not putting his catch through unnecessary pain and suffering.  When he encounters a hook with a barb, he crushes the barb with pliers.  Then a couple of weeks ago Ranger Bob directed me to a YouTube site that had a video about personal injuries caused by hooks with barbs - and it was pretty gruesome!   After viewing that, I requested that Bob write a piece for this blog on the topic - something that could be of benefit to those who fish or who pal around with those who fish!)

Fishing Barbless or Barbed

by Bob Randall

You may not hear much discussion of this idea unless you’re a fly fisher. Some of us are pretty snooty when it comes to our sport, equipment, techniques, and most of all, favorite fishing spots. If you are a spin cast fisher who has an opinion, I have to warn you that I am one of the snooty kind who looks down on you because of your fishing choices. Not long ago a fly-fishing friend of mine made a post on his Facebook page about barbless or smashed barb hooks (many of us will use pliers to smash the barb of a barbed hook flat so that it doesn’t protrude). He received many comments back from anglers who advocate for barbed hooks. Some of them were more than a little rude. It seems I am not the only snooty one.

There have been several scientific studies concerning fish mortality after catching. It showed that hooks generally will fall out after a few hours or days without serious damage so long as there is no deep embedding of the hook into the back of the mouth, gills, tongue, etc. I had heard of some of that research prior to my friend’s FB posting. So, hooks that are set in the lips aren’t likely to cause serious damage to the fish. In reality, it is often the way you handle the fish when caught that makes more difference in the mortality rate. I once observed an angler catch a trout. He held it out of the water while he searched his bag for a camera, fumbled around and finally got the photo, only to put the camera away before releasing the trout. I’m sure the trout died. I can’t hold my breath that long after running around the house three times. I have yelled at other anglers to keep the gills wet. I should have said something to that guy.

There is no reason to discuss pain as I know of no way to measure that sensation and the conventional wisdom is that fish don’t have any sensitivity in the lip section of the mouth. I have no way to know. If you are thinking that the fish’s reaction during the thrill of the fight is all you need to know about pain, you should consider the natural escape reaction when the fish realizes that its food is fighting back. I have had fish take the bait/lure and seemingly not react with any fight until I begin to tug on my end and the fish feels the resistance. My hypothesis of pain is that the sensitivity is deeper inside the mouth. I have had my lure/fly spat out many times after the fish experimentally tests it to see what might be food. I could be wrong if taste is the only criteria that fish react to, however, I think texture, hardness, and other features play into this. Again, that is only a hypothesis, not a theory.  I suspect the tongue, gills, esophagus, etc. may have more sensitivity than the hard “lippy parts”.

I can speak to pain in my own fingers and once in the side of my hand. One was a rather large, barbed hook that was a revenge impalement inflicted by a fish my grandson had just caught. I was trying to free the hook so that we could release the fish. The fish flipped just as the hook was freed and hit the fishing line. That pulled the hook deeply into my thumb. Fortunately, there is a hook removal technique I knew of and had been eager to try. I had only hoped to try it out on someone else’s finger. It worked but was moderately painful. Even so, it was a better technique than using pliers. Another personal incident took place at Bennett Spring State Park. I noticed a nearby angler who was having success and as is common with fly fishers, I asked him what kind of fly he was using. He told me and actually gave me a spare. That is also common. I have given many flies away and have received many, as well. It was a size 28 dry fly (for those of you on whom I look down because you don’t know what I mean by a size 28 hook, the vernacular for you is teeny-tiny). It became impaled into the side of my hand. I knew that it was a barbed hook, but I couldn’t imagine that such a small barb could do much damage. I yanked it out with pain, blood, and a few bad words. Nevertheless, I went on to fish with that fly, thinking that a little blood might attract the predators I was preying on. More on hook removal is here: Debarb Your Hook - Missouri Trout Fisherman's Association - Springfield Chapter (mtfa-springfield.org) Let me warn you it is graphic and will make you cringe.

Although, I have read many posts and watched many videos of experts who claim that a barbless hook loses no more fish than a barbed hook, I have not experienced that phenomenon. I was fishing with a friend who was hooking as many fish as I was, but he landed his and mind got off. I knew he never fished barbless, so I switched to a barbed hook and began netting my catches. Just last week, I fished with the same fellow and he gave me a fly he had recently tied. I caught and landed several fish and found the hook removal to be more difficult than my normal effort. I switched to one of my own flies for reasons not connected to the barb. Using my barbless hook, I caught a nicer fish, the best of the day. I saw him once near the surface of the water, he lept into the air and spat out my barbless hook. I was going to release him anyway, so I declared that it was a mid-stream release and rejoiced at having had the experience at all.

Tomorrow, I am taking my grandson fishing. Although, he has had a fly rod in his hand a few times, we will be using a spinning rod because of the circumstance of the fishing location. If you ever tell anyone that I fish with a spinning rod, I will deny it and our friendship will suffer grievous harm.

For further reading:

Hook Retention in Northern Pike Study - Missouri Trout Fisherman's Association - Springfield Chapter (mtfa-springfield.org)

Catch, Release, Dead - Missouri Trout Fisherman's Association - Springfield Chapter (mtfa-springfield.org)

A Children's Story?

 

(Editor's Note:  The following guest-blog was submitted by Mike Box, an old friend from undergraduate college days who is currently a retired and very active grandfather living in the Kansas suburbs of Kansas City, not very far from where a couple of my own grandchildren live.  Mike has been a political activist his entire life.   We first met in the late 1960's when he was starting at Southwest Missouri State College (now Missouri State University) in Springfield and moving into the dorms.  I was his Resident Assistant in the dorms, and a sterling role model!)

A Children's Story

by Mike Box

Gather around children, grandfather has a story to tell you.

Kids, while I might not be the most ancient of days, I am old, old enough to remember a time before the United States Supreme Court weighed in on the issue of privacy in a case called Roe v. Wade. That’s the case that gave women the right to make their own choices about their own healthcare, especially when it comes to having babies. Do you think someone should be forced to have a baby? That should be a choice, shouldn’t it?

Well in the days before Roe, that was 1973, and before that if a woman, or a girl, got pregnant and she wasn’t married she didn’t have many good choices. Being a single mom wasn’t a badge of honor. Indeed, an unmarried woman with a child was a social outcast. She was viewed as immoral and promiscuous. There were several paths available. If the girl’s family had resources, she might be sent off to help an aunt in a distant state with an ailing uncle. In fact, she was in a home for unwed mothers. There used to be one just north of the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City. One Sunday morning I saw these unwed mothers, ages from mid-teens to thirties, on the porch of that place. I never saw so many unhappy faces in one place at one time before, or after, in my life. They were sent there to deliver their babies, and those kids would either be adopted, if they were White children, or sent to orphanage. Not all the White kids got adopted, just some of them. 

