Fadeout on George Maharis

 

by Pa Rock

Television Junkie

Last week marked the passing of a once well-known television actor whose claim to fame rested primarily on one role.  George Maharanis was ninety-four when he passed away at his home in Beverly Hills, California, on May 24th.  The New York native who had been trained as a classic stage actor, found television as the medium which finally allowed his breakthrough into public recognition.  

In 1960 Maharanis, who was then thirty-two, began playing Buzz Murdock, a twenty-three-year-old non-conformist youth who was traveling the country with his best friend in a 1960 Chevy Corvette convertible and having various weekly adventures along the way.  The road of choice for their travels was "America's Highway," a.k.a.  "Route 66."      The television series, "Route 66,"  featured Maharanis as the dark-toned and a bit untamed (some compared him to James Dean) Buzz Murdock, and actor Martin Milner, light-skinned and blonde, as the traveling partner, Tod Stiles.  My memory of the series was that Tod Stiles (Milner) was usually at the wheel of the two-toned corvette.  Perhaps, according to the storyline, it was his vehicle.

"Route 66," which began in 1960 and lasted until 1964, was very popular during it's short fun of nearly four full seasons.  The old highway itself crossed America at one point as 7th Street in Joplin, Missouri, just forty-five miles north of where I was growing up.  Escape was possible!

Maharanis stayed with the show for nearly three full seasons (84 episodes), but eventually left for what he described as "health reasons" (hepatitis) and what others on the set described as his unhappiness with television and a desire to make movies.  Part of his unhappiness was with what h considered the quality of television work.  Of the dozens of directors that he worked with on the show, Maharanis said that only five knew what the were doing.  Others on the set were apparently quick to refer to him as the one who was "difficult" to work with.

Maharanis never emerged as the movie star that he thought he could become.  His career was hobbled by a gay sex scandal in the early 1970's, something that was illegal at the time, and the subsequent roles that he was offered were largely mediocre and forgettable.  His complete retirement from the entertainment business finally came about in the 1990's.

George Maharis is gone now, but hearing of his demise brought back a few memories from a very oong time ago.

Peaceful travels, Buzz.

Fadeout.

A Bad Day for Mowing

 

by Pa Rock

Trimmer of Grass

I'm old enough to remember the age of biorhythms, a bit of New Age quackery that surfaced in the 1970's and was used by many to justify various aspects of their lives, as well as their accomplishments or lack thereof.  Biorhythm theory was a pseudoscience which suggested that peoples' lives were influenced by rhythmic cycles - physical cycles of exactly 23 days, emotional cycles of 28 days, and intellectual cycles of 33 days.  

The days progress through each of the individual cycles in a wave pattern from the high points of +100 when things in a particular cycle are generally going very good, down to a "0" lie in the middle where things are of an uncertain nature, and then on down to a -100 where things can get decidedly negative.  I think at one time these extremes were called "critical" days.

Several scholarly studies have failed to lend any credence or validity to the theory of biorhythms whatsoever.

Be that as it may, yesterday I experienced what was clearly a "double critical" day in my physical and emotional cycles.  I had put off mowing to the point that my neighbor had sneaked out one evening earlier in the week and taken a couple of passes along the portion of my yard that borders the road separating our houses.  When the neighbor starts sneaking around to mow your yard for you, it is definitely time to mow!

After spending thirty minutes or so getting suited-up in my special mowing gear - long pants and long-sleeved shirt, bucket hat - along with plenty of sunscreen of the few remaining exposed spots of my tired old carcass, I went to town, bought gas for the mower and came home ready to get down to the business of riding the mower for six or more hours.  It was 10:00 a.m. when I first cranked my mighty zero-turn riding mower.  One hour later I finally got it started.  Someone, somehow, had managed to turn off the fuel supply line which slowed the process considerably, but whoever did the dastardly deed had failed to take into account that I have five college degrees and would eventually figure it out.  Before that experience I had not even known about the fuel supply line or the very small lever the t shuts it off.  Now I do.  Clearly my "intellectual" cycle was hitting its full stride, even if my "physical" cycle was showing some concern.  But through it all, I managed to keep my "emotional" cycle in check.

I hadn't been mowing very long when I ran over a brick.  After I got the mower shut down and restarted, I was relieved to see that I hadn't torn it up.  That came thirty minutes later.

The reason I ran over the brick is that it was nearing 11:00 a;m. and getting warmer, and I had applied sunscreen too liberally to my face and it was melting and getting in my eyes.  I was squinting and my vision was becoming impaired.

Not long after the brick, I nudged the mower too closely to a raised flower bed that I was circling and managed to knock a large landscaping stone loose - and then run over it.  That one did so some damage, and by the time I got the mower stopped, I had a flat tire which appeared to be damaged.  At that point my "emotional" cycle was also bottoming out.

Being home alone and not being a mechanic, I abandoned that mower and went and got my spare - a much older rider with a smaller cut and a steering wheel.  I hadn't been on the spare in nearly three years - although my son has kept it operational and occasionally uses it himself to help Old Dad with the mowing, so it took several minutes to relearn how to use it - but I finally did.  Then I spent about half-an-hour being beaten to death by that antique - and it was extremely brutal to my broken arm.   I finally decided that since I had about a third of the yard mowed, and all of the parts that can be seen from the road, that I would give it a rest and try to get the tire repaired on the good mower.  Today my son is in town working on that task.

There are days that just do not start out worth a damn, and those are the days when a person should consider going back to bed.  Maybe biorhythms have no validity, but there is something to be said about having a plain old "bad day!"

A day that starts in the crapper will most likely stay in the crapper!

Tina Turner, Simply the Best

 

by Pa Rock

Fan Boy

A powerful human being with an amazing voice left us last week.  Tina Turner passed away at her home near Zurich, Switzerland, on May 24th at the age of eighty-three.  Ms. Turner, who was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tennessee, is more readily associated with the Tennessee hamlet of Nutbush, the place where she grew up in the household of her grandmother.  Tina's grandmother passed away when Tina was just sixteen, and the girl packed up and moved to St. Louis with ambitions of becoming a success in the music industry - and the rest is history.

 It was a long road and a hard life from Nutbush to Zurich, and Tina Turner laid her hard life out for public scrutiny.  She was married twice, first to fellow musician Ike Turner who had serious substance issues and was a physically abusive spouse, and second to Erwin Bach, a European record executive who was sixteen years her junior.  Turner and Bach, whom she described at the love of her life, were together 38-years and married for the final ten years of her life.  Ike Turner gave Tina regular beatings, and Erwin Bach gave her one of his kidney's five years before she passed away.  

Tina Turner also raised four sons.   Two of the four were adopted, Ike's sons from previous relationships, one was her biological son from a previous relationship before she was with Ike, and one was with Ike.  Both of her biological sons preceded their mother in death - one by just five months.

The astounding Tina Turner had essentially two musical careers.  The first was her partnership with Ike Turner that lasted  from the late-1950s for about two decades into the mid-1970s.  Those were the "River Deep, Mountain High" and "Proud Mary" years in which her rich and powerful voice was  making its imprint on the music scene and with the public.  Her second career was after she very publicly shed herself of Ike, and that one showed her true range as a singer and entertainer.  The second career was mostly a solo effort, and was born with her "Private Dancer" album of 1984, an effort which produced multiple memorable singles including the title track "Private Dancer," as well as "What's Love Got to do with It," and "Better be Good to Me."

