Rambling Perspectives

As I write this, it is 4:30AM and I have an unsettling bout of insomnia.  After a battle with the state unemployment office yesterday on my mother's behalf, I am still wound up tighter than the girdle on a Pentecostal preacher's wife at an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast, and a lot of things - many things - have been weighing on my mind the past 24 hours or so.  So, as writing is my therapy, I thought this would be a good time to "sound things out."

My mother is a 67-year-old Vietnam veteran and as of the past several months she has been out of work for health reasons.  To be totally honest, her situation has looked pretty dismal.  I have been really hitting on this whole thing about how some sectors of the population are obsessed with entitlement - they think because of their race, for instance, they are "entitled" to a lot of things.  This has caused me to be very vocal about some issues, and some of what I may have said yesterday could be misinterpreted as something it is not.  Let me say this right up-front - God created all human beings, regardless of race, etc., in his image, and all human beings regardless of physical factors have rights to basic liberties and such.  And, every race has its good and bad people, as human nature is prone to sinful behavior regardless.  The problem lies with when one race or group of people, who may have suffered some injustice in the past, decides to reciprocate the injustices on others.  With the election of the present administration in Washington, DC, we have seen such a setback in race relations over that very thing, and recently my mother experienced that first-hand.  However, to give you an idea of the gravity of this situation, I want to share a story from a few years back in the Saint Petersburg Times that I saved just for an occasion to discuss it like this.

Cathy Salustri was a 34-year-old White lady who in 2005 bought an affordable house in Bartlett Park, a predominantly Black area of Saint Petersburg.  Although even some of her Black friends told her this was not a good idea, she went ahead with it anyway.  Salustri, a New York native, had grown up in a multi-ethnic community and racism was not something that really was an issue.  Then, she moved to Bartlett Park.  In December 2005, things from her porch and yard started "walking off," and after a Black suspect jacked a scooter from her house and was apprehended doing it.  When she went to court, the guy who stole the scooter was brought up on drug charges, and apparently showed no remorse as he waved and smiled at his buddies - most of whom were Black also - and seemed to be having a good time despite the fact he was being tried for some serious offenses.  That really hit Ms. Salustri hard, and it colored her perception of Blacks since.  Was Cathy Salustri a racist for thinking that way?  I really don't think so, and here is why.  First, Salustri struggled with it - she didn't want to feel like that.  Second, deep down I really believe she understood that not all Blacks behaved like that, and that image of the lowlife, nonrepentant Black criminal is just as disgraceful for millions of decent hard-working Blacks as it was for Salustri.   Cathy Salustri, I believe, is actually a decent person who almost feels powerless to take action on crimes committed against her property - mostly by Blacks unfortunately - because she fears being labeled a "racist," and that has to change.  This poor girl finally just couldn't stand it anymore, and she put her house up for sale.  I have to be sympathetic to how she feels, because recently something similar happened to us.

One afternoon a couple of months back, I was taking a shower after working on a large project I was doing at home.  As I was drying off, I hear this knock at the front door, but am not yet decent to do anything about it, so I look out the peephole in our door.  As I do so, some Black woman in a brown dress and floppy white hat reaches up, snatches a windchime off our porch, and then walks off with it!  I was a little upset by that.  In the neighborhood we live in here, all of our neighbors are White, and many of them are middle-class people who keep to themselves.  However, there is a predominantly Black area about 3 blocks south of our house, and my guess is that this is where the thief came from.  Mind you, this was around 6 in the evening, and it was still light out, so she did that little stunt in broad daylight!  Regrettably, the "n" word sort of rushed through my mind as I thought about this woman, and I have had to repent of that a lot since.  Much like Cathy Salustri, I grew up in an area where racism and such was not really common - my small West Virginia town I grew up in didn't have a lot of Blacks, and to be honest the issue never came up.  And, even if Black people moved to town, after the people got to know them they were generally integrated into the life of the community and became part of us anyway.  And, the Blacks I did know as a kid were by no means criminals, and one of them even became my best friend in school, a guy by the name of Abdul.  However, upon moving to Florida to attend college, I was exposed to some things that, well, didn't sit well with me.  I have tried to rise above it over the years, but there has been a lot of nonsense going on, as this whole entitlement mentality often grips some of these people and they think their skin color is justification for obnoxious and criminal behavior, and they use it to manipulate the system and they make themselves very unpleasant people to be around.  I want to revisit that shortly, but wanted to first share another story related to this which involved my mother recently.

