Grandma Aggie

 

by Rocky Macy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

by Pa Rock

Missouri Voter

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

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

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

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

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

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

I that is your long game, Jack - godspeed!

Getting Ready to Spring into Summer

 

by Pa Rock

Farmer in Very Late Spring

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LaMDA Lawyer's Up

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Steelhead in Missouri

 

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

Steelhead in Missouri

by Bob Randall

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Long Slide: JFK to Watergate and Beyond

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Horrors of Coming Home

 

by Pa Rock

Humanoid

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

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

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

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

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

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

Computer Shopping in Kansas City

 

by Pa Rock

Road Warrior

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

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

We are off to the Plaza!

A Close Encounter with Wilma Mankiller

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

by Pa Rock

Reminiscer 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thirty-One Men and a Truck

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dead School Children Do Not Reflect Our Values

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stand tall, protesters, and talk hard!

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

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Supremes can wait.

Our kids need to come first!

Star Dust

(Editor's Note:  In today's posting, Ranger Bob, a naturalist by training as well as by inclination and avocation, takes a deep dive into his ultimate origins.  Ranger Bob's journey into his past goes far beyond any "genealogy" that this tired old family researcher has ever attempted!)

Star Dust

by Bob Randall

Every proton, neutron, and electron of every atom that is or ever has been part of my body all spewed out of the singularity about 14 billion years ago.  Naturally, that first proton-neutron pair was a hydrogen atom.  Who knows how long it took or how many places in the universe it traveled to before fusion in some star made that atom into other elements?  Who knows if it was in more than one stellar furnace?  Was it part of more than one asteroid or comet, changing "rides" with each collision?  That's just one atom.  Who knows how many other similar cosmic events took place to gather all the other atoms and molecules needed to make me?

Well, the answers to those specific questions are all the same: nobody knows.  Now, if you're a cosmologist, a theoretical physicist, or astrophysicist feel free to make a correction or two.  If you're a religious nut, a palm reader, an astrologist, an anti-vaxer, a flat earther, a science denier, or any other type of supernatural or pseudoscience believer, I wouldn’t be interested in your opinion.  Write your own essay.

All of that was just getting the ingredients here to Earth.  Think of all the times those atoms and molecules were involved in photosynthesis, worked their way through digestive systems, floated in the atmosphere, brought back down by a raindrop, settled to the bottom of an ocean to be locked in rock for millions of years, or flown to Mexico in the body of a monarch butterfly?  Maybe some of my atoms were even part of a fern that was eaten by a brontosaurus, then deposited somewhere to be eaten again by dung beetles.

And then somewhere along that trip, there was me.  Are any of those "beginning of me" atoms still in me or did I lose them all in dying cells, drops of blood, and respiration?  Have they all been replaced by atoms I picked up throughout my life and in the broccoli I ate last week, etc.?

The ride isn't over.  I'm just a marker in the route.  My atoms will be part of microbes, worms, bird poop, spinach, and a member of a yet-to-evolve species.  If a large enough meteorite hits Earth with enough force to throw some of my atoms off into space, it will be a wild ride to another part of the universe.  The atoms that are still here when the sun expands enough to engulf Earth will become part of our star.  When it explodes, who knows where they will go?  I’m just star dust.

Dear Martin

 

by Pa Rock

Reader

The small town of Greenfield, Missouri (pop. 1,220), is located about forty miles from Springfield, the largest metropolitan area in southwest Missouri.  Greenfield is a small, primarily agrarian community that is the seat of Dade County,  Ironically, forty years or so ago Greenfield also boasted one of the most progressive rock radio stations in the area, but those days of leaning into the future now seem to be firmly framed in the little town's rearview mirror.

Early this past April, during the fifteen-day period that some Missouri educators refer to as the "turkey shoot," a period of time in which school boards can vote to not renew the contracts of non-tenured teachers, the school board at Greenfield voted to not renew the contract of a high school English teacher just as she was about to achieve tenure.  When the teacher requested a reason for her non-renewal, as was her right, the superintendent presented her with a letter stating that her contract had not been renewed because of a preparatory worksheet that she had used with her students related to a novel titled "Dear Martin."

