An Old Review of "Bus Stop"

by Pa Rock
Happy Typist

A quarter of a century ago this very month I was a busy man.   Not only was I learning to function as a single parent, I was also a full-time school principal and in my spare time trying to earn pin money as a freelance journalist.  I had articles appearing fairly regularly in a handful of national genealogical and historical magazines, and my newspaper genealogy column, "Rootbound in the Hills" was in its fourth year of publication and appearing in several local newspapers.

The largest newspaper carrying "Rootbound" was the Neosho Daily News, and Neosho also happened to be where we resided at that time.  One afternoon as I was dropping off the next week's column, I approached Anne Cope, the editor of the Daily News and told her that I was planning on attending a dress rehearsal of the local community college's production of William Inge's classic American play, Bus Stop.  Would she, I asked, be interested in a review of that production?  Anne knew that I could write, but she still expressed a bit of caution, noting that the newspaper made an effort to treat all local endeavors in a positive manner.  I assured her that I liked this particular theatre troupe and would not be penning a hatchet piece.

(Full disclosure:  Many people in the Crowder theatre department were friends of mine.  My young son, Tim, and I had recently been in their production of "Our Town," and the group subsequently went on to produce a play, "Love Among the Armadillos," that I had written.)

A day or two later I submitted the piece which follows.  Not only was it printed word-for-word as originally written, it was featured on the front page, and the entire review was placed on a blue background allowing it to stand out from the rest of the day's news.  I guess Anne liked it.

Recently, again while sorting treasure in the garage, I came across that old newspaper.  I am reprinting the review here as a way to preserve it for future enjoyment.  I'm sure I'll want to read it again when I get old!

Crowder Production of "Bus Stop" is Exceptional!

by Rocky Macy
(April 25th, 1991)

The 1950's evoke memories of simpler times:  Ike and Mamie, the nickle cup of coffee, and family outings during that brief interlude when neither radio nor television seemed to dominate out lives.  And one of the most popular diversions of that era was the drive-in theatre.

It was at Neosho's Edgewood Drive-In where most of us were first introduced to the riveting works of playwright Williams Inge.  It would be hard to forget Marilyn Monroe under any circumstances, but her superb rendition of Cherie, the country singer with questionable talent who was trying to escape her obsessive, yet naive, boyfriend, insured that Inge's "Bus Stop: would become an American masterwork.

"Bus Stop" is making a return engagement to Neosho, this time as a stage production of the drama department at Crowder College.  The play, under the direction of Rebecca Daniel, will be presented at the Elsie Plaster Center this weekend with showings on Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2:00 p.m.

The Crowder troupe, coming off an impressive season which included "Our Town," "The Magician's Nephew," and "Nunsense," will enhance their already formidable reputation with this production because it is, in a word, exceptional!

The story unfolds in Grace's cafe, a well-kept and decidedly small-town eatery that serves as a bus stop on the highway between Kansas City and Topeka.  The late bus arrives, only to be greeted with the news that the roads have been closed by snow and probably wont open until morning.  As the night swirls on, passengers and locals mingle, and in the process several tales are told.

All of the cast are veterans of previous Crowder productions with two exceptions.  Glen Heffner, a freshman from Monett, makes his debut performance as Will Masters, the local lawman.   The other newcomer is Curt Gilstrap, a Neosho High School senior who portrays Bo Decker, the lovesick cowboy who can't understand the subtlety of romance.  One of the more intense moments of the show occurs when these two young men enter into a physical confrontation on the stage.  Their characters, and the action, are well defined and believable.

Grace, the proprietress, is played by Regina DeGroat, and Richelle Sink is her inquisitive and trusting waitress, Elma.  The worldliness of the former contrasts nicely with the innocence of the latter, giving both actresses good opportunity to show their abilities - and they do it well.  

Mike Slawter, another regular of the group, brings Virgil Blessing to life.  Mike's character has the very difficult task of keeping Bo reined in and headed toward maturity.  And the teacher even gets into the act.  David Sherlock, drama instructor at Crowder, tackles the role of Carl, the bus driver.  His performance is first-rate and definitely not a surprise to anyone who saw his earlier work in "A Walk in the Woods."  

Every show has its moments, and many of the most memorable ones in this version of "Bus Stop" come from Jonathan Peck and Jana Wilson.  Peck, as the eloquent and increasingly drunk Professor Lyman, shows an astounding range of ability as his character bounces from levity to pathos and back again.  The "Romeo and Juliette" scene which he shares with Richelle Sink is absolutely mesmerizing.

Jana Wilson is consistent - consistently great!  Wilson brings an electric intensity to any role she tackles.  Her Cherie, the nightclub singer whose brass has begun to tarnish, would make what's-her-name from the movie version sit up and take notice.  The role was made for Jana.  She knows it and she shows it.

The success of any dramatic endeavor rests with the director.  This play works.  Thank you, Rebecca Daniel!

Ike and Mamie are gone, as is Marilyn.  And the Edgewood Drive-In has long since fallen beneath the bulldozer's blade. But "Bus Stop" lives on.  It's great literature, it's Americana, and it's at Crowder College this weekend.

Merle Haggard Exits on His Birthday

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Country music legend Merle Haggard passed away yesterday at his home in California.  He died of complications from pneumonia.  He had just turned seventy-nine - that day.  Haggard was also born in California, to parents who were true Okies and had moved with his older siblings from Oklahoma to California a couple of years before Merle's birth.  The impoverished Haggard family was motivated to leave Oklahoma when their barn burned.    They settled in California's Central Valley where Haggard's father found work with the railroad - and for a time the family lived in a boxcar that the father had remodeled.    It was a hard existence that could have been penned by John Steinbeck.

Merle Haggard burst onto the national music scene in the mid-1960's with a song called "Swinging Doors."  By the time I was in college in the late 1960's he had a couple of monster hits on the country charts - a pair of angry redneck anthems - "Okie from Muskogee" and "Fightin'  Side of Me" - which crossed over to the pop charts where they were both revered and reviled.  His redneck bonafides gained Haggard entrance to the White House on two separate occasions.  In 1974 he performed at Pat Nixon's birthday party - where President Nixon famously quipped, "I'll bet there aren't any Jews in Muskogee either."  In the 1980's Haggard was invited back to the White House to perform for the Reagans.

The famed country music star was an ex-convict who served time for burglary at California's San Quentin prison.  He was incarcerated in San Quentin in 1958 at a time when Johnny Cash performed a concert there for the inmates, an occurrence that helped Haggard set some direction for his life after parole.  California Governor Ronald Reagan pardoned Haggard for all past crimes in 1972.  (Haggard had an arrest record going back to the age of eleven when his mother turned him over to authorities for being "incorrigible.")  Mama tried.

In later years Merle Haggard abandoned some of his hard conservative orthodoxy and became part of the country music "outlaw" movement joining the likes of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, and Hank Williams, Jr.  By that time people undoubtedly were smoking marijuana in Muskogee - and lots of it! 

Some of Merle Haggard's more famous songs, many of which he wrote himself, include:  "Mama Tried," "Today I Started Loving You Again," "Silver Wings," "The Bottle Let Me Down," "If We Make It Through December," "Sing Me Back Home," "Hungry Eyes," and "Pancho and Lefty" - a duet with Willie Nelson.