I mentioned that my mother is 67 years old and is a veteran of Vietnam, and for a number of years she has worked as a CNA for several local nursing homes here.  Recently, she had to leave her job due to health reasons, and when she did she took a massive financial hit that has left her struggling.  So, she decided to apply for unemployment benefits here at what is called a local "one-stop center."  Like many of the bureaucratic clusters people call "government agencies," this is no different - surly employees treat the applicants often with indifference and contempt, and the time one has to waste waiting to do business in one of those offices is just ridiculous.  At any rate, Mom had to do some of her application process on the computers, which are a complimentary service offered by the state unemployment program to help people find jobs, file paperwork, etc.  They are actually a valuable asset - that is, if you are computer literate!  My mother though has never hardly used a computer in her life, and of course she needed help.  So, she asks this Black administrator for assistance, which is what the guy is paid to do, as he is, as a county employee, rendering a public service.  The employee, a fat guy, was more interested in staring at the cleavage of a Black patron that he totally ignored Mom, who by this time had a short fuse.  She finally said, "Look, I need some help!" at which time our portly Black friend throws a sheet of paper in front of her and says "Read this!"   Mom was understandably frustrated, and she vented later about it to us, referring to that employee utilizing frequent use of the "n" word.  My mother does tend to exaggerate some, so quite honestly I took what she said with a grain of salt until we had to go down there yesterday because again, the unemployment office screwed up Mom's benefits and she had to run around like a chicken with her head cut off to fax this and verify that - you wonder why we have a huge deficit of trillions of bucks, right??  Any rate, that Black employee was there, and he was indeed out there flirting with Black patrons in the lobby while a line of exasperated people were waiting to get some help.  It is bad enough when you have to go into one of those offices to wait, and wait, and wait, only to be treated rudely like a number by some crass government employee, and then this.   Which now leads to some observations I want to make.

Again, I want to reiterate that the bad behavior examples I have talked about in no ways should be used to stereotype all Blacks - many Blacks are good, decent, hardworking people who mind their own business and provide for their families, and they deserve respect for the good work they do.  Also, there have been many great Black statesmen - Alan Keyes, Herman Cain, Colin Powell, etc. - who have made an uncompromising stand for traditional values and are fellow soldiers-in-arms with those of us who have similar convictions.  Also, there are many stellar Black role models - Bill Cosby comes to mind, as he is not only a talented actor but also the type of individual you'd want as a neighbor.  The problem is that you have a significant and very vocal element of the Black population that thinks they "deserve" special entitlements because of the virtue of skin color, and they use this to justify a lot of bad behavior in many cases. These individuals diminish perceptions of Blacks by others, and often a lot of good, decent Blacks have to pay the price for those idiots and their behavior.  However, what is worse is that this mentality is reinforced by a group of self-appointed leaders that have accurately been coined "plantation pimps" - people such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, James Cone, Jeremiah Wright, and others like them - who, cloaked often in the sacred title of "reverend," exploit religion to shake-down the masses with impositional guilt.  And, that is another thing - I get so sick of some segments of the Black population using religion as a means of manipulating and screwing-over other Blacks by preying on their spirituality, and in that case I would say some regulation would be good to close down some of the jackleg "churches" one often finds in Black communities.  However, that mentality is actually a more sinister invention of an evil system, which although it exploits the "race card," is actually more racist because it reinforces bad behavior.  Let's give a little background on that one.

I have come to understand over the years that an awful lot of historical revisionism has been shoved down the throats of many American schoolchildren from kindergarten to grad school, and as I grow older and more informed, I have had to re-evaluate a lot of the stuff I was taught as a kid.  Take for instance the Civil War.  If you look at your typical garden variety high school history book, it is going to tell you that slavery was the focal issue of the Civil War, and much of the American public still buys that version.   However, the more I look into it, I see a bigger issue.  When the Industrial Revolution happened at the end of the 18th century, it made a lot of greedy individuals (the Rockefellers, Morgans, Vanderbilts, etc.) extremely rich, and these greedy individuals worshipped at the altar of the Almighty Buck.  As they gained wealth, they also gained a lot of unwarranted influence over government officials, who likewise were often bankrolled by these same greedy people to advance their agendas even at the expense of the precious endowment of the citizen vote.  These greedy individuals became Corporate America, and they ironically enough were largely centered on the great population centers of the Northeast.   However, these Yankee "robber barons" wanted to expand their territory and fatten their coffers, and the slave trade back then was an area they wanted to invest in.  However by the early 1800's, many Southern states began to outlaw the business end of importing and selling slaves, and this created an issue for the "robber barons" and their government stooges, who wanted to also enrich their coffers with unjustified taxation.  So, when the South began to say that it could survive on its own without the Federal establishment, and that it wanted to regulate its own revenue, a group of rich New Englanders (many of them more racist than anything!) wanted a piece of the action of the cotton industry, and their flunkies in Washington (in particular "Honest Abe") were more than willing to oblige.  So, the "plight" of the slaves, and their ordered emancipation, was used as an excuse to keep Federal control over the South to get those cotton dollars. 