"Dear Martin," by Atlanta-based author Nic Stone, is the story of a young black man, Justyce McAllister who has been salvaged from a life in the hood by being awarded a scholarship to a prestigious college preparatory high school - and the way his life is affected by that move into a dramatically different environment.  In the "About the Author" section of the novel, there is the following statement about the origins of Ms. Stone's focus for this novel:

"Dear Martin is her first novel and is loosely based on a series of true events involving the shooting deaths of unarmed African American teenagers.  Shaken by the various responses to these incidents - and to the pro-justice movement that sprang up as a result - Stone began the project in an attempt to examine current affairs through the lens of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s teachings."

Obviously there were some prominent people in Greenfield, Missouri, who were uncomfortable with the idea of their students being exposed to the currents that flow beneath the issues of race in America, in fact, they undoubtedly feared that it might be connected to that "Critical Race Theory" that Fox News had been warning them about.

Being an old teacher myself, one whose academic background is steeped in English and history, my response when I heard about the school board's action in Greenfield was to purchase a copy of the book so I could read it for myself and see what all of the noise was about.  I bought it, read it, and liked it - a lot.

Justyce is an exceptional teen who has received some miraculous advantages in a life that could have easily been defined by impoverished circumstances and bad choices.  But even with his advantages, real life still relentlessly pursues him through the racism of a society that has been built on stereotypes and nurtured across generations.  No matter how hard he tries, Justyce cannot seem to alter how he is perceived by the world around him.

After an incident in which he is handcuffed and wrongfully arrested by a white police officer, Justyce, who has read and studied many of the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., begins an introspective and self-healing project of journaling personal letters to Dr. King in which the youth examines his own struggles in relation to some of the trials that Dr. King endured.  He begins each of those letters with "Dear Martin."

"Dear Martin" is not a lengthy novel, and its not complicated with structural barriers like difficult vocabulary, multi-layered plots and sub-plots, or flashbacks.  It is a fairly simple story of a young man finishing high school and getting ready for college, his social interactions with varying degrees of friends, and his relationships with two very different young ladies.  Justyce interacts with racial injustice when it confronts him directly through the police and the community, or when it comes at him obliquely through his high school friends.  He even has to deal with his own mother's intense dislike of a white girl dating her son, a dislike that is based entirely on the girl's race.

But even though "Dear Martin" comes across as a fairly straight-forward read, it is anything but simple to digest.  The story of Justyce McAllister constantly confronts the reader those old prejudices and that reach back generations and have silently and insidiously become a part of who we are.  "Dear Martin," with its gut-wrenching forays into situations that have their roots in contemporary news stories, is self-revealing and, at times, an uncomfortable experience, but it is also a vehicle for change and growth.

I regret that the community of Greenfield, Missouri, saw fit to fire (okay, "not-renew") a teacher because she wanted her students to experience "Dear Martin," and I regret that the small community of Monett, Missouri,  banned the same book from its high school.   Schools should foster growth and change, and schools which try to impede growth and change are pulling civilization backward.  I feel sorry for children who are mired down in communities that fear ideas and thinking - and change.

But know this world:  there is a young man in Salem, Oregon, who will be fifteen next month, and his grandfather will be sending him a copy of "Dear Martin" as a birthday gift.

Excellent work, Ms. Stone.  I was moved and challenged by your very disturbing first novel.

Babies in the Barn!

by Pa Rock

Farmer in Spring

Every morning, not long after daylight,  I feed the cat at the chicken coop and then trek on out to the barn where I scatter hen scratch for the guineas.  Most mornings I find Mama Guinea sitting peacefully on her nest which is located at the back of one of the animal stalls, and the two male guineas somewhere close-by keeping an eye on the maternity ward.  