About twenty-five years ago Merle Haggard was playing a regular gig in Branson.  He and Willie Nelson shared a theatre on the strip where Merle did afternoon shows and Willie gave the evening performances.   Tim and Molly (my two youngest) and I went to one of Willie's shows, but we didn't make it to see Merle.  That was our loss.

Somewhere out on the Internet is a list of famous people who died on their birthdays - I've seen it - and Merle Haggard's name can now be added to that list.  The last I heard they weren't holding regular meetings.

A true American legend has left the stage.  Rest in peace, sir - and give our love to Mama.

Corporate Elitist Democrat Finger-Points

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Hillary Rodham Clinton, the darling of the moneyed and elder denizens of the Democratic Party, has been relatively quiet, polite, and reserved toward her sole remaining challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, but that appears to be changing.  Sanders, who is a couple of years older than the former Secretary of State, has nevertheless shown strength among the younger and more progressive elements of the party - and has won seven of the last eight nominating contests.  Now it appears that the equanimity of Mrs. Clinton is finally beginning to wear a bit thin.   Yesterday after Sanders picked up yet another win, this time in Wisconsin, a state that had been thought until very recently to be firmly in the Clinton camp, Hillary began wondering aloud if Sanders was even a Democrat.

Well, let's see.

Bernie Sanders has a long history of supporting the nation's poor and disadvantaged.  He promotes the idea of free college for all, and is steadfast is his support of a woman's right to choose, believing it is a decision that should be left to the women involved and their physicians.  He supports universal background checks on gun purchases.  Sanders is for comprehensive immigration reform, something that will provide a path to citizenship for the eleven million undocumented immigrants currently living in this country.  He also believes that banks and corporations should pay their fair share of taxes and not exist on corporate welfare.  And, over ninety-nine percent of his campaign contributions are in form of small, individual donations - and are not rooted in corporate treasuries or Super PACs.

Yep, he sounds like a Democrat to me.

Mrs. Clinton, while being on the Democratic side of most of the major issues, is much more open to corporate and lobbyist cash and a bit more beholden to entrenched party bigwigs, many of whom will go to the convention as "super delegates" without any public vetting for that particular honor.  As a former six-year veteran of the Walmart Board of Directors, she has a familiarity and comfort around America's boardrooms that would be an anathema to people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Hillary is currently leading in pledged delegates, but she does not have the nomination sewn up.  While she did win a string of victories across the cracker south, none of those states will support her in the general election.  Sanders has won seven of the last eight Democratic contests - in places where Democrats can and must win in the fall.  He appears to be the candidate that the party base is turning to, and no amount of finger-pointing and name-calling is likely to change the direction of that prevailing political wind.

The primary in New York state in two weeks will be the big kahuna.  If Hillary loses her adopted home state, the state that sent her to the U.S. Senate twice, then she should pack it in and let the public will prevail.  The Democratic party should pick its nominee based on the desire of the people and not on the rusticated party machinery grinding along under the tight control of entrenched party hacks, like Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and hoary old "super delegates."

Bernie is about the future - and unfortunately Hillary appears to be more about business as usual.  They are both Democrats, and either would be preferable to what the Republican Party seems ready to cough up for the 2016 election, but only Bernie is expressing a clear vision of what America really could be.

Not only is Bernie Sanders a Democrat, he is a damned fine one!

Obama Screws Up Big Time - Or Does He?

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

In an announcement last week that left some political observers more than a little dumbfounded, President Barack Obama endorsed the re-election bid of Florida congresswoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, an outspoken corporate shill who also happens to head the Democratic National Committee.  Wasserman Schultz is facing strong opposition in Florida's Democratic primary from Tim Canova, a progressive law professor.

Wasserman Schultz has recently made news with her attempt to gut the reform measures put forth by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to rein-in the excesses of the reprehensible payday lending industry.  While the incumbent member of Congress is comfortable taking donations from corporations, banks, and glorified loan sharks, Canova is not.  He has built his campaign on small contributions from individual donors.

When Obama, himself a progressive former law professor, made his surprise announcement endorsing Wasserman Schultz over Canova, the grinning congresswoman rushed to have her picture taken next to the popular President - perhaps to prove, at least to herself, that she remains a real Democrat. 

Tim Canova, passed on the opportunity to grab a few headlines by decrying the President's inexplicable endorsement.  He didn't have time for a political brawl anyway because Canova and his staff were too busy opening contribution envelopes.   Canova may not have risen to the bait and gotten fighting mad, but his supporters certainly did - and the checks started flying in!  The Canova campaign pulled in over $100,000 in small donations in the four days following the President's endorsement of his opponent.

Not only has Wasserman Schultz worked to gut legislation aimed at reining-in predatory payday lenders, she also led the Democratic National Committee into reversing its ban on donations from federal lobbyists, and she appeared to have a hand in causing the Florida Democratic Party to deny Canova access to it's voter database.   The Canova campaign reported spikes in donations each time one of those outrages occurred.

During the first quarter of 2016, Canova's campaign took in $557,000 from a total of over 15,000 individual small donors .  With Barack Obama's well-known shrewd political instincts and abilities, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to imagine that he knew he was firing up Canova's base when he endorsed Wasserman Schultz. 

Wasserman Schultz may be grinning, but Canova is too busy to care.  He is working hard to bring a bit of honesty and integrity back into Congress - and he's doing it without the aid of loan sharks and banksters.

Monday's Poetry: "All the World's a Stage"

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

Something got me waxing philosophical this week, perhaps the sudden and unexpected death of the mean old Tom turkey who had as much, if not more, claim to this little farm as I do, and as I pondered the meaning of life, my thoughts turned to the roles I had played during my brief stint romping across its stage.  That, of course, brought me to the famous thoughts that the Bard of Avon had on the subject.  William Shakespeare, best known for writing plays, used his quill at one point to bring forth a famous poem that describes life in terms of being a play.  He then inserted that poem into one of his plays as lines of dialogue.

I have been around just a little over sixty-eight years, a very brief encounter with the stage upon which life exists when measured against the grand scheme of things.  My minuscule time here has witnessed me playing the role of a son, student, friend, husband, father, and grandfather - as well as a host of roles carried out in the workplace.  Life has cast me in motion viewing much of the planet on foot, as well as in cars, on trains, planes, and boats.  I have lived in the Ozarks and the Orient,  hitchhiked across Moscow, bicycled across the Caribbean, celebrated New Year's at a street party in old Hanoi, been a nocturnal visitor to the White House kitchen, seen five U.S. Presidents and the stuffed remains of V.I. Lenin and Ho Chi Minh, and fed about a million birds.  Now I sit at the far edge of the stage, partially hidden by the curtain, peacefully napping but occasionally snapping awake to shout something rude to some bothersome actor who is causing a commotion nearer to center stage.

If life were a book, I would be organizing the footnotes. 

But it's not, it's a stage.  Jaques said so to Duke Senior in As You Like It:  Act II, Scene VII.