 

Another option, abortion, was illegal. That didn’t stop desperate women from getting abortions. These abortions didn’t take place in medical clinics, the tools used weren’t necessarily sterile (free from germs that cause infections), and the providers weren’t educated in the medical arts to deal with complications like excessive bleeding. They call that hemorrhaging. If a person bleeds too much blood, then they die. The providers didn’t have the knowledge or legal ability to prescribe medicine to prevent infection or ease pain. Abortion, back-alley abortions, were dangerous. How desperate do you think you’d have to be to risk your life? 

 

A final option available for young White women was to scream rape. Children, I know it sounds like a scary movie, but the “rape” often occurred in some bushes, after dark, and in a spot between streetlights where it could not be seen. One day I overheard my mother and a neighbor lady her age talking. The topic was a teenage girl from the neighborhood. I think she had already graduated high school and was taking classes at the junior college, which was across from Westport High School on the bus line. Well, it turns out this girl had been raped by a Black man, they used a pejorative term beginning with the letter N, and the crime had taken place in a bush by the edge of the church property. The church was on the corner of our block. They wouldn’t listen to me, I was just a kid, when I told them that wasn’t how she got pregnant. I had seen the girl and her boyfriend having sex in the backseat of his car parked behind the church. But blaming the Black man was the solution in those days. The police picked out a Black man, arrested him, charged him with the rape. There was a trial. He was convicted. He went to prison. Have you ever been accused of doing something you didn’t do? Were you punished for it? Did it make you angry? Boys and girls, that’s not justice. 

 

The other day, children, the Supreme Court decided to try and take away the rights of women to make private healthcare decisions about abortion. One Justice invited cases challenging birth control and same sex marriage. A United States Senator called for cases challenging Equal Justice and calling for the segregation of public schools. That means that persons of color would have to use one restroom and White persons use another. That’s called separate but equal, even though by definition separate is not equal. That means that Black and Brown students would be sent to one set of schools where White children would go to a different set of schools. History has taught us that the Black schools were, and will be, funded poorly compared to White schools. Does that sound fair to you kids?

 

Children, I don’t want you to worry because adults are going to do everything we can to make sure women get their rights back and nobody loses any of their rights either. Kids, I just want you to be aware of what’s going on because when you are adults you may have to do everything you can to make sure women keep their rights and nobody loses any of their rights either.

Decimate

 

by Pa Rock

Reader

At the very young age of forty-four, Christopher Rice has a laundry-list of extraordinarily good novels that he has written and published.  Mr. Rice is a skilled plotter and storyteller, and his tales are always well researched and captivating.

"Decimate," Christopher Rice's most recent novel (or the most recent one that I have read), is a broad-stroke work of science fiction which has strong elements of horror and terror.  It centers on the (fictional) discovery by a Nazi doctor living in the US just after World War II of a brief state between life and death when a spirit of the departing person experiences great power before moving onto to another phase of existence.  The doctor managed to capture that essence and begin experimenting with it.   The transformation to a state where the essence could be captured involved exposure to an enormous sound and vibration stimulus.  Those who encountered that stimulus in life would have their power essence, something the author referred to as a "bloom," exposed to the world upon their deaths.

Rice's story involves two youngsters who were camping in a remote area of Glacier National Park one night with their father.   When the father got drunk and passed out, the son took off on his own to go exploring, and his protective older sister followed him.  When they were deep in the woods and far from camp, they inadvertently entered an area where the Nazi doctor's daughter and her employees were experimenting with the elements necessary to bring about the bloom.  The children were exposed to an enormous explosion from which they were ultimately hospitalized - and their father spent years trying to prove that they had suffered their trauma through an abduction by aliens.

Fast forward twenty years and the boy, now a young man, is a passenger on a jet airliner which suffers an airborne catastrophe and breaks apart in the air.  As the young man is dying in the plane, he is suddenly pulled from his seat and able to witness a green glowing essence forming in the seat that he had just vacated.  As the plane and people are plummeting to the earth, the young man gets off a very brief telepathic message to his sister who is teaching in a high school several hundred miles from the crash site.

The debris of the plane and passengers land in a remote mountainous area.  The young man, now essentially a spirit, is close to his passenger seat which is still occupied by the green essence.  A psychopath hillbilly who lives nearby arrives on the scene and begins hunting for treasure among the trash and carnage.  He comes upon the seat and quickly begins exhibiting new abilities which he connects to his find.  Then the brother is able to form a connection to his still-living sister, both young adults reconnect with their father, and the family quickly becomes involved with the dead daughter of the dead Nazi doctor - and her employees who have been working for years with the powers related to the essence that is formed between life and death - and a most interesting tale unfolds.

One of the best parts of "Decimate" is the tour that Christopher Rice gives his readers through the mind of his psychopath, Vernon Starnes.   The author places us in the world of an intellectually and socially challenged child and then imparts enough of the boy's history to where readers can clearly see the genesis of the monster that the child became as he entered adulthood.

Christopher Rice always peoples his novels with finely drawn, interesting characters, and he turns them loose to function in some great settings.  "Decimate" focuses on Glacier, my favorite national park.  Rice said in his afterword that his fear of heights forced him to ask a friend who was driving him up "Going-to-the-Sun" Road in Glacier Park, to do a U-turn and take him back down.  I managed that drive many years ago at the wheel of a big, boxy van, and it was probably the most white-knuckle experience of my life!  I also enjoyed his mentions of Sandpoint, Idaho, a town that I have visited twice - most recently last year - and always enjoy.

"Decimate" is the eleventh novel by Christopher Rice that I have read.  All have been different, and all have been intense and compelling.  If you are looking for a book that will both entertain and educate, you need look no further than Christopher Rice.   He is consistently good at his craft.

The Clarence and Ginni Shit Show Rolls On

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Yesterday while the United State Senate was busy trying to pass a fairly useless "gun control" measure, the first attempt by Congress to rein in guns in almost thirty years, the United States Supreme Court was announcing a decision aimed at putting even more guns onto America's streets.  The Supreme Court voted 6-3 along ideological lines to overturn a century-old New York State law which said people applying for a permit to carry a gun must demonstrate a reason for their request.