The "stall" is just a small area penned-off by ancient oak boards and nestled up against the backside of the barn's exterior wall.  It has no gate or point of entry, other than just climbing over - so I am not sure what it's original use was.  There are two of those "stalls" located next to each other, and entry to either would require more effort than I would be willing to put into the matter, so Mama Guinea sees me walking around in the barn and visiting with her over the side of the stall, but she does not have to worry about me coming too close.  The male guineas focus on her and basically ignore me on the one or two times a day when I invade their large, two-story home.

Mama Guinea had left her large nest of eggs alone for long periods of time as she was depositing her daily offering, and I was worried that they might not hatch.  But the young hen, who is just barely a year-old, knew more innately about what she was doing than I did - because this morning she had two chicks chirping to each other and to her as they frolicked around the edge of the nest!  Mama Guinea, who was still busy incubating the rest of her eggs, seemed to be trying to ignore the noisy babies.

Papa Guinea, however, was in the stall with her and pacing nervously back-and-forth in front of the nest, and Uncle Guinea was watching from the far rail of the stall that sits adjacent to the maternity ward.  Both the papa and the uncle appeared to be proud as . . . well, uh . . . guineas!

I am intentionally staying away from the barn for a few hours giving things time to get settled.  I will head back up around noon and see if there have been any new arrivals.

It is definitely Spring at Rock's Roost because we have babies in the barn!

Update. #1:     As of about 11:00 a.m. today there were many more new hatchlings.  I'm estimating fifteen or so, but they are out of the nest and hopping around like fleas - and impossible to count!  All three adult guineas are hard at work trying to control the babies.   Occasionally Mama Guinea will get them all back in the nest for several minutes, and then they start straying again.   They are also visiting the adjoining stall during their outings from Mama's nest.

I am unable to climb into the stalls, but I have managed to get feeders and waterers into each stall close to the interior walls.  Hopefully the little ones will discover those shortly and focus on meeting their physical needs.

Imagine the havoc in the maternity wards if human babies were born with the ability to crawl out of their bassinets and walk around!

Update #2:   The little chicks have discovered the feed and they seem to love it.   They are still hopping around like fleas, but all three adult guineas are in the stall working at keeping them controlled.   The unofficial count is fifteen babies with possibly as many at seventeen.  

Ranger Bob has suggested that I put a cot in the barn and sleep out there for the next month or so to fight off raccoons and other predators. Ranger Bob is a funny guy!

Update #3:   Wednesday, shortly after daybreak.   It was still darkish in the barn during my morning breakfast tour, but all three parents were in the stalls and  I could see several of the babies huddled in a corner.  The good news was that I saw no small bodies or signs of predators.  The little chicks will grow surprisingly fast, so every day of survival increases the likelihood that they will manage to reach maturity.  If that happens, Rock's Roost will be one noisy little acreage - with no damned ticks!

Monday's Poetry: "Kids Who Die"

 

by Pa Rock

Poetry Appreciator

American poet Langston Hughes penned this powerful poem, "Kids Who Die," in 1938 as a lamentation and as a way to bring attention to the cruelty, suffering, and deadly chaos that was arising out of the racial and class struggles of that time.   Today, more than eighty years later, race is still an open wound in our country, one that will not heal, and one which some people even refuse to acknowledge as a prevalent social ailment.

With this work Langston Hughes drew the curtain back on young people dying as a result of racially-inspired hatred and class struggles, but I cannot help feeling that if he were alive and writing today, the poet would add a few stanzas about the young people in our country who are being gunned down for simply going to school.   We have yet to hear the sweet song of life triumphant.

Kids Who Die

by Langston Hughes

This is for the kids who die,

Black and white,

For kids will die certainly.

The old and rich will live on awhile,

As always,

Eating blood and gold,

Letting kids die.

Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi

Organizing sharecroppers

Kids will die in the streets of Chicago

Organizing workers

Kids will die in the orange groves of California

Telling others to get together

Whites and Filipinos,

Negroes and Mexicans,

All kinds will die

Who don't believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment

And a lousy peace.