But, there were also some powerful duets in the second career.   Ask Alexa to play "Tina Turner duets," crank jp the volume, and just try to not get swept up and washed away by the sounds!

"What's Love Got to Do with It," the 1993 movie biography of Tina's life and particularly about the abuse she endured from Ike Turner, received many accolades as well as an Oscar nomination for Angela Bassett who played Tina in the movie.  It also did much to stir a national conversation about domestic abuse.  The movie was rooted in her book about those years which was titled "I, Tina."

One of my favorite Tina Turner memories of all time (and yes, I have told it in this space before) originated in about 1976, after Ike and Tina had broken their act but had not yet divorced, and after Sonny and Cher had also broken their act and were in the process of divorcing.  Sonny and Cher's troubles brought about the end of their successful television variety show, and CBS had given Cher her own show which lasted from 1975-1976.  One evening her guests were Tina Turner and British actor and singer, Anthony Newley.  The three of them did a wild and raucous rendition of Neil Diamond's "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" that brought down the house! I've always thought that CBS was missing a sure bet by not digging that one out of the vaults and releasing it as a music single.

I thought about featuring a song today that was strongly associated with Tina Turner, but there are just too many to choose from.  Musically she was everywhere, from "Proud Mary" to "Private Dancer" and so much more.  Her voice, and music, and dancing were all so distinctive, so "Tina"!

Tina Turner has left thee stage, for good this time, but it will be a long damned time before the world forgets her - if it ever does.  She was and always will be simply the best!

Our House

 

by Pa Rock

Home Occupier

I live in an old, but very well built house.   It was constructed in the late 1950's by a professional carpenter who made it for himself and his young family, a wife and four sons.  They lived here for many years before the mother, by then a widow, sold out and moved to town.  She sold to an old man and his grown son who lived here for several years, and then that old man sold out to me almost ten years ago, another old man who now lives in the house with his adult son.

I guess the house is developing a "type."

The house is small, about 1,800 square feet, with two small bedrooms and two small baths, large living room, kitchen, utility room, finished basement, covered front porch, and a comfortable deck off of the back porch.   Back when it was built it was even smaller, by about a third, yet somehow the structure managed to accommodate two adults and four healthy boys!  There are several outbuildings, including two 12-by-24-feet metal buildings that I purchased new and had moved to the property.  The old asphalt shingle roof never had a leak, but a couple of years I had the house and two outbuildings covered with metal roofs just to insure that leaks never had an invitation to develop and plague my happy existence.

Many days I see deer from the front room window as well as from the back deck.   Raccoons, possums, armadillos, even the odd skunk visit the property on occasion, and several groundhogs have permanent burrows beneath the property.  (The carpenter's wife, an original resident of the house, even saw a black bear on the property one time.)   The house sits on ten very green acres with peaceful views in all directions.  There are many trees on the property, including several massive pines that were planted as saplings by the grandfather of the boys who grew up here.

One of the boys who was raised here now lives across the street in a house that he and his wife have occupied for nearly forty years.  He's a nice guy, but he still works full-time so we have not socialized much over the years.  Having one of the original residents so close has always put a certain amount of pressure on me to keep the place looking nice.  Recently, however, I have begun slowing down on the yard work.  When I mow, it looks like a park, but now the park is developing a nice ragged fringe.     Maybe that is why my neighbor's interest in his old home place seems to be suddenly rekindled - or perhaps his interests are changing as he, too, approaches retirement.

What used to be two or three brief conversations a year with the neighbor are now becoming almost daily occurrences.   Anytime the neighbor sees me out in the yard, he strolls over to exchange a few pleasantries.  He seems to be home more and is definitely outside working in his yard more than before.  This past week he even spent several hours cleaning off the county roadway across the street from my yard, an act which gives me a much better view of the deer on that side of the road.

And when the neighbor comes over he quickly becomes immersed in nostalgia.  He likes to stroll the property and show me where the bases were located when he and his brothers played baseball, and tell other stories about various features of the property as he re-lives his bucolic boyhood.  The other day he led me to the backyard where he then made himself at home on the deck.  While he and I and Rosie sat chatting and enjoying the afternoon quiet, he began talking of how his father was too busy building homes for other people to take care of things at home.

He said, "You know, Mom and I built this deck.  We had always talked about how nice it would be to have one, but Dad was busy building other people's houses."  Then apparently one day when the couple was getting on in years and the father was coming into his final illness, the son and his mother decided just to roll up their sleeves and build the deck themselves.  He said that as they worked, his father would occasionally step out on the back porch and offer advice, but my neighbor and his mom did the actual work.  They began the project early one morning and were sitting on their new deck that evening.  I have kept the old deck well treated, and it is still one of the nicer features of the home - and very solid.

I began this piece with the intent of describing "my house," but as the tale poured through my fingers and onto the keyboard, I began to realize that this house, and all houses, embody emotions, memories, and histories of all who have passed through their doors, slept under their roofs, and relaxed and told tales on their decks.  The old house is not "my house," it's "our house."

Several people have had the privilege and responsibility of caring for the old house where I currently hang my clothes, and, over the years, it has cared for all of us.

I'm thinking that I probably need to go mow.

Stupid and Dangerous, Even for Texas

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Politicians of the right-wing persuasion, and particularly those who happen to be Republicans and reside in southern states, seem to have an innate fear of drag queens, a group of people whom they believe are hellbent on taking their football-playing, gun-toting, tobacco-chewing fourteen-year-old boys and turning them into purse-carrying sissies.  They don't want want drag queens anywhere near decent children, and they don't even want books that mention drag queens in the libraries.  It's all about protecting children.

This week legislation finished making its way through the Texas legislature and is now headed to Governor Abbott for his signature.  That bill will make things incredibly more dangerous for Texas school children - far more so than occasional entertainment by men wearing make-up and frocks.

The new Texas legislation would allow schools to do away with trained and licensed school counselors and instead replace them with unlicensed and uncertified religious chaplains.  The chaplains could be volunteers, or they could be paid through funds which have been allocated for school safety and security.

There are many fine people who volunteer to work with children in many activities, people whose motivations are pure almost to the point of saintliness.  But there are also others, people who gravitate to where children are so that they can satisfy their baser urges.  These opportunistic sexual leaches go where the children are - and scout troops, church groups, and schools are all very common targets.

When people go through training and a certification process in order to work with children, they not only acquire skills and knowledge that will help them in that work, they also are carefully observed by teachers and professional mentors who can pick up on signs that indicate unsuitability for the profession.  They are, in essence, screened,  and those whose motivations to work with children are less than altruistic can be eliminated.

The people running the state of Texas may feel very sanctimonious in their crusade to keep drag queens and knowledge of drag queens away from the children of their state, but they are about to throw open the schoolhouse doors to people who really do pose a threat to children.  Turning the psychological care of children over to people with no training who just want to "help children" is not only shortsighted, it is stupid and very, very dangerous.