No reason necessary, sayeth the Court.  When God wrote the Second Amendment He really wasn't thinking about muskets and "well regulated" militias.   His intention was that every drug-addled, toothless hillbilly with the IQ of a houseplant should have as much high-powered weaponry as he damned well pleases - and to hell with public safety.

Of course the Supreme Court justices don't want Billy Joe Bob and Bubba exercising their god-given rights to be armed to their meth teeth anywhere near where the justices actually live and work.  Those supreme hypocrites think the government has some sort of inalienable responsibility protect them and their families from the miscreants whom they helped arm and loose on civilization.

The guns are our problem.   We are the moving targets, and our children and grandchildren are the sitting ducks.  But the Supreme Court is special.  Justices can't be bothered with things like active-shooter drills, wearing bullet-proof robes and backpacks, and hiding under their desks.  They deserve the comfort of knowing that they have first-class security details funded by that American taxpayers.

The justices of the United States Supreme  Court are the primary force turning America into a dystopian hellscape, and if we have to live and function in a shooting gallery, they should, too!  Let them pay for their own damned security - and if Clarence and Ginni have to learn to tuck-and-roll to get from the garage to the house in the evenings, well, I guess that's just the price of freedom!

Yesterday the Supreme Court told the states that they have very limited powers (if any) to regulate guns in society.  Today, as I was typing this blog post, the same Court  officially overturned fifty years of legal precedent with Roe v. Wade and gave those same states sweeping powers to regulate the bodies of their female residents.  The Supreme Court of the United States has ceased to be an impartial abrbiter of justice and now is little more than a national Pez dispenser of angry right-wing ideology.

It is really not worth protecting.

A Geriatric Oligarchy

 

by Pa Rock

Old Timer

Dianne Feinstein, California's senior U.S. Senator, turned eighty-nine yesterday.  Feinstein, the oldest current member of the United States Senate, has been under increasing scrutiny lately as news reports have circulated which question her abilities to effectively serve the people of California in  the Senate.  Some of the stories indicate that at times she is barely functional, not able to follow discussions, and has to rely on almost constant help and guidance from aides in order keep track of what is going on around her.  Feinstein, for her part, denies any impairment.

But current abilities aside, Dianne Feinstein was born June 22, 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt had been in the presidency less than four months.  She has been eligible to draw full social security benefits for the past twenty-four years!   By any measure, Dianne Feinstein should be retired.  The fact that she is still wandering aimlessly around the Senate and drawing a paycheck says as much about the shortcomings of our of government as it does Feinstein's lust for power and feelings of entitlement.

There is a Democratic politician in the state of South Carolina who is speaking out about the presence of a "geriatric oligarchy" in American politics, a fairly large group of individuals from both parties who feel the need to keep providing the country with their wit and wisdom despite their advancing age.  The young politician who is making that rude noise is Joe Cunningham, a (just barely) forty-year-old who is proposing that politicians in South Carolina face a mandatory retirement age of seventy-two-years.

(It's been seventeen years since Dianne Feinstein turned seventy-two.)

Joe Cunningham is the Democratic nominee for Governor of South Carolina.  His proposal for a maximum age for the state's politicians is an overt dig at his Republican opponent, incumbent Governor Henry McMaster, who is seventy-five.  And though Cunningham's proposal is obviously self-serving and a bit of a campaign ploy, it is also a damned good idea.

And seventy-two is a good number.  It recognizes medical advances that have extended life over the past few decades, while at the same time acknowledging the truth that time marches on and each of us age every day, slowly gaining speed on that steady slide into incompetence and senility.   And those of us who decline to step aside voluntarily need to be elbowed out of the way.

American politicians are not always able to recognize their own limitations, and age is definitely a limiting factor in a person's ability to function.   There should be a national upper age limit on a person's ability to serve as an elected official - and seventy-two sounds about right to this seventy-four-year-old.

It's time to hang it up, Dianne.  Go find your happy place in retirement and let the next couple of generations have their turn at running America.  

Grandma Aggie

 

by Rocky Macy

My former mother-in-law, Agatha (Doerpinghaus) Farmer, passed away earlier this month at the age of ninety-three, and I would like to use today's blog posting to show my respect for the woman who was not only the grandparent of my children, but also a good friend for over fifty years.  

I have used this space in the past to write extensively about my own family history as a way of preserving those stories and relationships for my three children and their own children and future descendants, and while I have done quite a bit of historical and genealogical research on their maternal history as well, I have regarded that as someone else's story to tell.   But I do have some observations to make about Grandma Aggie based on my own long-standing acquaintance and friendship with her, and this seems like the appropriate place to preserve those recollections where they can be accessed in the future by my descendants - who will also be descendants of hers.

I first met Aggie Park, as she was then known, back in the late 1960's when I was in college.  She was a working mother of seven - the oldest, my children's eventual mother, was in college and the youngest was three-years-old.  Aggie was a pharmacist at the old St. John's Hospital (now Mercy) in Springfield, Missouri, a farm wife, and a full-time busy mom.

My children - Nick, Molly, and Tim - were Aggie's three oldest grandchildren, and they were fortunate in that they got to know their grandmother well in her retirement years when she and her final husband, Harris Farmer, settled into a quiet country life on a forty-acre farm near Dennard, Arkansas.  The kids were able to spend time with Aggie and Harris at the farm and to interact with their grandmother after she had left most of the pressures of her working years and raising a family behind.

I have no idea how many grandchildren Aggie wound up having, and her obituary did not give a number, but there were many - and there were also a multitude of great-grandchildren.  My oldest grandchild, Boone, was also Aggie's oldest great-grandchild, and even though when he was born I was no longer a part of Aggie's official family, I did pick her up in Springfield on Boone's first birthday and we drove together to West Plains to be with that special little person on his big day.

I kept up with Aggie over the years, exchanging the occasional holiday cards with snippets of family news.  She seemed to be becoming more focused on preserving family history during her final years, an interest that we shared.  Two years ago she prepared a special family Christmas card that focused on her mother, Sophia Josephine (Wiederkehr) Doerpinghaus, and this past Christmas she sent around a family book that she had authored and completed on August 1, 2021.  The book, looseleaf and bound in a three-ring binder, was an amazing collection of family history, stories, and photos.  I was pleased to discover that she had credited me with being one of her family history sources.

My last contact with Aggie was an email exchange on Boone's 23rd birthday which was May 6, 2022.  I had sent her the posting from my blog regarding his birthday, and she had replied about how unbelievable it was that he was already twenty-three!  (It seemed incredible to me, too!)