Of course, the wise and the learned

Who pen editorials in the papers,

And the gentlemen with Dr. in front of their names

White and black,

Who make surveys and write books

Will live on weaving words to smother the kids who die,

And the sleazy courts,

And the bribe-reaching police,

And the blood-loving generals,

And the money-loving preachers

Will all raise their hands against the kids who die,

Beating them with laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets

To frighten the people - 

For the kids who die are like iron in the blood of the people -

And the old and rich don't want the people

To taste the iron of the kids who die,

Don't want the people to get wise to their own power,

To believe an Angelo Herndon*, or even get together

Listen, kids who die - 

Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you

Except in our hearts

Maybe your bodies'll be lost in a swamp

Or a prison grave, or the potter's field,

Or the rivers where you're drowned like Leibknecht**

But the day will come - 

You are sure yourselves that it is coming - 

When the marching feet of the masses

Will raise for you a living monument of love,

And joy, and laughter,

And black hands and white hands clasped as one,

And a song that reaches the sky - 

The song of the life triumphant

Through the kids who die.

* Angelo Herndon was a black US labor organizer who was arrested and convicted of insurrection in 1932 for attempting to organize industrial workers.

**Karl Liebknecht was a German socialist/communist who was assassinated in 1919.

Untangling the Missouri Senate Race

 

by Pa Rock

Missouri Voter

Missouri's senior US senator, Ol' Roy Blunt, is retiring this year so that he can work full-time in his family lobbying enterprise, and the scramble by ambitious politicians to replace him is starting to resemble an old-fashioned cattle stampede, or pig push.  As of now it looks as though the ballots of the two major parties will contain a total of thirty-two names for the position, with a few other independents and members of various minor parties also vying for a place at the government trough.

The Republicans somehow managed to field twenty-one candidates in their effort to keep Blunt's senate seat in their column.  Of the twenty-one, only four stand any serious chance of winning the nomination in the August primary election:  Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, Congresswoman Vickie Hartzler,  Congressman Billy Long - a true "long" shot, and former (disgraced) Missouri Governor Eric Greitens.

The Democrats will have eleven candidates on the August primary ballot, but only two have a real chance of securing the nomination:  Lucas Kunce, a former combat marine and who promotes progressive causes and has built a formidable campaign war chest on small donations from individuals - and Trudy Busch Valentine, a beer heiress who entered the race on the last day of filing and appears to be the "safe" candidate of Missouri's establishment Democrats.

The four major Republican candidates are all Trump "Big Lie" supporters with fascistic tendencies, and each of the four would be roughly equal in their unacceptability for the office. But it is Missouri, and each of the four could also win a general election.  In fact, the expectation is that a Republican will win, and the national Democratic Party has played into that expectation so far by largely ignoring the Missouri Senate race.

But there is a plausible scenario in which the Democrats could win.

Former Republican Governor Eric Greitens was forced to resign from office after it was revealed that he had duct-taped his naked hairdresser/mistress to a piece of exercise equipment in his basement and then photographed her and used those photos in an attempt to blackmail her into silence over their affair.   Greitens' wife subsequently took the kids and left him, moving out of state, and now they are in court in a custody battle in which she is alleging serious domestic abuse.

And - get this - Greitens continues to lead in GOP polling for the senate race - and he is beatable - and the state Republican Party is fearful that he will be their eventual nominee and could possibly lose Blunt's seat to the Democrats. 

 (If only Chuck Schumer was smart enough to reach that same logical conclusion, he might spend some of the party's money in the "show-me" state.)

But Schumer aside, some Democrats are beginning to figure out that the race, given the right circumstances, is winnable.  Lucas Kunce, the progressive former Marine who grew up on a Missouri farm, had the field essentially to himself for several months as the national Democrats ignored the race, and Kunce used his time to build a strong internet grassroots campaign that raised a barn-load of small donations. However, as the reality of a potential race against the reprehensible Greitens began to materialize, the Democratic establishment suddenly looked around and realized that their lead horse was a progressive who was spouting proposals and ideas that were outside of their comfort zone.  