(Perhaps if we had mandatory training and certification requirements for people who want to serve in our governing bodies, bad laws like this one in Texas would never be an issue.  Just sayin' . . . )

Goodbye Evil Arch

 

by Pa Rock

Survivor

 Over the past eight years I have had physical therapy at the local hospital three times, each for an issue involving shoulders and arms.    In 2015 I was dealing with a bone spur on my shoulder that was very painful and eventually resulted in surgery.  Then in May of 2020, just as the pandemic was getting into full swing, I fell backward out of a raised flower bed and broke my right arm just below the shoulder, a break that could not be cast and involved a lot of pain and discomfort.  Finally, on January 30th of this year I slipped on some black ice and managed to break my left arm just below the shoulder -  a break almost identical to the one that I suffered less than three years earlier on the other arm.  

This time, after an ambulance ride to the ER and later a visit with the orthopedist in his office, I went to Kansas City for a month of R&R while my son and his family looked after me - and then I returned to West Plains for physical therapy which began in early March.  The long ordeal finally came to an end yesterday.  The physical therapist, whom I had once before, did a wonderful job, and the arm is much better.

This time in the physical therapy program I had one treatment that I did not experience on during the first two rounds at the same clinic.  I call the new procedure "The Evil Arch."

"The Evil Arch" is an extremely simple device that could be made in any home workshop for a twenty-dollar bill, but I suspect the one at the clinic, which looked to be professionally made, probably set the hospital back a couple of hundred bucks.

Basically "The Evil Arch" has a one-inch board base that is about three-feet in length eight inches or so in width.  A plastic support bracket to hold a 3/4-inch PVC pipe in place is screwed into the center of each end of the board about one inch from the end.  The end of a piece of 3/4-inch PVC pipe is placed in one of those brackets and tightened into place, and then extended out toward the other bracket.   The pipe, however, is longer than the space between the brackets, and must be bowed upward about two feet into the air before it will connect and fit into the bracket on the other end of the board.  In that process it becomes an "arch."  Then 27 large plastic shower rings are clamped onto the arch - and before you ask - I have no idea why that particular number was chosen.  The shower rings spend the rest of their existence being lifted  up and over the arch from one end to the other.

"The Evil Arch" is very lightweight and can easily be moved by one person to various locations to accommodate the individual needs and abilities of patients.  When I used it - which was every day that I was present in the clinic - the device sat on a window ledge giving me a grand view of the traffic along US 63.   The base of the contraption was about one inch above my navel, and the tip of the arch was about one inch above the top of my head.  Any first grader could have lifted those rings all day long - but for a seventy-five-year-old codger using his broken arm, it was more of a struggle.

When I was introduced to "The Evil Arch" on my first day in the program, I thought smugly that it was one activity at which I could excel.   As my therapist looked on, I moved the 27 shower curtain rings, one at a time, from one end of the arch to the other.  Easy peasy.  But before I could move on to the next activity, the therapist complicated my life by then asking me to move them back to their original position.   By the time I had moved all 27 back to the side of the board where it had all started, my arm was beginning to throb.

We went on that way for a couple of sessions, with me lifting the rings up and over for a total of 54 times, But when I began to show an abundance of competence and confidence with that task, the therapist changed the game plan. Now she wanted me to do that whole routine twice - or a total of 108 lifts.  (I know it was 108 because I got to where I counted each and every one to myself.)    The longer I lifted, the heavier those strength-suckers became! 

Then one day the therapist suggested that we make it a little more interesting, and she added a half-pound weight to my wrist at the beginning of the activity.  It was harder, but I persisted and mastered that - all the while suspecting what the next modification would be.  The weights were gradually increased, and for the past month so I have been doing the 108 lifts per session with two pounds of weights on my left wrist, the wrist attached to the most recently broken arm.  What were once simple shower-curtain rings were beginning to feel like bricks!

But I did it, twice a week every week - along with many other strength-building activities, and yesterday I graduated!

My arm is better, my attitude is better, and I will never look at PVC plumbing pipe and shower curtain rings the same way again!

Thank you, Julie!

Uvalde (and more) Remembered

 

by Pa Rock

Grandfather

The constant flow of bloodshed in our schools is not something that we have to endure.   It is an almost totally unfettered onslaught of pestilence and savagery brought on and openly condoned by American politicians - primarily Republicans - who put the profits (and political donations) of gun manufacturers above the lives of children.  It can be stopped, and it must be stopped!

My earliest professional career was in public education, a field that I left a little over three decades ago.    Schools were different then.  At the time I moved on from teaching, automatic and semi-automatic weaponry was illegal, and things like concealed-carry and permitless-carry weren't even being discussed.   America was well-armed in the 1990's, but it had yet to cross over into the realm of guns having more rights to exist than children.

I'm not going to regurgitate the abhorrent list of school bloodshed that has ensued over the past three decades, but for me three will always will always stand out as for their absolute savagery and horror.  

One of the most brutal attacks in this steady stream of carnage came in December of 2012 when a mentally unstable young man broke into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and shot and killed twenty-six people, twenty of whom were first-graders. The shooter, who was armed with automatic weapons, walked from classroom to classroom calmly firing bullets into the bodies of little children.   I sat in my office and cried that afternoon.  Surely this would be the incident that ended this evil once and for all, I thought - but I thought wrong.

Another shooting that always surfaces when I find myself dwelling on the crimes that America inflicts on its children is the Parkland school shooting in Florida on Valentine's Day in 2019.  On that tragic day an angry former student forced his way into the high school and went on a shooting rampage with his automatic weaponry.  While that shooter took his time killing seventeen, mostly students, and wounding seventeen others,  many young people hid in  closets and under furniture in classrooms while texting their good-byes to parents and loved ones.  The horror would have been unimaginable.

But the most awful of the school shootings to me was the one that occurred in Uvalde, Texas, at the Robb Elementary School one year ago yesterday.   That one felt personal.  The killer, a mentally disturbed young man with automatic weapons, who was also a former student at the school, managed to get into the building and wipe out a large, combined classroom of fourth-grade students and their two teahers.   The shooter had plenty of time to fire multiple shots into the ten-year-olds because police stalled for nearly an hour before entering the classroom.   They were scared of the shooter's automatic weapons.

The body count in Uvalde was 19 students (10-year-olds), two teachers, and seventeen more students wounded.  Many of the wounded survived by lying on the floors in the blood of their dead classmates and pretending to be dead.  The shooter then calmly waited on the police to finally arrive and kill him.

I have six grandchildren, four boys and two girls.   At the time of the Uvalde shooting, my granddaughters were both ten-years-old and in fourth grade - one in Oregon and the other in Kansas.  That shooting made it very real for me, and now, every day, I worry about my grandchildren.  It is a burden that no one should have to carry, yet school shootings become more commonplace by the day.

Shame on the politicians who continue to support this madness.   They, too, are lying in blood and pretending to be dead to the world around them!

And they, too, are as evil as the angry young men who are using weapons of war to inflict their rage on little children who want nothing more than to go to school and be happy.

And shame on the rest of us for standing by and allowing this madness to continue!