All the World's a Stage
by William Shakespeare

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

 

Don't Look for Jesus in Mississippi

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

The old hymn by Martin Luther, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," may have added meaning as soon as Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant manages to slap his signature on a wacko bill being sent to his desk by the intellectual gnats in the state legislature.

Mississippi lawmakers in their zeal for protecting all that is holy in America have rushed through a bill that will permit the establishment of armed security gangs in the state's churches.  In addition to keeping the voters whipped into a frenzy over gun rights and helping the NRA and gun manufacturers sell more guns, the proposed law seems to be grounded in two justifications:  first, the legislature has a sergeant-at-arms, so why cain't can't the churches, and second, there was (wink, nod, wink) a church shooting in Columbia, South Carolina, last summer, so churches need protecting.

Of course, the church in South Carolina was a black house of worship and the shooter was a white youth obsessed with the Confederate flag and protecting the virtue of white women.  Somehow I doubt that the Mississippi legislature intends for this bill to increase gun sales in black communities.  After all, whites bearing guns are invariably patriots while armed blacks are almost certain to be gangsters and thugs.

Members of these security patrols who are trained by the church will be immune from civil prosecution if and when they fire their weapons in church.

The Mississippi Church Protection Act also contains provisions that would allow citizens to "constitutionally carry" or pack concealed weapons in holsters even without a state permit, and it prohibits state officials from enforcing any federal gun regulation not passed by Congress.  Those patriots in Mississippi don't want to have to submit to any executive orders issued by the Muslim dictator currently holed up in the White House.

The Mississippi Police Chiefs Association does not like this legislation - especially the provision that eliminates the need to obtain permits for concealed carry.

So, when Sunday morning finds you driving through Mississippi looking for a house of worship - drive on Pilgrim, drive on.   Jesus is much more likely to be found elsewhere.

Jonesboro Revisited: Nature or Nurture

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Today's posting marks the end of my current focus on the tragic school shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas, back in 1998 - an act of mass homicide in which an eleven-year-old shooter and his thirteen-year-old friend opened fire on a group of their fellow students and teachers - a pre-planned and well thought out assault that left four children and one teacher dead.  Nearly a dozen others were wounded, and the entire school, community, and nation were left in a state of shock and disbelief.

I collected various materials in the weeks following the deadly assault, articles dealing with the criminal and psychological aspects of the case, as well as examination of the shooters, their families, the laws governing juvenile crime, and public attitudes on the deadly incident.   That collection of materials became the focus of a project for a graduate social work class in which I was participating at the University of Missouri - Columbia.

The following is a paper that I did as a part of that project.  It was based on what I learned while studying the issue, but is not long and was not meant to be a full-fledged "research" paper.  It was intended as an overview and something geared toward a general readership - and not necessarily a university professor.  The title of the paper, which focuses on nature versus nurture in relation to the molding of child criminals, is based on two movies which were popular at the time.  There is also one line couched in the paper that is a steal from a bit of dialogue in a Tom Cruise movie that was popular at the time.  The closing line, a quote from Pogo, has been used by me in several written pieces to the point where it feels a bit trite - but the line fits.

Unfortunately, Jonesboro shook America, but did not shake it awake.  The years that followed witnessed other shootings of young people by young people.  Names like Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook went on to become synonymous for a sickness in our society that only seems to be growing more deadly as it ages.  The current despicable effort by the National Rifle Association to groom children for violence through gun-infused classic fairy tales can only serve to make the situation even deadlier.  That organization remains a national disgrace.

Here is one more out of the dustbin of my scholastic history.

Homicidal Children:

Natural Born Killers

or

Made in America

by

Rocky G. Macy

May 4, 1998 

       It is reminiscent of an old joke, one that has circulated so long that you know the gag line well before the person telling it is done with the build-up.  The joke goes something like this:  "I'm thinking of getting rid of my television.  I can't stand all of the bloodshed, carnage, and mindless violence - and that's just the evening news!"  The "joke," of course, has long since ceased to be funny.

       With violence in America becoming so commonplace that we are almost completely oblivious to it, any news story that has the power to rise above the swill and slam us out of our complacency is an anomaly worthy of notice.  The holocaust at Jonesboro is such a story.   Jonathan Alter of Newsweek notes incredulously:  "One of the most shocking things about the Jonesboro massacre is that it's still shocking - that America's bottomless capacity for violence has not fully numbed us yet."  (Alter, 1998)  Stories with the power of Jonesboro deserve more than just a few horrified comments in passing - they merit sustained national debate.  Jonesboro, the most recent of eleven school shootings within the last five years, has engendered debate in a number of areas and become a metaphor for violent youth.

       The public's opinion is literally all over the place on the question of punishment for the two young shooters who calmly and with malice aforethought opened fire on their classmates and teachers.  Some believe they should be tried as adults, while others argue for judicial treatment as juveniles.  Some want to see the parents of the shooters stand trial.  There are those who think the boys should serve time in an adult facility.  Others, however, argue that they are mentally disturbed and not old enough to be fully cognizant of the impact of their actions, and therefore should not have to spend time in any type of penal institution.  Some even go so far as to want to see the boys put to death.  An anonymous caller screamed at the grief-stricken grandmother of the older youth, "I hope your boy gets raped in jail and killed!"  (Faltermayer, 1998)   One contributor to the CNN Internet message board on the Jonesboro shootings said, "The murders should be publicly executed.  It doesn't matter what age they are.  They should be held responsible and set up as an example."  Another contributor to the same message board phrased the same feeling a bit more succinctly by saying, "Society needs to stamp these two bugs out of existence regardless of age."  (Contributors, 1998)  Everyone is vocal - everyone has an opinion.

       The question of blame is even more volatile.  No one is questioning that the two boys who were arrested are really the ones who pulled the triggers.  Even their parents reluctantly admit that their sons did the killing.  It is there, however, that the unanimity ends.  The parents, as "good" parents tend to do, were quick to blame their son's complicity of the bad influences of the "other" boy.  The populace at large point to everything from violence on television and in movies, to video games, guns, public schools, lax laws, society in general, a breakdown of the family, lack of supervision, bad breeding, the economy, all of the above, some of the above, and none of the above but something equally compelling.  Boiled down, it becomes a question of nature or nurture.  Are people born with a propensity for violence, an innate ability to murder than can manifest itself in childhood, or is it an acquired taste - something that they have to learn?  Or is a child's ability to commit homicide a mixture of nature and nurture, an intricate lace of genetic and psychological wiring that may never be fully understood or open to reliable prediction - a toxic combination of gene pool and cesspool?

       Gene mapping and our rapidly increasing knowledge of the impact of genetics on our bodies and our personalities would seem to indicate that genetics may play a role in the phenomenon of extremely violent youth.  However, a lifetime of raising and working with children - and, indeed, just existing in twentieth century America - tells me that the family and society must bear the brunt of the responsibility for atrocities committed by children.

       The family is a child's training ground for membership in society.  The values and beliefs that are instilled by the family shape the child and guide him out into the world.  It a parent hits, a child learns to hit.  If a parent is bigoted, a child learns to hate.  If a parent ignores a child, he learns from others.