On the very last day of filing for the August primary (March 29th) a new Democratic candidate threw her hat into the political ring.  Beer heiress and political novice Trudy Busch Valentine launched an obviously well-prepared campaign for the senate seat, and former state senator and establishment Democrat placeholder, Scott Sifton, dropped out in favor of Ms. Busch Valentine. It appeared to be a well-engineered attack by the Democratic establishment on the progressive populist campaign of Lucas Kunce.

In the two months since Missouri's filings for office closed, Lucas Kunce has continued to barnstorm across the state never backing down from the opportunity of giving his hard-edged opinions to anyone who will listen, and Trudy Busch Valentine has been uncomfortably standoffish and evasive.  Her continued reluctance to wade into the issues and share her passions with the state's voters lead to the perception that she is being "handled" by a professionals who feel the safest approach to the election is to keep her speaking in generalities and not allow the candidate to wander into the political weeds.   It's a "first we poll and then we talk" approach, and it tells us far more about her campaign style than it does about who the candidate is as a person or what she actually believes.

One aspect of Trudy Busch Valentine's campaign that is grating, at least to this Missouri voter, is the noblesse oblige attitude that she seems to be imparting onto her campaign.  As one of several children of the late Gussie Busch, candidate Trudy grew up on Grant's Farm and has a personal wealth somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion dollars - a nice neighborhood, indeed!  To her credit she did earn a nursing degree and worked in the medical profession, but she is also seems to be acutely aware of her immense wealth and tries to justify her run for the senate with the "from those who have been given much, much is expected" sentiment.  That almost feels like "I may not really want this job, but I owe it to the people of Missouri to do it anyway."

I'm not sure that I can be comfortable someone who deigns to serve us because she feels obligated to do it.  I also consider the preponderance of millionaires and billionaires in the US Senate to be problem that ultimately works against the best interests of ordinary people.

At this point I am not even certain that I will vote in Missouri's Democratic primary.  I may opt to take a Republican ballot and vote for disgusting Eric Greitens, knowing that he will be the easiest for the Democratic candidate to beat in November.   It all depends on what the final polling looks like before the primary.  Regardless of which ballot I take in August, Democratic or Republican, I will be supporting the efforts of Lucas Kunce.   As of this week I have sent his campaign a donation, not a lot, but a significant amount for an old fart on a fixed income, and I will have a Kunce sign in my yard and a Kunce bumper sticker on the Kia.

I don't need the Democratic establishment to tell me how to vote.  I've been around quite awhile and I know what's what - and what needs to be.

And whichever Democrat wins the August primary will have my support and vote in November's general election.  (I may be obstinate, but I'm not completely stupid!)

I'll be voting - you should, too!

Teacher Raising Money to Buy Banned Books for his Students

 

by Pa Rock

Former Teacher

Adam Byrn Tritt is an Advanced Placement English teacher at a high school in Brevard County, Florida, who has a problem with Florida's zeal for banning books from schools and libraries - a problem that likely originated when his local school district had him remove Kurt Vonnegut's classic anti-war novel, "Slaughterhouse Five" from his classroom's curriculum.

Mr. Tritt, in fact, has become so angry with the notion of book-banning that he decided to do something about it.  He has begun raising money to  buy banned books which will then be distributed to students in Brevard County to read over the summer.  

To date, Adam Tritt has collected over $8,000, and he is still working at raising more.   He is primarily investing the money is good, used books - where his dollars will go further than buying new books.  Tritt said that he is trying to acquire most of the books from local sources.  Some of the books that he is purchasing include "Beloved" and "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison, "Not all Boys are Blue" by George M. Johnson, "Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret" by Judy Blume, "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood, and, of course, Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five."   

Local businesses and churches will be helping Tritt distribute the books.  Kids sixteen and older must show proof of ID in order to acquire books, and those under the age of sixteen must be accompanied by a parent.