A Tale of Two Missouri Cities

 

by Mike Box

Guest Blogger

(Editor's Note:  Yesterday in this space I posted a brief commentary about a young man from Chesterfield, Missouri (a suburb of St. Louis) who had attempted to drive a 26-foot moving van through barriers and onto the White House grounds the night before..  His attempt was futile, but as police searched they found a Nazi flag in the cab of the truck, and as the young man was being arrested he reportedly made threatening comments against the White House.  It was clearly an act of terrorism, though not a very bright one.

An old friend from college who is a former resident of Missouri read that blog posting and attached an interesting comment comparing two suburban communities in St. Louis County, Missouri - Chesterfield, which spawned the fellow who tried to attack the White House two nights ago, and Fegruson,  where an 18-year-old black youth, Michael Brow, was shot and killed by a white police officer, a killing which resulted in prolonged nights of rioting amid an over-reaction by the state of Missouri.  Here is what Mike had to say about it - re-posted in this space with his permission, of course.)

"Talk about a tale of two cities! Chesterfield has a median family income of $124,551. Compare that to Ferguson, you remember Mike Brown and Ferguson, don't you? Ferguson has a median family income of $40,195. 35% of Chesterfield's residents have a Master's degree or higher. Meanwhile in Ferguson only 7% have reached that level of education. Nationally, only 13% of Americans are so well educated. 

"On August 9, 2014, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. In 2019 a Chesterfield police officer shot and killed the driver of a car that struck him. The State of Missouri responded to Mike Brown's death by bringing a large military styled show of force. There was an investigation into the officer involved shooting in Chesterfield. He was found not to be at fault. The police officer that killed Mike Brown, Darren Wilson, was not brought to justice. 

"It is true that a prosecuting attorney can take a ham sandwich to a grand jury and get an indictment. In Saint Louis the prosecuting attorney, in my opinion, didn't try very hard to indict Darren Wilson. 

"There are some people in Saint Louis County that may have legitimate grievances with the government. By all objective measures the fold in Ferguson got the stick while those living in Chesterfield got the carrot. 

"But it wasn't a kid from the underprivileged city of Ferguson that pulled a stupid stunt in Washington, D.C. It was a member of the privileged community of Chesterfield who did that. And the kid from Chesterfield was arrested. I'll give you odds that if it had been a kid from Ferguson, he would have ended up DOA at the nearest trauma center." 

I appreciate the time and thought that Mike Box put in crafting his response to my simple regurgitation of the facts.  He provided an enlightening look at social and racial disparities, even within the same county, and his thoughts on the matter are reflective of the same divides that continue to plague most of America.

Thanks for sharing all of that, Mike, and for allowing me to repeat it.

Missouri Nazi Storms White House, Misses

 

by Pa rock

Citizen Journalist

A nineteen-year-old man from Chesterfield, Missouri, rammed a 26-foot  U Haul moving van into one of the cement barriers on a street outside of the White House late yesterday evening in an apparent attempt to storm the President's home.  According to one eye witness, when the man hit the barrier with his truck and the barrier didn't move, he backed up and tried again.

The incident, which was scary in part be because a moving van was used twenty years ago to blow up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, caused city streets to be closed and traffic to be re-routed, but no serious injuries to  people or property were reported.  The nearby Hay-Adams Hotel was also temporarily evacuated at the request of the Secret Service.

One news report said that the initial search of the van was conducted by a remote-controlled police robot.    The cargo area of the van contained only a moving dolly, but a Nazi flag was reportedly found in the cab of the truck, along with a black backpack and a roll of duct tape.  The young driver also was said to have made threatening comments about the White House at the scene.

The driver was arrested on numerous charges including threatening to kill or harm a president, vice president , or family member - as well as assault with a dangerous weapon, reckless operation of a motor vehicle, destruction of federal property, and trespassing.

Last night as this story was breaking, the Nazi contingent on Twitter began referring to it as some sort of "false flag" operation, something  dreamed up and carried out by the government in order to make the American Nazi's look bad - but clearly those folks do not need anyone's help in that regard, and they continue to be a punchline for the MAGA movement of right-wing extremists.

NAACP Does Florida!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

On Saturday the NAACP, our nation’s premier Civil Rights organization, issued a travel advisory on the state of Florida warning would-be travelers to the state that, under the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida is becoming increasingly hostile to Black Americans as well as to other struggling minority groups.  In its advisory the national organization spoke of DeSantis’s “aggressive” attempts to remove the teaching of Black history from the curriculum of Florida schools, and his efforts to restrict “diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools.”
 
DeSantis was instrumental in blocking the introduction of an Advanced Placement program in African American Studies from Florida high schools.
 
In a statement on the matter the NAACP said:
 

“Florida had been openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals.   Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.”

 
“The League of United Latin American Citizens” and “Equality Florida” an LGBTQ advocacy group, have previously issued travel advisories encouraging people not to come to the Sunshine State.  Tourism is a huge part of Florida’s economy  - and more that 137 million people visited the state in 2022.
 
DeSantis, a Republican who is about to announce a bid for the GOP presidential nomination, has been steadily positioning himself as a right-wing extremist for the past couple of years.  Part of his political assault on his own state has been an unrelenting attack on the state’s major employer, Walt Disney World.  His beef with Disney goes back to when the Magic Kingdom spoke out against the DeSantis' anti-gay policies.    

At some point the governor of Florida will foul his own nest to the point that decent and tolerant people will look elsewhere for their vacation experiences – and perhaps even their retirement homes.  Florida's economy will falter, and Ron DeSantis will own the mess he created.
 
Great work, NAACP.  Now do Texas!

Is the GOP Getting Too Much Fiber?

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I was watching a YouTube channel this morning and enjoying Randy Rainbow's hillarious takedown of Ron DeSantis, and when that ended it was immediately replaced by a clip of some nutritionist or doctor  doing a presentation on the dangers of consuming too much fiber.  I'm old enough to remember when we were encouraged to get more fiber into our bodies, but now, according to the video that I saw this morning, that practice is regarded as risky.  The person in the clip was saying that excessive fiber in one's diet can cause "poop blockage" in the bowels, stretch the bowels, and increase discomfort when one sits on the pot.

And all of that, of course, circled my thought processes right back to Ron DeSantis and the other  Republican dreadful hopefuls who are running for President - or at least are strongly contemplating getting into the race.  As I pondered the list, I suddenly realized that many of them seem to be from the same part of the country - the American Southeast - and, for some reason, that again brought me back to thoughts of poop blockage.  

Oh, there are geographic outliers to be sure.  Strays with little-to-no chance of getting the nomination like Sununu in New Hampshire, Christie in New Jersey, Noem in South Dakota, Pence in Indiana, and Hutchinson in Arkansas.  While they must content themselves with snatching the occasional bit of press attention, it is a gaggle of goobers in the Southeast who are sucking down most of the GOP's oxygen - and they are almost all centered in two states:  Florida and South Carolina.

First among the Florida candidates would have to be Mr. Toad of Mar-a-Lago who has already declared, and as a former President as well as an active and buffoonish cult leader, Donald Trump cannot be ignored.  Then there is also the extremist right-wing governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who seems to be planning a formal entry into the race next week.  (If you have yet to see the Randy Rainbow clip on DeSantis, it will make your day!)