       People generally have good intentions when they bring babies into the world.  They plan to love these little human beings and do all that they can to ensure their success in life.  Quite often, however, those plans get derailed.  One out of two marriages in the United States today ends in divorce, a situation that results in children being raised in one-parent or step-parent households and being shuffled between angry adults like so much unwanted baggage.  Children who are lucky enough to live in two-parent households often are left unsupervised due to economic circumstances that dictate the need for both parents to work, and when the parents get home they are too exhausted to engage in positive or meaningful interactions with their children.  And then there are the other parents - the alcoholics, drug addicts, brawlers, maniacs, lunatics, and other arguments against evolution who feel the need, the need to breed.  It is almost a given that their children will suffer from neglect and be exposed early and continuously to family turmoil and violence.

       Genetics is undoubtedly a factor in the problem, and the family must bear a significant portion of the blame as well.  It is society, however, that provides such a fertile spawning ground for this evil. 

       America is a violent country, a place where "amber waves of grain" flourish in soil made rich with the blood of genocide.  It speaks of being united as "one nation, indivisible, under God," but is, in fact, a crazy quilt of political and religious opinion in which everyone is right and everyone else is necessarily wrong - a democracy where the majority is entitled to make decisions only when it agrees with the individual.  America' citizens value "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and believe ardently in their right to live by their own terms, regardless of how those terms impinge upon the rights of others.  The "land of the free and home of the brave" cherishes individual liberty, but doesn't trust its own government to ensure it.  America's citizenry waves the flag, packs a gun, and worships money.  It has taken over two centuries, but America has managed somehow to evolve into a milieu of delirium in which everyone is right about everything, and everyone has a right - a duty - to protect themselves and their families from the political and religious vagaries of everyone else.  Hell yes, America is violent!  How could it be otherwise?  And how, as a nation, can we honestly be surprised by the occasional emergence of lethal youth?

       Pogo said it best:  "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

References

       Alter, J.  (1998, April 6).  Harnessing the hysteria.  Newsweek, 27.

       Contributors, V.  (1998).  School Violence"  message board (Vol 1998).  Cable News Network.

       Faltermayer, C.  (1998, April 6).  What is justice for a sixty-grade killer?  Time, 36-37.  

Jonesboro Revisited: Parenting and Juvenile Justice

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist 

When I began digging through the old materials on the Jonesboro school shooting which I had accumulated while in graduate school, one item I unearthed was a brief set of notes covering a telephone interview that I conducted with June Wise.  Ms. Wise was the Chief Juvenile Officer for Missouri's 40th Judicial Circuit at that time, someone with whom I worked professionally for several years - and a very good friend.


The subject of our conversation was violent juveniles.  We talked on April 23, 1998, less than a month after the Jonesboro shooting.

MACY:  What do you see as the underlying causes of children becoming angry and violent enough to kill?

CJO WISE:  A desire for power and control.  Children who are violently abused, especially before the age of eight, often have a concealed need to have control.  There are other reasons also that vary from case to case.
       A child needs to be looked at differently than an adult because a child is limited to what he knows.

MACY:  What do you believe should happen to an eleven-year-old who murders other children?

CJO WISE:  First of all the child needs to be protected - from the community and from himself.  The hard question is how to protect him.  If he is confined for several years he will become institutionalized.  Adults who commit hideous crimes often get out after a few years.  A child should have the same opportunity, but if he spends his formative years in prison he will stand very little chance of becoming successful in life.

MACY:  Should parents be held criminally accountable for the actions of their children?

CJO WISE:  We went from a system like that to a more lenient one.  We need to impose more responsibility back on parents.  Parents often protect their kids when problems arise, and then they are surprised when the kids get into serious trouble.

MACY:  If Jonesboro had occurred in your circuit, what would have happened to the shooters?

CJO WISE:   RSMo 211.071.1 adopted in 1995 lowered the age that a juvenile could be certified as an adult in any felony from fourteen to twelve.  That same law says that any child may be certified to stand trial as an adult if they commit any of seven specific crimes - one of which is murder.   

(1st degree murder, 2nd degree murder, 1st degree assault, forcible rape, forcible sodomy, 1st degree robbery, and distribution of drugs.)

MACY:  So they would have been taken into custody and tried for murder as adults?

CJO WISE:  Yes.

MACY:  Would they be jailed with adult offenders?

CJO WISE:  RSMo 211.073.1 establishes the concept of dual jurisdiction.  Children can be held as juveniles by juvenile facilities while being tried as adults.  There is a new facility nearing completion in Montgomery City, Missouri, that will have 50 beds and house children who have been tried as adults and sentenced to long-term imprisonment.  When they turn twenty-one, our agency will back out and they will be transferred to adult prisons.

MACY:  What is the minimum age that a person in Missouri can be executed for murder?

CJO WISE:  I'm not certain, but I would imagine that it is twenty-one.

 
June never got back to me on the minimum age for the death penalty in Missouri.  From what I can glean from the Internet, the minimum age for execution in Missouri would have been sixteen at that time.  The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2005 in a case out of Missouri (Roper v Simmons) that it was henceforth unconstitutional to execute someone for a crime committed before they reached the age of eighteen.  Rehnquist, O'Connor, Thomas, and, of course, Scalia were the  dissenting votes in that case.

(Tomorrow:  A recap of my study on Jonesboro with the paper:  "Homicidal Children:  Natural Born Killers or Made in America"  a look at the issue through the lenses of nature and nurture.)

Jonesboro Revisited: The Popular Media

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

This series began with a news story that the National Rifle Association (NRA) has begun a program designed to lure young children into an appreciation of the destructive power of firearms.  That venerable "gun rights" organization has recently begun sponsoring a program to update classic children's literature, such as the stories of Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood.  The updated versions feature the child characters - and Grandma - carrying guns and supposedly showing children that they don't have to fear wolves and witches if they have the foresight to bear arms when they wander through the woods.

The NRA is grooming children to become paranoid adults who will spend large portions of their incomes buying guns - and gun sales are the lifeblood of the NRA.

At almost the exact same time that I came across the piece on the NRA and its fairy tales, I also stumbled upon some old materials that I had collected and papers that I had written while at the University of Missouri in the late 1990's pursuing a graduate degree in social work.  When I began this blog in 2007, one of the purposes had been to collect and preserve various things that I had already written in a place where they could be easily located and accessed by any of my descendants or future researchers who had use for them.

The materials that I came across while rooting through the garage included a collection of articles on the Jonesboro school shooting which occurred in March of 1998 toward the end of my first year in the two-year masters program, as well as three small papers that I had written on the topic:  a compilation of what the local and national media had to say on the topic, an interview with a juvenile officer on the topic of violent juveniles, and a paper summarizing my findings.  After carefully rereading that collection of writing, I decided to re-explore Jonesboro and present that material here.  It will run over the next three days, beginning with look at how the popular media covered the horrific crime back when it occurred.

(Note:  At the time this paper was written, the Internet was just beginning to come into full-flower as a quick link to numerous media outlets.  The professor for whom this paper was compiled, an older gentleman, had visions of his students spending long hours digging in the dark recesses of the rows and rows of card catalogue cabinetry at the university library, and to some extent that was necessary, but large amounts of news and opinion were also readily available on the Internet.  This experience marked a turning point with my familiarity with the new medium.)