No one expected Florida's book-banners to take this affront to their work lying down, and they have not disappointed.   A local right-wing group calling itself "Mom's for Action" is using Facebook to attack Adam Tritt personally, comparing him to a sex offender, a "groomer," and someone who is intent on providing pornographic materials to children.  The rabid group of book-banners has challenged dozens of books available in local schools and libraries, saying they contain sexual content that is not appropriate for children - their own children and everyone else's, too.

But Adam Tritt has not been deterred by the slander and name-calling.  He is hard at work making sure that the children of Brevard County have the opportunity to read the work of writers whose intellect and vision reach far beyond the gutter world of hate-riddled Facebook posts.

In addition to being a public high school teacher, Adam Tritt is also a college instructor, elected public official, and a published author and poet.

The world needs more people like the teacher, Adam Tritt, and the young people of Brevard County, Florida, are lucky to have him in their corner!  

Red Ants Don't Like Black Ants

 

(Editor's Note:  The following arrived from Ranger Bob yesterday in the form of an email, and while it prompted me to reach for the dictionary a couple of times, I found his message to be both amusing and thought-provoking.  My own thoughts on conflating politicians with ants is that, by and large, ants do less damage.  Enjoy.)

Red Ants Don't Like Black Ants

by Bob Randall

My neighbor and I stood at the property line looking at each other.

Fooled you, we were friendly. We talked about my water drainage problem and how I might dig a little ditch to help drain it. Since neither of us know exactly where the property line is, I wanted to talk to him. He was OK with whatever I wanted to do. We switched the topic to his flower garden and next thing we knew, I was standing in the middle of it pointing out which of his vegetation was what kind of flower (or weed). There was a brief mention of politics. It was odd that one of us was a lifelong Republican who now calls himself an Independent who will never vote Republican again while the other is a lifelong Democrat who is going to vote Republican in the next election. The political discussion didn’t last long because we both knew we didn’t want to slip into the quagmire where our former political parties are drowning. 

I later wondered to myself how each of us looked at the same issues and came up with different voting decisions. I thought that maybe we were like little boys with magnifying glasses looking at ants. I had red ants in my yard and he had black ants in his yard. We scrutinized different colonies of ants. I made observations about red ants and he made observations about black ants. 

I think a lot of people find (or rationalize) an answer that satisfies them and fail to look further. I’m pretty happy with my ant answer, even though it may only be a partial answer, but I shouldn’t be satisfied. There has to be more.

A couple of days later I was reading one of my favorite blogs. There was an issue about how identitarianism is incompatible with humanism. You can read the original article the blogger referenced here. If I ever get to the point that the word identitarianism ever rolls smoothly off my tongue, I’ll let you know. It seems to be advocating for the political interests of a group. The point of this essay is not about humanism that the blogger was referencing, it’s about how we look at the same things with different colored lenses. 

A day after that, I read another of my favorite blogs. The author was referencing the very same article but was in an alternate universe from the first blogger. I was dismayed that two of my favorite bloggers were now at each other’s throats. Then I read the comments. On the first day, I agreed with a few of the comments, and disagreed with a few of the comments, and found that a few of the comments didn’t make any sense at all. I followed up on the next day’s comments. Wowecazowy! The well-thought-out comments were now buried under the newer comments and were almost nowhere to be found. The comments were lacking good thought, they were biased, and they were mean. They quickly got off into the weeds and didn't seem to be talking about the same things. I will admit that one side seemed worse than the other but maybe that was my bias showing through. The two groups were, indeed, making observations about different colored ants and would give no quarter to ants of the other color.

Let me remind you that their original topic was about a split in humanism. With over 4,000 religions in the world, I expect a lot of crazy arguments about religion. (If you want to argue about the number, just substitute the words “a lot” for "over 4,000" and let me say that you suffer from Identitarianism). I didn’t expect such vitriolic arguments from humanists. 