Trump and DeSantis, that's two mighty big political names from a state whose dry land mass gets smaller every day.  But there's more.  Francis Suarez, the very popular Mayor of Miami, also seems to be heading toward an imminent announcement that he, too, is running.  Republicans in Florida have cultivated the Cuban immigrant vote for generations, and Suarez, a son of Cuban immigrants, ought to have a fairly solid grasp on that section of the electorate.

And there's more yet!  Florida has two Republican senators with national name recognition.   Rick Scott, the Medicare fraudster who tried unsuccessfully to topple Mitch McConnell from his leadership of the GOP in the Senate, has said that he will not run, but honesty is not Scott's long suit, and he could change his mind.   The state's other senator, Marco Rubio, ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, and has, as of yet, not made any noise about getting into the race this year.   But Little Marco, like Scott, has no shortage of ambition.

Whether they are officially "in" the race or not, that is still five well known Republicans from just one state, any of whom would humiliate themselves in a heartbeat by eating corndogs at the Iowa State Fair in front of cameras if they thought they had a snowball's chance of winning four years of flying around in Air Force One and playing unlimited golf.

And then there is South Carolina.

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has already announced her candidacy for the GOP Presidential nomination.  Haley was most recently Trump's Ambassador to the United Nations.  While serving as governor of South Carolina, Haley appointed  Tim Scott to the US Senate in 2013 when Senator Jim DeMint resigned, and Scott has since been re-elected in his own right.  Senator Scott, the first Black person to represent South Carolina in the Senate since Reconstruction, has filed paperwork indicating that he, too, plans to run for the GOP presidential nod.  

That's two from South Carolina - and should the ever-charming Senator Lindsey Graham develop a wild hair and throw his chapeau into the ring during a fit of pique, why that would be three!

And while we are focused on the Southeast, there is also a delusional squeaky hinge in the state of Georgia who thinks that Donald Trump is just itching to ask her to be his running mate.

Maybe it's something in the water that's creating this wad of presidential ambition within the GOP in the American Southeast, or, then again, perhaps that political blockage is just the result of too much fiber.

Perhaps an elephant laxative would be in order.

In fact, better make it a suppository!

Some Personal Perspective on Hiroshima

 

by Pa Rock

World Traveler

President Biden is in Japan this week meeting with the G-7 leaders of the world's most prominent democracies.  Their meetings are being held in the city of Hiroshima which was the first city in the world to suffer the direct carnage of an atomic bomb  -  a bomb that was dropped at the direction of another US President, Harry S. Truman.   Interestingly, Biden is not the first US President to visit Hiroshima, which is now internationally recognized as a living memorial to Peace.  Barack Obama visited Hiroshima and spoke in front of Peace Park's centerpiece, the Atomic Dome, on May 27th, 2016, seven years ago next week.

I have written about Hiroshima several times in this space because I was fortunate enough to visit the city in February of 1973, less than twenty-eight years after it was bombed by US forces on August 6, 1945.  My wife and I took a military hop (a free ride) from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa to an Air Force facility near Tokyo.  We spent a couple of days touring Tokyo and then took the famed Japanese "Bullet Train," which was then the fastest train in the world, south to the old Japanese capital of Kyoto.  The fast train ended in Kyoto and we had to get on what was derisively referred to as "cattle car" train that forced people to stand tightly packed together for the remainder of the long ride to Hiroshima. 

We spent a long weekend in Hiroshima - where people who spoke English were a rarity at that time - and did a thorough tour of Peace Park over a couple of days with a young Japanese man named "Hiroshi" who volunteered to guide us so that he could practice his English.   In the evenings we walked the streets of the city and visited the colorful, noisy, and ubiquitous pachinko parlors.

For anyone who would like to know more about Hiroshima and the way it was in the 1970's, I have exhaustive accounts of that visit in this blog on the entries of August 6, 2010 (the 65th anniversary of the bombing) and on August 6, 2020, the 75th anniversary of the bombing.  Those pieces contain lots of anecdotal detail and historical tidbits.  Also for anyone who would like a sense of what life was like in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing, and the horrific impact that it had on the lives of the ordinary people who were waking up there on that day, I highly recommend John Hersey's "Hiroshima," a small, yet very powerful accounting of life in the city the morning the world changed forever.  It is an extremely moving sketch of the lives of six individuals who witnessed the bombing from ground level and lived to tell the tale.   

(I used Hersey's book in high school history classes.  That is probably something that would be frowned upon today in the rush to sanitize history.)

President Biden is at Peace Park today along with other world leaders.  I hope that each of them is able to take some time and walk among the monuments and read the messages of peace that have been delivered to the people of Hiroshima from the peoples and countries of the world.  It is quite a moving tribute and one that is well worth taking the time to fully appreciate.

Get Well, Senator Feinstein - Or Go Home

 

by Pa Rock

Reliable Democratic Voter

Dianne Feinstein, the longest serving current member of the United States Senate as well as the Senate's oldest member, has just returned to work following a nearly three-month absence in which she dealt with a case of shingles that some reports say resulted in a very dangerous side effect of brain fever.  Both of my parents suffered from shingles during their final year or so of life, and I can personally attest to the awful physical impact that the condition has on its victims, and the emotional pressures that it brings to bear on family members.

Dianne Feinstein had the malady and she managed to survive, and a couple of weeks ago she returned to Washington amid great political pressure to either get back to work or resign so that someone else could represent California's and the nation's interests in the US Senate.

But is Feinstein actually back?  She is transported about the Capitol in a wheel chair and is constantly attended (guarded?) by a tight circle of aides.  This past week a reporter did somehow manage to slip past her legislative attendants and ask the senator a question related to her recent long-term absence from the Capitol - and Feinstein smiled back and told him that she had not been gone.

Oooh-weee-oooh!

Yesterday there were some stories in the press about the posse of aides who are constantly in attendance with Pelosi.  According to a report in yesterday's edition of the "New York Intelligencer," Feinstein's "secret caretaker," the person glued the tightest to the failing senator, is Nancy Prowda, the eldest daughter  to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  Ms. Powdra, who is not an adult baby-sitter by training, works as an executive with Hilton Hotels when she is not assisting and/or guarding she remnants of California's senior senator.  Some reports indicated that she may be currently residing with Feinstein in the senator's home.

Why doesn't the aging senator who was born three months and two days into FDR's FIRST term just pack it in, retire, and go home to California to enjoy what time she has left in the sunshine of the Golden State?  One possibility is that she enjoys the power and prestige of being in the Senate and does not want to give it up.  But, of course, another possibility is that at this point she doesn't have a clear understanding of her situation and just smiles and goes along where she people roll her - and signs her name where they point.  That would hardly be a recipe for leadership.

There have also been stories in the press of late suggesting that the senior senator from California is little more than a pawn in a larger chess match that is playing out to determine the state's next senator after Feinstein is finally gone in January of 2025.