Violent Children:

A Brief Analysis of the Popular Media

and the Internet

by

Rocky G. Macy

4 May 1998

       Jonesboro.  A sleepy mid-sized Arkansas city one minute, a metaphor for violent youth the next.  Who could have imagined on the morning of March 24th, 1998, that before the children of Jonesboro boarded the buses to return home that evening that their lives would have been interrupted by gunfire, death, and a media onslaught?

       While violence in American schools is becoming so common that its occurrence tends to get lost somewhere behind page one, Jonesboro was shocking and bloody to such a degree that it forced the topic back into the headlines.  The coverage of the massacre was told in color photos, words of anguish, indignant editorials, comparisons with similar crimes, views of experts, and voluminous amounts of public opinion.  The popular media became a fount of information on the topic of violent children.

       The newspapers that I checked regularly in preparing this assignment were The Columbia Missourian, The Columbia Tribune, The Maneater (the MU student newspaper), The Kansas City Star, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and USA Today.  All of those publications except for The Maneater offered similar news stories regarding the event.  Most also provided information on the ten other school shootings that had occurred in the United States in the five years preceding Jonesboro.

       The Columbia newspapers devoted some space to addressing the issue of violence in schools and provided information on what local schools were doing to address the problem.  All of the Missouri newspapers carried stories about the bill in the state legislature to allow citizens of the state to carry concealed weapons.  The papers from Kansas City, St. Louis, and USA Today carried pieces on the psychological aspects of violent youth.   The Maneater had a column about youth violence that focused on Jonesboro and a 1994 Chicago incident in which two young boys dropped a friend out of a seventh story window.

       All of the newspapers had editorial opinion dealing with violent youth as well as responses from the readers in the form of "Letters to the Editor."  USA Today complimented a couple of its stories with charts and graphs.

       The tabloids had a couple of articles focusing on troubled youth.  National Examiner told its readers in two separate issues that child beauty JonBenet Ramsey was murdered by her eleven-year-old brother, Burke.  The same publication also had a story entitled Daughter of Satan that focused on a young lady who supposedly recruited other teens to join her on a cross-country killing spree after watching the movie Natural Born Killers.

       The news magazines, much like the larger newspapers, used Jonesboro as a springboard for a wide-ranging examination of violence in society.  Time and Newsweek each had a cover featuring a photo of an armed Drew Golden (the younger of the Jonesboro shooters), and while Drew failed to make the cover of U.S. News and World Report, that magazine did carry a full page color photo of the youth, again armed, inside of its covers.   (The sheer number of armed family photos of Drew that found their way into the press was actually reminiscent of the endless deluge of JonBenet photographs that saturated the media for so long.)

       The electronic media also had a lot to say about kids and violence.  National Public Radio featured news and editorials about violent children for a couple of weeks following Jonesboro.  Several of the talk shows have focused on violent children over the past couple of years.  Geraldo Rivera has had Baby Face Killers, Teen Thrill Killers:  Why?, and What Do You Do with Kids Who Kill?, and a week after Jonesobro Oprah Winfrey aired a program entitled When Children Commit Crimes.

       The popular media focused on several areas:  the killings at Jonesboro and related news stories, safety issues for children and schools, the psychological make-up of violent youth, legal issues related to the crimes of kids, and the causes of violence.  News stories provide information and opinion.  As a rule they don't solve problems, but the news and views expressed by the media do focus the public's attention on problems and provide the grist for dialogue - and dialogue can eventually lead to the resolution of any social ill.

The Internet

       All of the major news organizations have homes on the Internet.  I was able to read Time's complete coverage of Jonesboro on-line several days before the magazine appeared on newsstands.  The two that I used most, however, were CNN and MSNBC.  Both not only had complete news coverage, but they also featured numerous links to related stories.  It was quite easy to jump to stories about other school shootings or more generic stories about crime and punishment, causes of violence, or articles on the psychological make-up of homicidal youth.

       CNN and MSNBC also employ message boards to collect and distribute public opinion on many contemporary issues.  CNN posted a message board immediately after Jonesboro that quickly gathered over 8,000 messages on things related to the tragedy - condolences, expressions of grief, rants for and against gun control, anger, and many, many questions.  But there were answers also - straightforward, homegrown solutions to the myriad of questions that swirl around the subject of kids who kill.  CNN had another message board on the subject of violence on television and in the movies.  Again, the responses were a insightful as they were unique, forthright, and honest.  Message boards on the Internet are quickly becoming America's Main Street - a place where news and opinion can race from person to person gaining passion and insight as they go.

       The Internet is an interactive encyclopedia that never goes out of date.  I used it for this assignment to locate information on juvenile justice, legislation, violence in the media, school shootings, and guns.  I also used the Internet to access professional articles through the University of Missouri libraries.

       E-mail and listservs add to the value of the Internet as an opinion gathering and generating tool.  Graduate students in the University of Missouri's MSW program used their listserv to comment on Jonesboro and related topics for several weeks after the shooting.  Their comments were heterogeneous and as interesting as those expressed by the general populace on the message boards.

       The Internet is a marvelous repository of information and news - some accurate, some less so - and an uncommonly well stocked marketplace of opinion.  It is the history, and knowledge, and culture of all humanity reduced to binary code and carried on electrical impulses to the edges of the planet and depths of our minds.  The Internet is our umbilical cord to cyberspace, a lifeline to the future and a tether to the past.  Its value as a tool for research cannot be overestimated, or for that matter, even calculated.

(Tomorrow:  Notes from an interview with a juvenile officer on the subject of violent juveniles.)

Jonesboro Revisited: An Overview

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

It is commonly referred to as the Jonesboro school shooting, but the actual incident took place at Westside Middle School in rural Craighead County, Arkansas - near the community of Jonesboro.  It wasn't the first school shooting in America, nor was it destined to be the last, but this particular shooting at a school was especially memorable due to the ages of the shooters.

On March 24, 1998, 11-year-old Andrew Golden, a kid described by one of his teachers as "sneaky," and his friend, 13-year-old Mitchell Johnson, got in a car owned by Johnson's mother and drove to a secluded wooded acreage near their school.  They had packed the car with camping equipment and several weapons that they had stolen from the home of Golden's grandfather, a conservation agent.  The also had over 2,000 rounds of stolen ammunition.

They parked the car in a wooded area next to the school, and Golden ran into the school and pulled the fire alarm - and then hurried back to join Johnson in the woods.  As the teachers and students marched outside and gathered next to the school, the two heavily armed boys opened fire on the crowd.  It was a real life shooting gallery.  When the carnage ended, five were dead - four students and a teacher - and nearly a dozen others were wounded.

It was an appalling act of barbarism that had been carefully thought out and executed by children.  At the time of the shooting, "Jonesboro" was the second deadliest school rampage in American history.  Now, sadly, less that twenty years later, it is in a five-way tie for ninth place.

Much was written about the backgrounds and family lives of these two cold-blooded killers.  Both boys lived in households in which guns were commonplace fixtures.  Mitchell Johnson and his brother had moved to Arkansas from Minnesota with their mother a couple of years before the shooting when his parents divorced.  Johnson's mother, a prison guard, later married one of the ex-convicts who had been serving time at her prison.