I haven’t looked at either blog’s comments yet today. When I work up the courage, I will. I have reached two conclusions, (a) identitarianism IS incompatible with humanism. The commenters proved that. (b) red ants don’t like black ants.

Me and My Kia Celebrate Our Anniversary

 

by Pa Rock

Road Warrior

This past Tuesday, May 31st, I received an email from the Kia agency in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, where I purchased where my South Korean automobile.  The email congratulated me and my Kia on our one-year anniversary.

My Kia Soul wasn't new.  It was (and is) a 2020 model that had been sold new in Joplin and then repossessed. I don't remember the exact mileage, but it had 18,000 miles and change when I brought it back to Missouri.  During our first year together I have made a half-dozen trips back to the Kansas City area (550 round-trip miles each plus whatever driving I did while I was there), a couple of trips to northwest Arkansas (500 round trip miles each), and a few jaunts to Springfield for doctor's visits at 200 miles per.  And even with those excursions, the Kia still has had less than 10,000 miles added to the odometer during that the year.

So I don't drive much.  There are weeks, in fact, when the little car never leaves the driveway.

The Kia agency used their anniversary email to invite me in to have the car serviced and said I could get thirty dollars off on accessories.   The next day I received an email from Kia suggesting that it might be time to come in and check out the new models.  (Did they think I had worn the last one out in just a year?)  They obviously don't have an accurate customer profile of me, because there were over 200,000 miles on each of my last three cars when I finally let them go.  And at 10,000 miles per year, it could take me seventeen years to hit that mark with this car.

That would make me ninety-one when the time for the next trade-in comes around.  By then I should have enough money set aside for a fancy electric vehicle - like a Ford 150 pickem-up truck or one of those ultra-cool battery-powered VW buses!  Heck, by then, we will undoubtedly have solar-powered cars, so I may go that route!

But, in the meantime, thanks for the anniversary reminder, Kia - and next year if you would like to send a gift, that would be fine, too!

Connect Me with a Human, Damnit!

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Are you tired of trying to talk to a machine when your cable or wi-fi service goes down?   Do you long for the good old days when you telephoned your insurance provider and an actual human answered the phone?  Do you catch yourself yelling obscenity-laced threats at recordings of demure individuals thanking you for your patience?

Each day it seems that American businesses place themselves further and further beyond the reach of complaining consumers.  It is a trend against the common decency that should not be allowed to persist!

Lawmakers in Spain (of all places!) have begun work on a comprehensive piece of legislation that would correct much of this injustice.  The bill, which will require the approval of the Spanish parliament, is being spearheaded by Alberto Garzon, Spain's Minister of Consumption.  He characterizes the effort this way:

"Customer service is a critical part of our relations with consumers which unfortunately and far too often causes endless headaches for Spanish families because far too many companies create bureaucratic labyrinths to stop you from exercising you right to service. These are difficulties which unfortunately waste an enormous amount of energy, time, and money."

Creating "bureaucratic labyrinths to stop you from exercising your right to service" sounds exactly like the dance that me and my internet provider do every few months.   And yes, every time I deal with their automated answering service, I waste inordinate amounts of energy and time!  But I guess that is part of the point - wear the bastard down and maybe he will give up and leave us alone.  

The proposed bill coming before Spain's parliament would require that:

•  companies offer a human service worker whenever it is requested by a caller;
• companies will have to answer calls within three minutes; 
• basic service providers (utilities, telephone, internet) will have to offer customer service 24-hours-a-day, 365-days-a-year.  (Other companies will have to provide customer service during normal working hours.);
• all customer complaints will have to be responded to within 15 days;
• the law will apply to all utility providers regardless of their size, and all other companies with more than 250 workers or whose business exceeds $53 million per year;  and,
• fines for breaking the new law will range from $160 to $106,000.

Thieving, soulless corporations being forced to actually listen to customer complaints and then take action on those complaints!  What a concept!  Our Congress should look at borrowing this forward-looking piece of Spanish legislation - and it undoubtedly would if Congress wasn't already securely owned by those same thieving, soulless corporations!