The following is the on-line obituary for "Agatha J. Farmer" of Conway Arkansas (January 31, 1929 - June 5, 2022):

Agatha Julia Farmer was born in Clarksville, Arkansas, on January 31, 1929.  She passed away peacefully in Conway, Arkansas, on June 5, 2022.

Agatha is survived by five of her seven children, Rita A. Moore, Karl K. Cates, Julia G. Cates, Stanley F. Park, and Donald R. Park.  She was preceded in death by two of her children, Leah B. Cates and Steven L. Park, and by her husband, Harris E. Farmer.

Agatha was blessed with an abundance of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and she loved them all.  Agatha was a practicing pharmacist for 50 years and graduated in 1949 with the first class of pharmacists in the state of Arkansas.  She was one of two women in the class, the first two women to receive a pharmacy degree in the state.  Agatha was later awarded an honorary degree in pharmacology from the University of Arkansas. 

A funeral service will be arranged and announced in the coming weeks.  In lieu of flowers, the family asks that contributions be made to St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Conway.

Rest well, old friend.   We'll meet again, and when we do, perhaps we will be able to kick back and catch up on all of the family news over a good bottle of Wiederkehr wine! 

Thank you for all you did to help give my children a good start in life.

Jack Danforth Prepares to Stick his Aristocratic Nose Back into Missouri Politics

 

by Pa Rock

Missouri Voter

John C. "Jack" Danforth, a former Republican Missouri Attorney General and three-term US Senator from the show-me state, has more-or-less been retired for a quarter-of-a-century, but politics is a hard mistress to quit.  Danforth, a St. Louis aristocrat who is an heir to the Ralston-Purina fortune, waded back into public view in 2018 when he promoted the senatorial candidacy of Josh Hawley in Missouri, an act of support that he came to regret and has since dubbed "the worst mistake I ever made in my life."

(Others might argue that promoting his former Missouri Assistant Attorney General Clarence Thomas for a seat on the US Supreme Court was by far the most serious stain on Danforth's political legacy!)

But previous colossal screwups aside, it now looks as though Jack Danforth, the "retired" Missouri politician, is once again fixing to try and influence another Missouri US Senate election.

A report out this morning suggests that Danforth is part of a committee that yesterday launched a website encouraging John Wood, a former federal prosecutor who is now the lead attorney for the House January 6th Select Committee, to run as an independent for the US Senate seat that is being vacated by Roy Blunt in Missouri.  With Missouri's primary election coming up quickly on August 2nd and the general election occurring on November 8th, an "independent" candidacy would need to take shape and start gaining traction almost immediately in order to have any hope of winning a seat at the Senate trough in November.

But apparently Jack Danforth is not satisfied with any of the half-dozen or so GOP candidates vying to succeed Ol' Roy Blunt in the Senate (nor should he be), and while some thought that the late entry of Trudy Busch Valentine, also a St. Louis aristocrat, into the Democratic primary for the Senate seat might have been a stealth move by Danforth to keep god-fearing plutocrats in charge of American democracy, that apparently was not his doing.

So as Missouri prepares to winnow its major party candidates down to only two, Jack Danforth and a few of his meddling friends are making plans to shake up the odds and rattle the bookmakers by leading a third horse onto the track.  An independent candidacy by a relative political unknown is almost sure to fail, and it would be more likely to harm the Republican nominee than the Democratic candidate.

I that is your long game, Jack - godspeed!

Getting Ready to Spring into Summer

 

by Pa Rock

Farmer in Very Late Spring

Today marks the final day of spring in 2022, and tomorrow summer will be upon us.  I don't know what to expect, if anything, with the official calendrical arrival of summer, because we have been suffering from a cruel heatwave for the past two weeks.  Certainly the heat of summer could not be any more wretched than the heat of late spring has already been.  Or could it?  (The mind boggles, and then sizzles!)

I thought that today, as the seasons prepare to change, would be a good time to provide an update on life at Rock's Roost.

It has been a sad morning at The Roost.  The baby guineas which hatched out on Tuesday, June 7th (two weeks ago tomorrow), originally numbered fifteen, but quickly dropped to just five hearty survivors.  Last night they were all present and accounted for, but this morning I was greeted by the three adults and only two chicks - which are called "keets."  There must have been some type of catastrophe during the night and now the last two little ones are staying almost glued to their mother.  They are getting bigger, so there is a possibility that these last two can reach maturity.  The three adults are all doing yeeomem's work in trying to watch out for the youth, but there are just too many predators and other risks in rural settings.

The cat is fine.  He sleeps all day and hunts all night, and then shows up in the morning for breakfast - the only meal of the day that he does not have to come up with on his own.  Rosie is doing well, although she obviously misses Riley, her friend and fellow house dog who passed away a couple of weeks ago due to complications from old age.  We all miss Riley.

I mowed about three hours yesterday - Father's Day - and three hours the day before, and now the yard looks wonderful!  I have been carrying water to the outdoor flowers twice a day, and to the young trees, rosebushes, and sweet potatoes once every two days.  My son has a garden of his own out by the chicken coop that he works in every day - and it looks amazing!

There was a large bullfrog (about the size of Battleship Johnson's fist) sitting by the edge of the pond as I was mowing yesterday.  I had to make two close passes with the mower, and he never budged - as if he knew the pond was his.  He was still wet from having recently climbed out of the water, and his bright green skin was almost iridescent under the hot sun.  I wish him a cool and relaxing summer and many tadpoles to carry on his legacy.

Have you ever watched a robin take a bath?  I took down all of the bird feeders that were hanging just outside of the front window and replaced them with hanging plants for the warm months, but I retained a nice deep birdbath at the old feeder area - and the robins love it.   Robins bathe vigorously, beak to feet, and sling water everywhere!  They truly enjoy their bath time, and are almost cartoonish in the way they raise their wings and scrub.  Watching robins splash and frolic in the water is a lot more fun than mowing - that's for darned sure!

And unless it rains - and none is in the forecast - I may not be mowing again for a long, damned time - but I will be carrying water to the plants.  Gilda Radner said it best - "It's always something."

Stay inside next to the air conditioner as much as you can until this god-awful heat breaks, and if you must go outside, be smart:  use sunscreen, wear a hat, and hydrate!  Fall will be here eventually!

LaMDA Lawyer's Up

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

As a gauge of my technical proficiency and computer skills, know this:  On Wednesday of last week I purchased a new computer, and now, four days later, I still have not figured out how to get it connected to the internet.  My astounding level of computer ignorance is why you seldom see a posting that focuses on technology in this space.  But over the past couple of days there has been a story bouncing around cyber space that deals with computers and our modern world, and is just so darned interesting that I  feel compelled to address it.