Andrew Golden, the younger of the two shooters, lived with both of his natural parents, a pair of postal workers, and his grandfather, the conservation agent, lived nearby.  He had what appeared to be a loving and stable home life.  But then photos of young Andrew began making their way into national publications - pictures of a little boy holding and aiming guns.  One iconic picture of little Andrew - at around the age of two - clad in cammo and holding a rifle - even made its way onto a cover of Time.  It was becoming apparent that Andrew had grown up steeped in a gun culture.

The boys, who had seemed to be planning to live somewhere in the woods after they atrocity, were instead quickly captured and jailed.  They were adjudicated as juveniles and sentenced to incarceration in Arkansas reformatories until the age of eighteen.  The federal government added weapons charges to the legal mix, and the lads' time inside was lengthened until their twenty-first birthdays.

Both young men were released at the ages of twenty-one.  Mitchell had served over seven years of juvenile incarceration, and Golden had served more than nine by the time they were allowed to re-enter society.  Both adopted assumed identities and continued living in Arkansas.  Mitchell worked for awhile at convenience stores in northwest Arkansas before again running afoul of the law with charges of theft and the illegal possession of controlled substances and guns.  He was sent to prison for a term of eighteen years, but has recently been released.

Golden attended a community college for a period of time.  His new identity and location became known after he tried unsuccessfully to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

Both young men still face civil lawsuits filed by the relatives of their victims.

Of all of the school shooters in American history, and sadly there are many, only two, Golden and Mitchell, are today free citizens.

(More on "Jonesboro" tomorrow from popular media of the times.)

The NRA Is Grooming Children

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Lots of people buy lots of guns in the United States every day - that's a fact.   Even people who should not have guns, such as those who are mentally incompetent or have a history of criminal actions, buy guns.    Spouse abusers buy guns, chronic drunks buy guns, psychopaths buy guns.  The U.S. is, in fact, the easiest industrialized nation on earth in which to acquire a gun.  The gun industry, much like its big brother, the arms industry, makes money by arming both sides - the bad guys and the good guys - them and us.  It is a never-ending spiral of stupidity guaranteed to eventually end in disaster.

Surprisingly however, it looks as though the gun market in America is finally beginning to get saturated.  Sales are slowly dropping off, and that has those good patriots who constantly whip up paranoia to sell more guns to the country's boobs and rubes worried.  To sell more guns requires the expansion of markets, and the gun companies have begun doing what the cigarette companies did to combat similar dips in sales:  they are beginning to target children.  (Pun intended.)

The gun industry's propaganda arm, the National Rifle Association, has, according to an article in yesterday's New York Times, begun rewriting classic fairy tales to show how much safer children would be from witches and wolves and such if they (the kids) were armed.   They have apparently published new versions of Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood in which the kids and even Grandma are packing heat.   The new versions don't address the fact that in loosely regulated societies like ours the villainous witches and wolves could also get their hands and paws on guns without any difficulty at all.

Of course, both sides being fully armed is the gun industry's wet dream.

Everytown for Gun Safety, a group supporting sensible controls on the easy availability of firearms, reports that last year there were 278 unintentional shootings by children in the United States. Filling the heads of kids with firearm fantasies such as those being cranked out by the NRA can only serve to increase the number of unintentional, and often fatal, child shootings.  Much like the original stories by the Brothers Grimm, these stories will necessarily end badly.

Tomorrow in this space I will look back at one of the many horrible school shootings which have plagued our country over the past couple of decades - a shooting where one of the young shooters in particular had been tragically immersed in a local and family culture which glamorized the use of firearms.

Wayne LaPierre, how do you sleep at night?

Monday's Poetry: "Labor Pains"

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

Farms can be about many things, but two of the constant forces to offer definition to farm life are these:  birth and death.  Birth on a farm usually happens in the spring, but death can come at any time.  This past week I had to deal with the corpses of two banty roosters, two playful young birds who grew up together at Rock's Roost.  They were playmates as well as fierce protectors of the hens.  It was their devotion to the girls that led to their deaths at the talons of a predator hawk.

Nothing has been born at the farm yet, but I expect that to change this spring when the hens start becoming broody.  The peacocks appear to also be preparing to mate.  At my last farm several years ago I watched baby goats being born on a few occasions, and even had to get personally involved in pulling one baby out of his mother during an especially rough delivery.  Both survived - as did I!

Yesterday, Easter Sunday, I did witness something close to a birth.  I was working in the hen house in the afternoon, placing fresh wood shavings in the nesting boxes, when I cam across a lone hen sitting quietly in a box.  As I was working on the box next to hers, I suddenly heard the hen giving a low growl.  I stepped back to observe.  The little hen stood up in her box, she had to do so in a stooped position, and quit growling.  She began staring quietly into my eyes.  She appeared to be suffering in silent agony.  Suddenly a wave of relief seemed to cross her feathered face as ker-plop, an egg dropped into the box.  I have collected thousands of eggs over the years, but that was the first time I have ever seen one actually being delivered.

The hen took a moment or two to get her bearings before climbing out of the box and beginning to cluck her egg song.  Meanwhile, the farmer snatched the egg.

It was an Easter Egg!

To honor that significant farm event, I searched for a poem about chickens laying eggs - to no avail.  Instead I have chosen the poem, "Labor Pains," by twentieth century Japanese poet Yosano Akiko.  My little red hen certainly looked as though she would have been very sympathetic to the sentiments of this poet.

(I played the role of the prattling doctor in this little barnyard drama.)


Labor Pains
by Yosano Akiko

I am sick today,

sick in my body,

eyes wide open, silent,

I lie on the bed of childbirth.

Why do I, so used to the nearness of death,                         

to pain and blood and screaming,

now uncontrollably tremble with dread?

A nice young doctor tried to comfort me,

and talked about the joy of giving birth.

Since I know better than he about this matter,                 

what good purpose can his prattle serve?

Knowledge is not reality.

Experience belongs to the past.

Let those who lack immediacy be silent.

Let observers be content to observe.                                   

I am all alone,

totally, utterly, entirely on my own,

gnawing my lips, holding my body rigid,

waiting on inexorable fate.

There is only one truth.                                                             

I shall give birth to a child,

truth driving outward from my inwardness.

Neither good nor bad; real, no shame about it.

With the first labor pains,

suddenly the sun goes pale.                                                     

The indifferent world goes strangely calm.

I am alone.

It is alone I am.

The Grandchildren Speak

by Pa Rock
Proud Grandpa

It is a beautiful Easter Sunday morning in the Ozarks. 

This week, mainly because of my birthday, I was able to speak to each of my five grandchildren.   That was a rare treat.

Olive called first.  She told me she had been sick with the flu and had gone to the doctor.  She also, when prompted by me, told me that her kitty, "Rerun," was fine.  Olive asked me how old I was and I told her sixty-eight.  I turned the tables and asked her how old she was, and she piped up proudly, "I'm four!"  And she is.  Olive is going to have a baby brother this June, and we are all excited about that!