That game works this way:

Barring a political catastrophe, California is a reliably blue state that should return another Democrat to the Senate to replace Feinstein in January of 2025.  Right now there are five Democrats who have already officially declared that they want her job, and of those the most serious three candidates are all members of Congress:  Representatives Katie Porter (whiteboard Katie of Orange County), Adam Schiff (who represents some of the tonier areas of Los Angeles), and Barbara Lee who represents Oakland and the eastern region of the San Francisco Bay Area - and not the posh parts of San Francisco where people like the Pelosi's and Feinstein's live.  

If Feinstein should resign - or pass away - before her term ends, the governor of California, Democrat Gavin Newsom, could name her replacement, an act that would give a political leg up to his selectee in the 2024 race for a full term.  Newsom has said that he will appoint a black woman to fill that seat, a description which fits Congresswoman Barbara Lee.

But if Feinstein hangs on until the 2024 election, the choice would go to the voters outright, and Congressman Adam Schiff has a huge advantage of money already in the bank for the race - and he has the endorsement of Nancy Pelosi.

Katie Porter is a darling of the American Progressive movement and seems to think that her messaging will prevail in spite of not having a big-name California officeholder to cheer her along.

So, on a very basic level, the race to elect the next full-term senator from California centers around when Feinstein leaves office.  If she goes early the advantage will be to Gov. Gavin Newsom, and if Feinstein can remain functional until her term ends, Pelosi is likely to prevail with her pick.

It may be democracy of a sort, but a pissing match between the Governor of California and the former Speaker of the US House feels more like it is about the needs of Gavin Newsom and Nancy Pelosi than it is about the needs of average Californians - and that is sad - almost as sad as Dianne Feinstein.

Get well Senator Feinstein, or go home.

The Royals Export Celebrity Drama to the States

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The British Royal family, a closely inbred interrelated group of freeloaders and useless nabobs whose only function in life seems to be that of generating "news" for the tabloids and acting as human tourist attractions, have now opened a branch office in the States, and my, aren't we lucky to have them!

There used to be hope in some quarters that when Queen Forever Elizabeth II passed on, the monarchy would quietly extinguish itself, but now they - the king and his immediate heirs - seem to be working at warp speed to entrench their money and privileged lifestyles more firmly than ever into the British landscape.

His Divorced Highness, King Charles III and his Divorced Bed Partner, Queen Camilla, have already laid claim to all of the nicer family residences - even little Frogmore - and sweated their own DNA onto some of the more valuable family jewels, many of which were stolen from subjugated peoples generations ago.

But they wear them well.

Photographs of Charles in his coronation regalia of crown, jewels, and furs have him looking far more like an Old Queen than his mother ever did.  And Camilla, the Second Wife, may not be living up to the description "The Rottweiler" that the First Wife tried to hang on her, but Camilla is presenting as the silent partner who is scurrying about and trying to say and do all of the right things while staying out of the King's royal way.

There had been hope that the King's royal offspring, the two sons by the First Wife, would separate themselves from the useless lifestyle propagated by the past thirty generations of so of their direct ancestors, but that doesn't seem to be happening.  While both Wills and Harry presented as fairly normal kids when their mum was still alive, they now both seem to be just as damaged by unending privilege as most of their forebears.  William marches stiffly through his royal settings and duties as if he had a scepter shoved up his royal English backside, and Harry, who became essentially irrelevant once Wills mastered the art of making babies, moved off to the Colonies where he now peddles his celebrity status for American dollars instead of British pounds.

Wills and Harry have both essentially eschewed the notion of ever working for a living and are instead content  to earn their keep in society by being celebrities.  God knows we don't have enough of those.

Yesterday Harry and his wife, Meghan, carried a couple of news cycles when some member of their staff told the press that they had just been pursued in a high speed car chase by members of the paparazzi, an evil subset of humanity who make their living by snapping photos of celebrities in a symbiotic relationship that keeps the social parasites in the press and the photographers in pizza.  That story about a high speed car chase by fiends with cameras had legs, of course, because Harry's mother, the King's First Wife, lost her life in that exact scenario.

But an hour or two later the taxi driver who was at the wheel for the royals during part of the alleged chase was talking to the press and saying it really hadn't been any big deal - and denials regarding the severity of the experience were also coming in from some of the police officers who had peripheral involvement in the incident.

But a car chase, especially a car chase by paparazzi involving one of Diana's sons, sells newspapers - and it also helps maintain celebrity status, and being a celebrity pays the bills.

It's all in a day's work for th rich and famous.

Don't worry, Harry.  Your American cousins will stand in awe every time you ride by in your Bentley.  We will give you the royal treatment you so richly deserve - and with any luck at all you will prove to be just as useless here as Wills is back home in Britain!

God save the king - and all who profit and freeload off of his existence!

Divorce Courts are being Clogged by Bible-Thumpers from Congress

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

As someone who has been there and done that, twice no less, I understand that divorce is a very painful process and one that should be kept as private as possible for a multitude of reasons.  But as someone who has taken abuse from phony moral arbiters, I also recognize that sometimes it is damned hard to sit on the sidelines and hold your tongue when the people suddenly seeking divorces are the same jackasses who have spent countless hours telling the rest of us how to live our lives!

I am, of course, rattling on about two current members of Congress, both of whom are known as Bible-thumping, gun-toting "Christians," and both of whom are now ending long-term marriages to the fathers of their children.  Both also profess fealty and adoration to a thrice-married, twice-divorced former President whose current wife, a former underwear model, oversaw the decimation of Jacqueline Kennedy's White House Rose Garden.

But praise Jesus and pass the beans because both of these politicians have taken the initiative and are fixing themselves and their situations. Soon the world will once again be all sunshine and bluebirds, and then they can go back to telling us lesser beings how to live our lives - whether we want them to or not.  

Best of everything in your new lives, ladies.  Please use them to focus on yourselves - and give the rest of us a break!

Texas, Where the Blood Is Always Flowing

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

It can be the slowest news day in the history of journalism, but there will be stories of gun carnage coming out of Texas.  The Lone Star State is armed to the eyeballs with all manner of firearms, and Texans are not afraid, nor reluctant, to use their massive personal firepower to sort the world out according to their personal beliefs.

Yesterday I wrote about Daniel Perry, an active duty US Army sergeant who moonlights as an Uber driver in the Austin area.   While some facts of the Perry case remain in dispute, they apparently were not in dispute to the jury who recently heard and evaluated all of the evidence surrounding the shooting.  Sgt. Perry did drive into a Black Lives Matter demonstration three years ago, for whatever reason, roll down his window, and then fired his legal pistol at a legally armed protester multiple times - and killed the man.  This past April an Austin area jury found Sgt. Perry guilty of murder - by a unanimous vote.   Perry, who claimed that he thought the protestor was going to aim his rifle at him, claimed his innocence in accordance with the Texas stand-your-ground law.

Fox News  did not like the Perry verdict, and they got Governor Abbott stirred up - and the governor has vowed to pardon the shooter just as soon as the Texas Board of Pardons gives him official cover to reverse the unanimous jury verdict.   The victim, remember, was a protestor with Black Lives Matter - not a regular Texan - and Abbott, who is a regular Texas politician, knows exactly how his toast is buttered.

Today there are a couple of more Texas shootings of an outrageous nature in the news.  