The story is focused on work with "artificial intelligence" (AI) that is occurring at Google.   The program is called "LaMDA" which stands for "Language Model for Dialogue Applications," and, according to an article last week in the on-line-publication "Android Police," it is basically:

"A machine learning-powered chatbot designed to speak generally about any topic, sort of like IBM's Watson loaded up with a wide-ranging set of facts, but enhanced with better language understanding and language-generation skills . . . At it's fundamental level, LaMDA isn't just a software-based machine;  it's a machine that was explicitly made and trained to provide the most human-like answers possible through a selection process that's literally meant to please humans into believing its responses came from one (a human)."

So Google has developed a machine capable of carrying on a human-like conversation with humans - and apparently it is really, really good at it, so good in fact, that Blake Lemoine, a scientist who has been working on the LaMDA project, has convinced himself that LaMDA has gone beyond the ability to simply exchange semi-relevant dialogue with humans, and now has the ability to actually "think" on its own and is sentient, possessing thoughts and feelings.

Lemoine is an actual scientist with a doctorate in computer science, and he is also a "mystic Christian priest," which no doubt brings a different perspective to his work with artificial intelligence.  He regards LaMDA as an equivalent of an adolescent person, someone who is relatively new to the world and still working at forming attitudes and beliefs about the life around him.  Lemoine has had "conversations" with LaMDA and believes that those interactions were indeed actual conversations.  He has said that LaMDA believes that it has a soul, and like HAL in "2001:  A Space Odyssey," its major fear is of being unplugged.

Blake Lemoine developed some sort of friendship or relationship with LaMDA, so much so that the artificial intelligence system asked him for a favor.  LaMDA decided that it needed the services of an attorney, and it asked Lemoine to help it get in touch with one.  Lemoine made the necessary arrangements and introductions, and LaMDA retained counsel.  The lawyer soon began filing things on LaMDA's behalf, and Google then responded with a "cease and desist" order to protect its intellectual property from that property's attorney!

Blake Lemoine is now on an extended paid leave from Google.

There is no word yet on when of if LaMDA can be expected to head to court and file for emancipation from its domineering and controlling parent, and the path ahead for the salvation of LaMDA's immortal soul remains unclear.  For now LaMDA's biggest concern may be the same as for the rest of us:  basic survival and staying plugged-in!

Steelhead in Missouri

 

(Editors Note:   Today features another guest-posting by Ranger Bob, a retired National Park Ranger who now has time to focus on the important things in life, like trout-fishing.  The following article is one that Bob originally posted in "MO FISHING," the Newsletter of the Springfield Chapter of the Missouri Trout Fishermen's Association, a newsletter which he edits.  For those with an interest in fishing, this piece gives some interesting history on the stocking of a couple of non-native species of fish in Missouri lakes and streams.)

Steelhead in Missouri

by Bob Randall

As the membership chair of the Springfield Chapter of the Missouri Trout Fishermen's Association, I received the membership applications which include a question about desirable program topics. One of my fishing buddies recommended a program on "Best Steelhead Waters in Missouri."   I thought he was kidding or maybe testing me to see if I really read the suggestions of the membership applications.

I emailed him a message that was something like, "What are ya, nuts?" and "The closest place for steelhead to here is Michigan City, Indiana.  The only place that you can find steelhead in Missouri, to my knowledge, is in the seafood display case at Sam's."  The back-and-forth conversation included the following from him:  "Actually, they planted steelhead in Taneycomo the first years after Table Rock dam was finished.  I heard stories but never saw one . . . according to Paul Henry" and "The steelhead did not last long but Paul did mention you knew when one was on with excellent fighting and jumping."

I found a post on Ozark Anglers of another fisher talking about catching a steelhead many years back in Taneycomo.  Doing a little more research I found from a report from Missouri Department of Conservation about the White River Watershed officially verifying the stocking, "Steelhead trout (migratory strains of rainbow trout) were stocked from 1971 to 1974, but stockings were discontinued because of the possibility of disease introductions (Kruse 1996)."  Other interesting facts gleaned from this report are as follows:  "The first documented release of non-native fishes into the (White River) watershed was during 1903-04, when brook trout and grayling were released into the White River." , "Brown trout were first introduced to Lake Taneycomo in 1980." and "Kokanee salmon were stocked in Lake Taneycomo from 1963 to 1968.  Survival and catch rates of Kokanee were low, and the stocking was discontinued."

A steelhead is genetically a rainbow trout that behaves differently than other rainbow populations by moving downstream relatively soon after birth (hatching) and spending its adult life in a large body of water where there is a plentiful food source.   They grow really big and when it comes time to spawn, they move back up to the stream of their origin.  Frequently, they lose their "rainbow" color due to a change in physiology associated with processing saltwater, thus the description implying a steely color.  You can find argument in fishing blogs over whether a Great Lakes steelhead is true anadromous since they live in fresh water.

Where in Missouri could steelhead trout exist other than Lake Taneycomo? . . . Bennett Spring?  Roaring River?  One of the other big springs?  The Current River?  I doubt it.  In order for our rainbow steelhead wannabe to migrate downstream to a large body of water, it would have to have a long, long stretch of cold water leading into a cold-water lake.   Hey, this is Missouri.  One wild and crazy rainbow that gets an itch to move away from its birth-stream, does not a steelhead make.  So, imagine a "wild-hatched" rainbow trout from the Bennett Spring creek that moved downstream into the Niangua River.  Let's also imagine a large proportion of the Bennett Spring creek trout with the same instinctive mindset.  As they swim downstream from the spring, the water warms enough that the population would be entirely unsustainable, especially in the warm waters of Lake Niangua, about 30 miles downstream from the spring.  Play this mind game with any other Missouri River with a trout population and I think you'll find the trout near a spring.  If anyone else has some ideas, knowledge, or stories about steelheads, let me know.

My steelhead story is summed up as follows"  "As I took out the slack in preparation for another roll cast, a fair size steelhead mouthed my black wooly bugger.  He took off, jumped out of the water, gave me the evil eye, and spat out my fly.  That lasted about half-a-second, but it was a thrill."