Judah and Willow phoned next from their home in Oregon.  Both children wished me a happy birthday, and Judah, who has had some speech challenges, said very clearly, "Happy birthday, Pa Rock."  He laughed as he said it.  Judah is such a happy child.  He has recently learned how to ride horses.  He likes animals - and I know that he would really enjoy getting to visit at the farm.

Sebastian phoned from Oregon that evening.  He called while I was at my Wednesday night card game, so we were able to chat for only a minute and I promised I would call back when I got home.  An hour or so later we were talking again.  Sebastian made a joke by wishing me a happy "first" birthday.  Sebastian takes karate lessons and is doing very well.

Willow got back on the phone after Sebastian got off.  She told me that she was eating a butterfly cookie.  I asked her if her mother had made it and she said "no," and that they had bought the cookies at the store.  I told her that I had bought cupcakes at the store for my birthday, and Willow replied in the cutest voice possible, "I love cupcakes!"  (So guess what Pa Rock will be bringing Willow when he goes to visit this summer!)

Boone was the last to phone in.  He has recently gotten his driver's license and a car, but the car is in the shop for some necessary maintenance.  Boone, a budding young singer and guitarist, told me that he has a "paying gig" in Neosho this Friday night - where he would perform a forty-five minute set of music.  He will also be taking his ACT this week as well as a test for placement in an Advanced English class.

All of the conversations were delightful, and they made my sixty-eighth birthday very special!  I have such wonderful children and grandchildren!

Hey Maricopa, Let People Vote!

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Maricopa County, Arizona - where I resided for the last several years of my working career - is home to some wonderful people - a couple of dozen, at least.  But it is also a haven for some of the most paranoid racists in America, legions of gin-soaked, redneck retirees, and countless people who conflate guns and religion with patriotism.

Maricopa County is a strange and severe place that regularly sends its citizens to the polls where they vote in the likes of Joe Arpaio, Russell Pearce, and Jan Brewer.

One of the few things that I liked about Maricopa County was the ease with which one could vote.  Registration was simple - easily accomplished at the Division of Motor Vehicles.  Somewhere, probably at the DMV, I checked a box on a form asking to have my ballots mailed to me, and the county clerk, a Republican by the name of Helen Purcell, sent ballots several weeks before any upcoming election.  There was no return stamp required, so all I had to do was mark the ballot and drop it back in the mail.  If I missed the mail deadline, I could take it to my polling place on election day and leave it there.

It was so, so easy.  Never any hassle or problem.  But, of course, I was an old white guy, not someone who should expect difficulty in casting a vote.

Now, according to the press, Republican officials in Maricopa County have taken advantage of the Supreme Court's essential gutting of the Voting Rights Act and eliminated 70 percent of the county's voting locations - a situation which caused waits in line of over five hours - with many people just giving up and leaving without voting.   Democracy advocates allege this was intentional voter suppression aimed at curtailing the voting of non-whites, but there were also reports of some white citizens of Maricopa County being trapped in the insufferable long lines and getting to experience first-hand what voter suppression really feels like.  (One report stated that there was only one voting location for every 108,000 people in the Phoenix area.)

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton has written to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking for a federal investigation into the matter.

I hope that Maricopa County and Phoenix are still using the mail ballots, but for those unable or unwilling to trust the mail, there should still be a basic right to go to a local polling place and cast a ballot - without waiting hours to vote - regardless of who you are or how dignified your family tree happens to be.  America has voted that way for over two centuries, and it works - when there is an adequate number of polling stations and plenty of ballots.

Hey Maricopa County - this is America!  Let people vote!

Blackburn's Committee Will Put Lives at Risk

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Marsha Blackburn, a cranky old congresswoman from Tennessee who opposes green initiatives and any form of gun control, favors giving the military more than it needs or wants, and strives to protect the rich from paying their fair share of taxes, is best known for her vigorous opposition to other women's rights to reproductive freedoms.  Blackburn, like fellow congressman, Trent Franks, of Arizona, sets all her flags to flying whenever the topic of abortion arises on the House floor.  She presents as opposed to abortion under all circumstances and loudly decries it as the taking of human life.

Blackburn, like so many of the anti-abortion crusaders, seems to quickly lose interest in maintaining human life once the infant is born.  Her constant opposition to Obamacare is indicative of her lack of interest in providing medical care that would prolong human life.   Marsha will protect you up until the rude spanking in the delivery room, but after that you are on your own.

Ms. Blackburn has recently been given the reins of a House subcommittee with the misleading name "Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives."   The title is misleading because what Ms. Blackburn and her GOP co-conspirators are out protecting is not infant lives at all, but rather they messing around in women's health care and attempting to force other females into carrying unwanted pregnancies.

Blackburn's subcommittee was formed in response to the Republican knee-jerk reaction to last year's (now discredited) secret videos that purportedly showed officials at Planned Parenthood negotiating the sale of "baby parts" (fetal tissue) to medical researchers.  And while the ultimate goal of Ms. Blackburn and others of her ilk is the complete shut-down of Planned Parenthood, the important women's health care provider has thus far survived.

The goal of the "Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives" appears to be intimidation of the people who actually perform the medical research which uses fetal tissue.  The committee, which had already issued thirty-some subpoenas for information, has now issued seventeen more - and the new subpoenas are requesting the names of individuals doing the research.  As one Democrat on the committee pointed out, the group has no safeguards in place to protect the names of those people once they are provided.  They will, in effect, be wearing targets.

And people wearing targets, particularly in our gun-crazy country, are in grave danger.  Just ask Dr. George Tiller, a man who was identified as an abortion provider by anti-abortion activists.  Ask Dr. Tiller about the target that the right-wing crazies placed on him.  Oh wait, you can't ask him.  He was gunned down in church by someone claiming to be "pro-life."

Ms. Blackburn if you want to truly be pro-life, then start by being a little more tolerant of the poor and the infirm in our society.  When poverty begins to disappear, when people have ready access to contraception and affordable health care, I predict that the demand for abortions will miraculously begin to lessen.  You are in a position to do more than just intimidate and incite, you could actually be making a difference.

All you need is a heart.

It's Not Name-Calling If They Really Are Fascists

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Most of the old farts in my Wednesday night card group are giddy with anticipation that Hillary will be arrested sometime during the fall campaign and made to account for being treasonous, or frumpy, or some other high crime or misdemeanor that Fox News assures them she must have committed.  The other side of that bright penny for them is that would then clear a path for Donald Trump or Ted Cruz to be elected President of the United States and save the Republic from itself.

And what a country it could become.  Trump has been promising since day one that he not only would strong-arm Mexico into building the world's biggest wall along our southern border, but that he would also stop all Muslims from entering our "Christian" nation - even those who already live here, own property here, have kids in school here, attend PTA, and who just happened to be traveling outside of the country on business or vacation.   They will be BARRED from returning to their homes, their children, their lives! 

(Construction companies will grow fat building walls during a Trump administration!)

Now Ted Cruz is joining the Muslim-bashers.  The man Trump has affectionately dubbed "Lying Ted" says that as President he will increase police patrols and surveillance in Muslim neighborhoods.