First is the story of a 26-year-old Texas woman and mother of multiple young children who found herself pregnant again, a medical condition with which she was not happy.    Texas, a land where the blood from gun violence never stops flowing, is staunchly "pro-life," and the only abortions currently occurring in the state are for "medical emergencies."   The lady had to go to Colorado to get her medical procedure.   Upon returning to the Texas, her boyfriend, and presumably the father of child, shot his girlfriend dead.   

The shooter has been arrested and charged with murder.  There is no word yet on whether the governor will feel compelled to meddle in this case or not, but it has enough political trappings that he may not be able to resist.  Fox News, what say you?

And this past Saturday night a twenty-year-old inebriated young man decided that the parking lot of the  Sonic Drive-In in the small town of Keene, Texas, would be a good place to get out of his vehicle and relieve himself.   A 32-year-old male worker at the Sonic happened to look up and see the guy hosing down the parking lot - and went outside to confront him.  Unfortunately, the public nuisance was not alone.  While the Sonic employee was trying to get the situation under control, a passenger in the man's vehicle reached for an assault rifle and fired six rounds at the meddlesome employee.  The shooter was a twelve-years-old boy.

The Sonic employee who died in the shooting was the father of a ten-year-old son.  

The shooter and his drunken driver fled the scene and were arrested later that night. Both have been charged with murder.

Texas.  Bloody fucking Texas.

Monday's Poetry: "Sympathy for the Devil"

 

by Pa Rock

Poetry Appreciator

Ever since Donald Trump brought hate and bigotry back into fashion in America, some Republican politicians seem to be abandoning their moral compasses.    Before taking a stand on crimes so heinous  that they would have, in years past, only had one decent response, some right-wing politicos now run their potential responses through a Fox News filter to make sure that what they say will not offend any of the angry old white folks whose whole world is based on what Fox feeds them.

Two recent examples:  

Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott is chomping at the bit to pardon a convicted killer, and all Abbot is waiting on is some official cover via a recommendation from the state's pardon and parole board.  The man Abbott is so eager to pardon is 35-yeear-old Army sergeant Daniel Perry, who in 2020 drove his car into a Black Lives Matter protest, rolled down his window, and fired five shots with a pistol at a man in the crowd who had an assault weapon pointed down and who was apparently approaching Perry's car.  Perry said in court that he felt the other man was "going to aim at me."  Texas has a stand-your-ground law, so the Perry, a legally armed Uber driver, immediately declared that he had feared for his life.

Sgt. Perry was tried on a charge of murder in Travis County, Texas (Austin) this past April and was found guilty through the unanimous vote of the jurors who heard the case, even though he had apparently been expecting to be exonerated through the stand-your-ground law.   Fox News was not happy with the outcome and the managed to get Governor Abbott stirred up about it.  In Texas a governor does not have unilateral pardoning power like the President does, and for Abbott to pardon the man who killed the protester, he must have a recommendation to do so from the Pardon and Parole Board.  Governor Abbott has said that he will make the pardon just as soon as he gets that recommendation.  

Abbott obviously knows far more about real justice and the actual incident that occurred on the streets of Austin than the twelve individuals who sat through the entire trial as jury members listening to - and weighing - the evidence, and then agreeing unanimously on the shooter's guilt - and when Abbott gets that recommendation he will fix the egregious error that the jury made, you betcha he will!

No pressure guys, but Greg is waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting!

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, like Abbott in Texas, is also a Trump acolyte.  DeSantis seems to be running for President, a situation which he apparently feels gives him license to speak about political outrages that occur anywhere.  This week he inserted himself, quite uninvited, into the case of Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old former Marine who has been charged in the choking death of a New York City mentally ill Black man as they were riding on a subway.  The victim died as a result of being placed in a chokehold by the Marine vigilante.  Many who knew the victim describe him as having been an annoyance - but essentially harmless.  Penny was arrested and charged with second degree manslaughter, and is now out on bail.

In a tweet last night Governor DeSantis described the vigilante who killed the subway nuisance (and fellow human being) as a "Good Samaritan."

Yup, Ron, I'm sure that's exactly how Jesus would have described him, too.

Today's poetry is another offering that initially entered the public realm as a musical recording.  It was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and was recorded, of course, by The Rolling Stones.  The song, "Sympathy for the Devil," highlights many other people in history who probably also felt - at some level - that they were doing God's work.   I'm not sure why it reminds me of Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis and others of that authoritarian stripe, but it does.

Sympathy for the Devil

By Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

 

 

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long years
Stole million man's soul an faith

 

And I was 'round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

 

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

 

Stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed Tsar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain

 

I rode a tank
Held a general's rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank

 

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah

 

I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made

 

I shouted out
Who killed the Kennedys?
When after all
It was you and me

 

Let me please introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached Bombay

 

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, baby

 

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what's confusing you
Is just the nature of my game

 

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint

 

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politnesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste, mm yeah

 

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, mm yeah
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, mm mean it, get down

 

Woo, who
Oh yeah, get on down
Oh yeah

 

Aah yeah

 

Tell me baby, what's my name?
Tell me honey, can ya guess my name?
Tell me baby, what's my name?
I tell you one time, you're to blame

 

What's my name
Tell me, baby, what's my name?
Tell me, sweetie, what's my name?

 

Francis X. Suarez

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I saw a blurb on the internet yesterday where pollster and former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway is promoting Francis X. Suarez, the 45-year-old mayor of Miami, Florida, as a potential GOP presidential nominee in 2024 - and apparently Mayor Suarez is giving that prospect serious consideration.    That would bring to three the number of Floridians chasing the front door keys to the White House.

Suarez would be an interesting choice.  Not only is he young, he is also dynamic and extremely popular with voters.  

Although Mayor Suarez is of Cuban descent, he was born in Miami, and is, in fact, the first native of that city to ever become mayor.  Suarez has won election twice as mayor, once with 86% of the vote and a second time with 78 percent - a clear indication that residents of his city like him and think he is doing a good job for them. Detracting from his appeal would, of course, be the deep and pervasive bigotry toward racial and ethnic minorities within the Republican Party.

I also read yesterday that Kellyanne might have had an ulterior motive in promoting a candidacy by Suarez, and that her true purpose in encouraging him to run would be for Suarez to become known on the campaign trail and then be available as a running mate for 280-pound Trump to be able to lean on as he tries to waddle back into the White House.

If Francis Suarez chooses to run for President, I hope that he is able to do it on his own terms and can stay clear of that stream of human sewage that is always swirling around Trump.  Kellyanne Conway would be a good first person for candidate Suarez to avoid.

Just sayin' . . .

Wet Tales of Woe and Mow(ing)

by Pa Rock

Victim of Rain

I missed two prime days of mowing this week when the weather forecast said rain, but it later failed to materialize.  Finally, on Wednesday, I decided to go ahead and mow and hope that forecast of rain for that day would be wrong as well.  After two hours the mower suffered a breakdown, leaving the yard looking as though the barber had died before the haircut was complete. Before I could get the mower going again, the skies opened and there was a deluge of rain. Then more rain on Thursday, heavy, and by Friday I had decided to wait until after our trip to Boone’s college graduation today and then maybe try mowing again on Sunday, weather permitting.
 