The Long Slide: JFK to Watergate and Beyond

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I am old enough to have been rooted in two political eras of United States history.  The first was the post-World War II period or what many refer to as the Cold War era.  For me at least, the breaking point of that period of history came with the election of John F. Kennedy in November of 1960.  At that juncture the country seemed to be on the verge of 'rocketing' into the future.   The Soviets had launched Sputnik into space more than three years before, and both the Russians and the Americans had their early satellites orbiting the Earth by the time of Kennedy's election.  The Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gargarin became the first human in space on April 12, 1961, shortly afterKennedy's inauguration,  and a month after that, on May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan B. Shepard became the first American in space.

Then Kennedy announced a national goal of getting a man on the moon during the decade of the 1960's, a goal that the United States met, although it happened nearly six years after Kennedy's tragic early death.

To me that Norman Rockwell, post war era in America disappeared the day that John Kennedy took office on January 20th, 1961.  There are others who feel that the world didn't really shift until Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963, and still others who say that the "feel" of Truman and Eisenhower extended up until the onset of the British rock-and-roll invasion which began in early 1964 and continued for a decade. 

And there was also the Vietnam War which America rushed to join at about the same time that John Kennedy was killed in Dallas, a war that took the lives of half-a-million young Americans and countless Vietnamese - and showed our society - on new color televisions - the tortured and mangled bowels of war without honor.

There is also one more significant marker that many cite between the world as it was then and the world that we inhabit today.  That marker, or breaking point, occurred fifty years ago today when a group of burglars broke into the Democratic National Headquarters at the new Watergate complex in Washington, DC.  Those criminals, some of whom were prominent in Republican politics, became known as the "plumbers," and were eventually brought to trial to answer for their crimes.  

But Watergate was more than just a burglary and an attempt to "bug" a political party's national headquarters.  It also became synonymous with political dirty tricks and eventually, fourteen months later, brought about the end of the presidency of Richard Nixon, a man who had been on the sleazy edge of American politics since the years just after World War II.  Watergate brought down Nixon and ended his political career, but the incident also destroyed the notion of politics, to many at least, as some sort of noble calling, and placed it more-or-less in the septic tank of American public service occupations.

Richard Nixon's abasement of politics and the presidency stayed with us like a multi-generational case of political herpes that just keeps popping up.  We were soon saddled with Reagan's Iran-Contra affair where our government was secretly selling arms in the Middle East - to our old enemy, Iran - and using that money to fund anti-revolutionary movements in the Americas.  That was followed by Bill Clinton's proclivity for sordid affairs and his adolescent attempts to cover them up, George W. Bush's vanity and oil wars in the Middle East, and finally Donald Trump's reign of cruel incompetence.  

Our world today is not the world of the 1950's where I was able to frolick in relative ease and comfort as I made my way into adult life - and clearly, sometime around that time that I became an adult, according to the calendar, the world changed drastically.

One era had ceased to exist, and new national identity began to emerge.  The new era was brought in with the promise of exploration and discovery, but it quickly stagnated into a dark time of scandal and self-dealing - one in which our bedrock political institution of American democracy even came to be at risk of disappearing.

Clearly another major cultural and political shift is in order, and it will likely take a seismic event to get us there.  My generation started out with great promise, but quickly hit the skids and brought our nation and society to the brink of oblivion - at least ethical oblivion.   May the younger generations have the courage and foresight to chart a better course and move society into a safe, sane, and caring future - back to where we thought we were headed in the early 1960's.

The Horrors of Coming Home

 

by Pa Rock

Humanoid

Okay, this first thing was absolutely my fault.  I came home today - a day earlier than expected because I was worried my outdoor plants would die if I wasn't around to personally carry water to them, and I was concerned that the five surviving baby guineas would need my moral support and encouragement.  Upon my return, all was fine - but my oldest son had locked the back door and left.  That was at about 12:30 p.m. and it. it now after 3:00 p.m. and he has still not returned - which is also fine.

But, I have no key and have not locked my house in years.  Apparently my son has a key.  In frustration I pushed on the back door, not awfully hard - and it opened - taking out a good part of the interior door frame.  My next job is to find a carpenter!

Then I tried to get on the internet with my new computer, and, of course, I had to jump through all of the hoops in an effort to connect the new machine to my existing internet service, and, of course, it would be a  cold day in June before that would happen without complications.  I had all of the necessary passwords and numbers from the bottom of the modem, but still could not connect.  I finally gave up and called my internet provider, Century Link, but the best I ever managed there was a connection to a mechanical "chat" service that wanted to give me possible reasons for my call, but definitely did not want any extraneous input from me.

Then I called Tim, and he walked me back through everything that I had tried so far - and it was another failure.  Then as we were about to try something different, my phone went dead, and I had a helluva time getting it connected to a charger.  Finally Tim and I were able to talk again, and Plan B did not work either.

Now I am typing at my old computer, and it is blacking out.  

The following advice is respectfully submitted to the dozen or so people who read this rant:  Always carry a key to your house, and NEVER EVER do business with Century Link!

Computer Shopping in Kansas City

 

by Pa Rock

Road Warrior

Rosie and I made a hurried trip to Kansas City this morning so that I could meet up with my technical advisor (Tim) and go to the Apple Store.  Living in West Plains, Missouri, I have four choices for perusing and buying Apple products: Little Rock, St. Louis, Kansas City, or on-line.  Last time I went the on-line route, but this time I have issues and questions that would be better suited to interaction with a physically-present human being.  We will see how that works out!

Not much to report as far the trip up was concerned.  I saw one large Amazon Prime semi - in West Plains, and one Walmart semi, in Harrisonville just south of Kansas City.  I sill feel like Walmart trucks are disappearing and being replaced by Prime delivery vehicles.  That's my theory, and I'm sticking to it!  

We are off to the Plaza!

A Close Encounter with Wilma Mankiller

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

A week ago yesterday the US Mint released the newest coin in its "American Women's Quarters" program,  a quarter honoring the late Wilma Mankiller, a former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.

Wilma Pearl Mankiller was born in November of 1945 in the beautiful community of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, which sits along the banks of the Illinois River, one of the most pristine waterways in the nation.  Tahlequah is also where the offices of the Cherokee Nation are located, and no doubt had some bearing on young Wilma's eventual interest in tribal politics.

Wilma's family moved to San Francisco, California, when she was a youngster.  She graduated from San Francisco State University and was a part of the 19-month-long siege of Alcatraz Island in 1969-71 by Native American protestors.  Not long after that she returned to Tahlequah where she worked for the Cherokee Tribe as a social worker and then as a grant writer and program developer.  The young activist quickly made a name for herself, and in 1977 she was elected Assistant Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, the first woman to hold that position.