God bless America, y'all.  The founding fathers would be so proud - the establishment of a full-blown police state to promote one religion over another.

I saw a report on the Internet this morning in which a person identified as a top foreign policy expert in the Cruz camp praised Senator Joe McCarthy from the 1950's communist witch-hunt fame as being "spot-on" with his ideas for ferreting out communists in all levels of government.  This particular "expert" believes that over the past administration members of the Muslim Brotherhood have been secreting themselves away in various government positions.

It can't get much scarier that the rebirth of Joe McCarthy with a Texas drawl.

If Hillary does manage to get herself arrested, it will most assuredly be America that suffers the consequences.

As Old as Hillary

by Pa Rock
Birthday Boy

They say it's my birthday, and I guess that's right.  I have it on reliable authority that I was born sixty-eight years ago today to Garland and Florine (Sreaves) Macy at Sale Memorial Hospital in Neosho, Missouri.   I was delivered by Dr. Melvin Bowman, who I believe was one of the hospital's owners.

On the day of my birth, Hillary Diane Rodham, who would one day marry and enable a prolific and indiscriminate sperm-dispenser by the name of Bill Clinton, was already nearly six-months old and and cooing happily in her playpen as she plotted the conquest of the free world.  Baby Donald Trump was a couple of months shy of his second birthday, and busy seeing how high he could stack his blocks before they all inevitably came tumbling down - and little Bernie Sanders and most, if not all, of the future Rolling Stones were already in school.

Every single one of those people, myself included, is too old to be running for President, much less serving, and too damned old to be hobbling out on stage to perform a rock concert.

Hey you gnarly old relics, let's all go fishing and give the youngsters their turn at running the world.  True, they will make some mistakes along the way, but didn't we all?  It's their turn - and it's their future.

Geriatrics unite - and wet a hook or two - or go play pinochle!

Que Bola, Cuba?

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

President Barack Obama, his lovely wife Michelle, and their two beautiful daughters, Sasha and Malia, disembarked Air Force One in Havana, Cuba, this past Saturday as the family began an historic three-day trip to the island nation that has been closed off to much of the citizenry of the United States since before the President was even born.  Though they left the big plane in a rainstorm, the family was all smiles and elegance as they stepped onto the tarmac and into history.

More than a thousand hangers-on came with or followed the Obama's from the United States to Cuba.  The entourage filling up Havana hotel rooms included, American businessmen, congressmen, political aids and government functionaries, baseball players, and many others who hoped to profit one way or another through increased normalization of relations between the former cold war adversaries.

During the brief visit which ends today, the President met with President Raul Castro of Cuba (the fourth time that they had the opportunity for a face-to-face meeting since both men became the leaders of their respective countries), toured old Havana, and placed a wreath at the memorial to Jose Marti, the Cuban patriot and poet.

At some point during Monday's activities, a photographer managed to snap a picture of Obama at the Plaza de la Revolucion standing in front of the huge metal portrait of Che Guevara - and, right on cue, Fox and other dark forces of American journalism (sic) tried to make something sinister of it.  No sooner had this conspiracy been hatched than responsible news sources countered with pictures of most other U.S. Presidents since Nixon standing in front of images of iconic revolutionaries.  Obama continues to be held to different standards than all of his predecessors.

The Obama's will leave Cuba today after watching a professional baseball game between teams representing the two nations.   They and their daughters will fly to Argentina for a brief vacation before the girls have to return to school from spring break next week.

(Historical Note:  Calvin Coolidge is widely reported to have been the last sitting President to visit Cuba when he traveled there in 1928 - but he wasn't.  Harry Truman stopped by the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 1948 while he was serving as President.  Jimmy Carter visited as an ex-President in March of 2011, and future President John F. Kennedy was familiar with the island during his recreational visits to Havana in the 1950's.  And, of course, there was that Teddy Roosevelt fellow, also a pre-president, who went charging up San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish American War.  When it comes to American chief executives with a personal knowledge of Cuba, Barack Obama is just one of several.)

(Pa Rock's goal for this week is to learn to take a "selfie" so I can snap a photo of myself in front of the giant portrait of El Che.  If I get a good one, it will be on my holiday card next winter!)

Que bola, Cuba?

Monday's Poetry: "Hawk Roosting"

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

Part of my daily routine here at Rock's Roost is an afternoon feeding which I refer to as "tea."  During this daily ritual, I scatter a few sunflower seeds up by the garage, where they are stored in a squirrel-proof metal garbage can, for the chickens - if they see me head to the garage and gather there waiting.  Then I take some sunflower seeds and dry dog food down to the penned-up peacocks who anxiously await their late-in-the day treat.  On the way back to the house I stop by the chicken coop and gather the day's final few eggs.

This past Saturday things went pretty much as usual until I entered the hen house to look for eggs,  There, just inside the door, sat a young hawk on the floor looking quite startled by my sudden arrival.  The hawk had just ripped the head off of one of my pair of little banty roosters.  Many of the other birds and the turkey were hiding at the far end of the coop trying not to draw the hawk's deadly attention.

I had a plastic cup in my hand, the vessel that had been used to carry the sunflower seeds to the peacocks.  I threw the cup at the small hawk and she rose into the air trying desperately to find her way out of the small building.  Finally she hit the open door and was free.  I gathered up the broken cup, tried my best to calm the excited poultry, and removed the dead bird from the premises. 

(There was no doubt in my mind that the little rooster had flung itself at the invader in an attempt to protect the hens.  Last year when the neighbor's dog came over to kill hens, the tally wound up being one hen and two roosters.  The male chickens may be a nuisance at times, but they are valiant unto death.)

Thirty minutes later I went back into the hen house to make sure that the girls had settled down, and when I entered I again found the young hawk sitting on the cement floor.  Fortunately I arrived before she had time to kill anything.  I gave chase, but again she managed to flee.  Since that incident I have made numerous surprise visits to the chickens' quarters, but the hawk has not reappeared.  I suspect she has a nest somewhere nearby and is just biding her time.

This isn't my first up-close-and-personal encounter with a hawk.  Back in 2005 I was living in an upstairs apartment in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, when I worked at Ft. Campbell.  I had a bird feeder out on my balcony that attracted large numbers of birds and squirrels - and was always a riot of activity.  One day I happened to notice that the activity around the bird feeder was much quieter than usual, and a quick glance outside enlightened me as to why.  A very large hawk had taken up a position on the balcony railing and was daring any other feathered creature - or squirrel - to venture close to the birdseed buffet.  My friend, Sandy Price, who was into all sorts of new age stuff, told me that a hawk was a sign of good luck, and she gave me a hawk card to commemorate the occasion.

Somehow I don't think my young rooster felt any luck at all as this small hawk ripped his head off.  And somehow I suspect that I have not seen the last of her.

Despite being savage killers, hawks are also quite elegant birds whose "lazy circles in the sky" and watchful eyes have inspired many poets to put pen to parchment.  Ted Hughes, a one-time British Poet Laureate and the husband of Sylvia Plath, had this to say about the graceful predator:

Hawk Roosting
by Ted Hughes

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.

(Special note to Bill Gates and the other culture overlords at Microsoft:  "Banty" is a word.  Buy a dictionary!)