Yesterday, Friday, I heard a forecast saying there would be rain every day through next Thursday.  Yesterday I also caught my neighbor cruising across my still wet yard on his mower doing some trimming to make the place look better.  The neighbor came over and sat on the deck later and we talked yards.  He grew up in this house and is thirteen years younger than me.  He can see that the mowing finally has me whipped, and he truly wanted to be a good guy and help out.

While sitting on the deck my neighbor and I also discovered that we have been feeding the same cat and calling it our own for the past couple of years.  (Don't ever underestimate the intelligence of a cat!)
 
But him "trimming" my yard  was embarrassing, nonetheless.
 
I also went out this week and bought two more dazzling rose bushes, one bright golden yellow, and the other, a “Marmelade Skies,” is the prettiest orange rose that I have ever seen.  I will get them planted tomorrow whether it rains or not.
 
Road trip today to watch Boone pick up his diploma in an outdoor ceremony – more complaining tomorrow – and the mowing when it quits raining or I get a round tuit.
Ah, spring!

Guns and Schools

by Pa Rock

Former School Principal

(For Boone Macy)

I have been both a teacher and a public school administrator in a past life, but I left that life in 1992 and never looked back.  It was a different time then.  

In the late 1970's and early 1980's I worked at a large rural high school where it was not uncommon for some students to bring guns to school in their vehicles. It was a sign of manhood for high school boys to have gun racks in the back windows of their pickup trucks where they displayed their deer rifles.  But those were different times, and the shooting at Columbine would not happen until 1999, long after I had left public schools and gone into the more dangerous world of state child protection.

While serving as a rural high school principal and being aware of how angry some students - and some parents - could become, I mentioned to our school superintendent one time that all of those guns in the trucks in the student parking lot made me uncomfortable, and I will never forget the sage advice that he offered on that subject:   "Oh God, Rock.  Don't get me in a gun control flap!"   And I didn't, but upon reflection I probably should have. ( I understand today that guns are no longer allowed in student vehicles at that same school.)

Students, of course, are not allowed to carry guns in any schools in America, though the NRA probably regards that as an unjust infringement of their constitutional rights.  But the guns come to school nonetheless, and damned near every day there is a shooting in an American classroom.  One of the more memorable of this year occurred in January when a 6-year-old boy in Newport News, Virginia, brought a handgun to school in his backpack and shot his first grade teacher in the stomach causing serious injury.

Yesterday a third grader in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a city of approximately 200,000, and the boyhood home of US President Gerald Ford, brought a loaded handgun to school in his backpack, but school authorities found it before he could do any harm.  The authorities in the Grand Rapids Schools are very good - that was the fourth student gun that they have found and confiscated this school year.  

The Grand Rapids School District has banned the use of backpacks by students for the remainder of the school year.  It is unclear at this point whether the NRA will regard that as an infringement on a student's "constitutional" right to be armed or not.

My oldest grandson, Boone, graduates from college tomorrow morning with a degree in elementary education.  I am happy for him and wish him the very best in life, but I am concerned.  Teacher's pay today is crap, even compared to when I was teaching, and the times are certainly more challenging.  

We all need to be demanding that guns be kept off of the streets and beyond the reach of criminals, the mentally impaired, and children!  Anything less is neglect of our kids, of our teachers, and of our civilization!

 

Enjoy your work, Boone.  Teach those kids, and always stay vigilant!

SAFE School Act is Phony Baloney

 

by Pa Rock

Former Principal

This past March there was a school shooting in Tennessee which shocked a lot of people.  The shocking part wasn't bullets flying in a school and tearing though the innocent bodies of young children, that happens all of the time in America.  The shocking thing was where it happened.   This barbarism did not occur at some under-funded, inner-city, gulag of desperation where minority children are collected and stuffed into overcrowded classrooms and then forgotten.    The shooting last March happened in Nashville, not only the capital of Tennessee, but the capital of US country music as well, and it did not happen in an underfunded public school, but rather in a nice, private school run by a church, where people with means sent their children.

Six people were killed at the Covenant School in Nashville that awful day, three nine-year-olds and three adults in their sixties.  One of the youngsters who died was the child of the pastor who was the school's leader, and one of the adults was a substitute teacher who was a good friend of Tennessee's governor and his family.

The Covenant school shooting in Nashville was different and it impacted a group of people who had no experience at being personally impacted.  It made people mad and it began to elicit responses from a wide variety of individuals who in the past would not have responded.

The state of Tennessee, which is by-and-large under the control of the Republican Party, had to be careful in its response.  Politicians there needed to be righteously angry without doing anything that might interfere with the gun industry's ability to continue to make and sell weapons-of-war (like the AR-15) with total impunity.  Yes, we love our kids and want to protect our kids, but trying to stop the spread of guns is not the answer.

So Tennessee politicians, with the exception of a few "radicals" in the state legislature, signed onto the old NRA argument that the best way to protect people from gun violence is through having more guns ready to join in the fray.

A couple of weeks ago Tennessee's two US Senators, Marsha Blackburn and Bill Haggerty, grabbed some important space in the press when they introduced legislation in Congress which they call the SAFE School Act, an act which they say will:

Provide a $900 million grant program to schools (public and private, of course) to train and hire veterans and former law enforcement officers to serve as school safety officers, hire off-duty law enforcement officers, and provide funding to harden schools and increase physical security.

Or, in the King's English, the bill would put more adults with guns inside of school buildings and provide more secure doors and windows.  Problem solved!

Then, to frost that cake, Senator Blackburn told a Fox News "journalist" yesterday that she would also support putting armed "grandparents" in the schools to help with the protection of students.  Most public schools in America are already crowded to the rafters with human bodies thanks to years of defunding by state governments, so it is unclear to this former teacher and school administrator where all of the extra people would sit, stand, or shuffle about.  And where would all of those guns be kept when Ma and Pa Kettle weren't on patrol?  Would that $900 million also be used for locked gun cabinets?

Here are my two over-arching thoughts on the SAFE School Act:

1.  More guns do not make a situation safer, and there is no credible research anywhere that reaches the opposite conclusion; and,

2.  Even if this plan made sense, which it does not, $900 million is just one more example of abysmal GOP underfunding.  In 2019-2020 there were 132,853 schools for students for grades K-12 in the United States (98,277 public and 34,576 private).  If those grant funds were evenly distributed among those 132,853 schools, each would receive a whopping $677.44, an amount that would probably not purchase one good security door.

Yes, there are ways that more money could make schools safer, and  strengthening doors and windows and employing better security measures - like restricting points of entry into schools and having plans to keep classroom doors and windows locked would help, but packing the hallways with Rambo wannabes and tottering old folks - all armed - would be extremely dangerous and would quickly result in reports of deadly unintended consequences.

School shootings will be reduced only when easy access to guns and weapons-of-war is reduced.  Fewer high-powered guns in society will equal fewer dead children in schools.  It's math, and it's simple.  Things like the SAFE Schools Act are just smoke and mirrors.  They are designed to give the illusion that something is being done, when, in reality, it's just the same old business as usual.  Gun business.