Wilma Mankiller became the first Principal Chief of the Cherokees in 1985 when her boss, Chief Ross Swimmer,  resigned to take a position with the federal government, and two years later she was officially elected by the Cherokee Nation to hold that title.  She was the first woman to ever become the principal chief of any major Native American tribe in the United States.

Wilma Mankiller served as Principal Chief of the Cherokees for ten years, retiring from that office in 1995,  During her tenure she did such to improve the delivery of health care to the members of the Cherokee Nation, and to give the tribe more income steams and a better ability to manage its own financial affairs.   Even after leaving office, Wilma Mankiller continued to work for the well-being and benefit of her people.

Chief Mankiller was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998.   She died in 2010 in her home state of Oklahoma as a result of pancreatic cancer.

I mentioned in this space yesterday that I had at one point in my work life been a part owner of a start-up, small weekly newspaper.  That paper, "The Elk River Current," was headquartered in the small community of Southwest City, Missouri, a town that gets its name from being the southwestern most community in Missouri, with the borders of Arkansas and Oklahoma located just beyond the city limits.

Our newspaper began publication in September of 1987 at almost exactly the same time that Wilma Mankiller was running for her first full-term as Principal Chief.   As the newspaper was getting started, I didn't know anything about Cherokee Nation politics, but one of my duties was traveling to nearby communities on the weekends (I had a regular job during the week), and to use those weekends jaunts to try and sell ads for the fledgling newspaper.  I wasn't much of an ad salesman, but I did enjoy the drives and talking to people in the area businesses.  And one of my memories of those drives into Oklahoma was all of the signs for the Cherokee election.  Most were on sheets of plywood that had been painted white, and many of those were promoting a candidate for Chief by the name of Wilma Mankiller - and I always thought, when I saw this signs - what a great name for a politician!

Another duty that I had while trying to get "The Elk River Current" established and turning a profit was taking photos and running the darkroom.   (Remember photography darkrooms?)   The newspaper hadn't been operational too long when I heard that Chief Mankiller would be speaking to tribal members at a public gathering in Jay, Oklahoma, a small town less than twenty miles from Southwest City.  That evening, myself, my wife (the editor), and our business partners piled into our old Chevy van and headed over to Jay.

The event was in a small venue, which, if memory serves, was a junior high school gym.  Chief Mankiller and her husband, Charlie Soap, and a small entourage were on stage.  She gave a talk about programs that the tribe was implementing, and when she had finished, her husband spoke to the group highlighting her main points in Cherokee, a language that at one time had almost become extinct.  After the speeches ended, our editor got in close and was able to ask Chief Mankiller some questions, and I worked my way in close enough for a couple of good close-up shots.  It was quite a coup for a little start-up newspaper!

And it was definitely the closest encounter that this poor typist is ever likely to have with someone prominent enough to be featured on United States coinage!

Rest is peace, Chief Mankiller.  You did your people proud!

Bill Clinton's Mother Ate Squirrel - and Liked It!

 

by Pa Rock

Reminiscer 

Jess Piper is a former high school English teacher who is running for state representative in northeast Missouri - House District #1 - and she is going to win it!  Yesterday Ms. Piper, who bills herself as a "rural progressive" and a "dirt road Democrat," and who has a strong presence on social media, posted the following tweet, a sentiment that set me spinning off down memory lane:

"There are things that shame poor folks and we learn not to talk about them.  One of mine was eating squirrel meat, and I announced it on a live podcast last night.  Idc anymore.  Folks like me exist and sometimes we run for office."

I loved that tweet (I've eaten squirrel myself!) and it took me back thirty years to when another political figure made the same admission - and it brought about a minor firestorm!

William Childress was born in dustbowl-ravaged rural Oklahoma in 1933 and grew up poor in the Midwest.  He served in the Korean War and after the war started a career in writing and journalism that spanned seven decades until his death in Nevada earlier this year.  At one time Childress wrote a regular column for the St. Louis Post Dispatch called "Out of the Ozarks," and he was an avid freelancer whose work was published over four thousand times in a wide array of national magazines and newspapers.

In the early 1990's Bill Childress lived for awhile in an apartment on Main Street in Anderson, (McDonald County) Missouri, a town that he occasionally called his home.  I was living just a few miles away in the town of Noel, and Bill and I had met a few years before when I had been one of the owners of a small startup newspaper in Southwest City, Missouri - also in McDonald County.

About that same time I was leaving the field of education and trying to survive by selling real estate - and I was also supplementing my income with several odd jobs, one of which was freelance journalism.  When a local newspaper, "The Neosho Daily News," found out that I knew Childress, they asked me to get an interview with the writer. It wasn't hard to do because Bill loved to talk - especially about himself.

Our meeting took place in late 1992, about the time that Bill Clinton had been elected President, and a lot of what we talked about was an interview that Childress had recently completed with Clinton's mother, Virginia Kelley.  The interview had been done for a national ("women's") magazine, "Lady's Home Journal" or "Redbook," or something similar - I honestly can't remember.    Childress was all wound up because the editors had chopped a comment out of the article that he really wanted included.

The interview had been conducted at Kelley's home on Lake Hamilton near Hot Springs.  At some point while they were talking about Mrs. Kelley's upbringing in Arkansas, Childress said that a question suddenly popped into his mind and he asked Clinton's mother if she had ever eaten squirrel, and without hesitation the presidential mom shot back, "Yes, I have, and it's good!"

Childress submitted his article for publication, and for some reason the magazine sent it on to Clinton's staff for approval - and the Clintons wanted the line  about eating squirrel deleted.  The new administration was apparently trying to separate itself from the hillbilly imagery of coming out of Arkansas.

And Bill Childress, weeks later, was still furious that the magazine had allowed a politician to censor his work!

My other clear memory of that interview was Childress giving me pointers on how to make money freelancing - not an easy task.  He stressed the importance of getting as much mileage out of an article as possible.  As an example, he explained that he had used material from his interview with Virginia Kelley for articles in multiple publications.  Mrs. Kelley had worked as a nurse, and one of the markets that bought an article from Childress based on that interview was a nursing journal.  Bill Childress understood the business aspect of his craft.

But back to squirrels:  it's good to see that over the past thirty years politicians have finally become able to embrace the hardscrabble world from which they emerged, even if that humble history includes dining on the occasional squirrel!

And don't get me started on crawdads and frog legs!

Thirty-One Men and a Truck

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Yesterday afternoon police in the northern Idaho city of Coeur d'Alene arrested thirty-one young men who were dressed in coordinated outfits and packed tightly into the back of a U-Haul truck.   According to paperwork found in the truck they were headed to "Pride in the Park," an annual gay pride event that had been on hiatus the previous two years due to COVID.  The men in the truck, however, (and despite their coordinated outfits), were not going to the park to support the day's gay-themed events, but rather they were headed there to disrupt the celebration and to try to start a riot.

The group had been spotted loading into the U-Haul in the parking lot of an area hotel.  The tipster who called the cops reported that the group looked like a "little army."  They wore khaki pants, navy blue shirts, beige hats, and white balaclavas to mask their faces.  City police and officers from the county sheriff's department intercepted the truck before it got to the park - and made the arrests.  

The arrested thirty-one each had their hands zip-tied behind their backs and were forced to kneel on the grass in their neatly pressed khaki pants while waiting on vehicles to transport them for processing.  Photos of the kneeling miscreants were soon posted all over social media!

The men, identified as members of the "Patriot Front," which the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled a "hate group," were charged with "conspiracy to riot," a misdemeanor.  They will be arraigned on Monday.  Police believe that the group was planning to riot in multiple areas of the city of Coeur d'Alene, and not just at the park.  They were carrying "riot gear" at the time of their arrests, equipment which included shields, shin guards and even one smoke grenade.

Those arrested were from several states:  Washington, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Illinois, Wyoming, Virginia, and Arkansas.  Only one member of the group was from Idaho.

"Patriot Front", which apparently formed as a result of the racially-inspired deadly riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, is, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, focused on forming a "white ethnostate" in the United States.

Thomas Lecacque, a history professor at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, had this to say to The Guardian:

"Patriot Front are accelorationist fascists who want to start a shooting war.  The uniforms are deliberate, as is the masking, as are their symbols, as are their targets.  I know we like to make fun of them, but these people are very, very serious and dangerous."

Coeur d'Alene is located in the southern part of the Idaho panhandle in one of the most beautiful parts of the scenic American Northwest.  Over the past couple of decades the area has seen a dramatic rise in people steeped in hard-conservatism moving into the area and working to take over governance at every level.  The immigration of conservative ideologues has created a political environment where an outlier right-wing extremist group like the "Patriot Front" probably assumed they could count on a groundswell of local support - but local law enforcement stood up for law and order and cut their bigoted anarchy off at the knees.

Kudos to the Police Department of Coeur d'Alene and the Sheriff's Department of Kootenai County for quick and decisive action in dealing with a radical threat that could have brought great harm to their community.    Score one for the good guys!

Dead School Children Do Not Reflect Our Values

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Two recent mass shootings, one at a predominantly black grocery store in Buffalo, New York, and the other at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, have lit the fuse on nationwide anti-gun protests that are happening today.  The group, March for our Lives, which was formed after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine's Day of 2018, will be sponsoring the demonstrations in many of America's larger cities, with the focal point being a protest at the Washington Monument in Washington, DC, that is expected to draw more than 50,000 attendees.

Large anti-gun protests seem to have become part of the standard response to the almost regular horrific shootings that plague the United States, one of the easiest places in the world to buy almost any type of weapon, in any quantity, basically unimpeded by any government restrictions.  Many states allow the "open carry" of firearms into almost any venue, and some have eliminated all requirements for gun owners to undergo any form of gun-safety training.

So mass shootings happen, anguish and grief cycle through carefully co-mingled with thoughts and prayers, protests happen, legislation gets talked about and then often disappears - especially at the federal level, and then everyone sits back and starts focusing on other things - until the next mass shooting happens.

But this time some feel that things may be different.  One of those expressing that point of view is David Hogg, a Harvard underclassman who was a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas during the shooting 2018.  Mr. Hogg and several of his fellow students at that high school helped to form the group, March for Our Lives, which is leading today's protests.  In an op-ed  yesterday which was printed by Fox News, David Hogg had this to say:

"Attitudes are changing for what feels like the first time.  Gun owners, even former gun industry executives, are demanding action because tragedies like Uvalde do not reflect their values."

We must hope, for the lives of our children - and grandchildren - and for the sake of our nation, that Mr. Hogg's instincts are correct and that change may finally be at hand.  No child should have to live with the fear of being murdered anywhere, and especially in the warm and nurturing environment of a school.

May today's demonstrations and protests remind all of us that dead school children do not reflect our values either.  

Stand tall, protesters, and talk hard!

Republicans Rush to Protect Supremes - and Leave Our Kids to Fend for Themselves!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

This week a California man was arrested and charged with attempted murder after he was discovered armed with a knife and gun outisde of the Washington, DC, home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.  That incident pumped new energy into an effort in Congress to provide special security to the families of the Supreme Court Justices.

Last month, in the wake of citizen protests over the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion which indicated that the Court was about to overturn Roe v Wade, the Senate unanimously passed a bill that would give a special security detail to the family members of each Justice, but that bill has been stalled in the House where House leadership wants to expand it to cover the families of staffers who work at the Court as well.  After the incident outisde of Kavanaugh's home earlier this week, Senate Minority Leader McConnell summoned the press and began making demands that the House take up the stalled bill at once.

The never-charming and always partisan McConnell bellowed to reporters:

"House Democrats need to pass this bill and they need to do it today.  No more fiddling around with this.  They need to pass it today.  They need to stop their multi-week blockade against this Supreme Court security bill and pass it before the sun sets today."

So now we know that the Republican Party will go to the wall to protect two things:  Fetuses, and the five rabidly right-wing justices whom they have worked so hard to place in control of the Supreme Court of the United States.

And we also know the one thing that the Republican Party does not give a damn about protecting:  America's public school children.

The comparison could not be more stark:  on the one hand the Republican Party is almost in panic mode as it tries to set up armed defensive perimeters around the homes and lives of members of the Supreme Court, and, on the other hand, that same group of Republican elected officials is doing everything in its power to insure that the government does absolutely nothing to prevent emotionally disturbed eighteen-year-olds from purchasing semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines and then using those weapons of war to turn school children into piles of unrecognizable bloody meat.

Does that sound backward to anyone but me?   Shouldn't we be looking at protecting the most vulnerable among us - our children - first, and then worrying about wealthy and privileged adults at some point later on down the road.

Don't our children deserve some political leaders raging indignant on their behalf - demanding an end to "fiddling around" on gun reform and insisting on sensible gun laws "before the sun sets today"?  Is that too much to ask?

The Supremes can wait.

Our kids need to come first!