Were the corporate "robber barons" as well as "Honest Abe" and his kind in DC really interested in freeing Black slaves?   If one studies the evidence, that was the furthest thing from their mind, and to be honest, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were more compassionate of Blacks than were Grant and Sherman.  Lee freed his slaves long before the war started, but some Union generals wanted to use them for cheap labor in the factories so their corporate bosses could get richer up there.  I am about to advance something I have been saying for a long time, and it is controversial.  I really feel that if the Feds would have kept their nose out of things, and corporate greed would have been kept in check, in time the South would have had a very peaceful emancipation of its own slaves similar to what Wilberforce did in England some years earlier.  You notice that the UK has never had the level of racial tension we have had in the US, haven't you?   If certain powers-that-be would have stayed out of the picture, I think today things would be a lot different than what they are now.   Therefore, I think instead of people bullying and villifying Southerners on this issue, they need to point fingers at the real culprits - they lived on Wall Street, Boston, and Washington!  I have much more I could say on this one, but sufficive to say many Blacks are in a sense victims - they are victims not of Southern attitudes, but rather of Federal and corporate/industrial manipulation.  Even today, bad behavior is often encouraged rather than addressed, and in particular the abortion industry - you do realize that Planned Parenthood was the brainchild of a eugenics-driven racist tart by the name of Margaret Sanger, who wanted to exterminate the Black race in this country through abortion.  And, in doing so, it seems that Blacks were repressed, suppressed, and oppressed not by Southern farmers, but by Northern business interests; if you encourage bad behavior among Blacks, it will make aborting them more popular.  And, that mentality has carried over to today - more young Blacks are in prison, more Black girls are sexually active at an early age, and these behaviors are exploited by corporate-bankrolled crap being churned out in "rap" records and bad movies.  And, many Blacks have bought into it themselves, perpetuating that image as an ideal of "Blackness," and therefore further alienating their White and Hispanic neighbors.  Does this all sound like a conspiracy theory?  Maybe, but take a look at it for yourselves. 

I have soapboxed on this enough this morning, and there is so much more that could be said about it too, as it is a subject that needs to be addressed and the truth about a lot of nonsense we have been told needs to be revealed.  And, to our Black friends, I need you to remember something - the next time a White person is treated badly by one of your own and utters the "n" word under duress from the experience, don't dismiss that person as a "racist."   Rather, maybe you need to understand that the White party in the situation may have no problem with Blacks and doesn't desire to suppress their rights - it just isn't fair for Blacks to discriminate against Whites either, and Blacks should know better.  Racism is racism, and just because you're Black doesn't justify it, nor does it justify a White person being racist either; both are equally wrong.  Hopefully, that is some food for thought today.

Thrower Educational Philosophy 101

I want to share a little story with you to start this off.  William Makepeace Thackeray wrote a classic comedy tale back in 1855 called The Rose and the Ring, and the focus of the story was the personages of four young royals in two fictional kingdoms.  The first, Prince Giglio, was the son of King Savio of the fictional kingdom of Paflagonia, but his father met an untimely death and was succeeded by his ambition-driven brother Valoroso.  In the meantime, in the neighboring (and bitterly rival) kingdom of Crim Tartary was the King Calvofiore, who was overthrown in a coup by one of his generals, Padella.   Calvofiore's toddler daughter, Rosalba, in the mayhem of affairs in the palace, was left to basically fend for herself and wandered off into the woods to be raised by wolves.  Soon, at Valoroso's palace in Paflagonia, a strange little girl with a raggedy coat and one shoe shows up, and proves so entertaining that Valoroso's daughter, the prissy Princess Angelica, decides to keep her as a pet until she gets bored (which was rather quickly) and the ragamuffin girl, now called Betsinda, becomes the Princess's maid.  Padella, now installed as King of Crim Tartary, has a son as well named Bulbo, who later plays into the picture.  A key figure linking all these kids together is a mysterious woman called the Fairy Blackstick.  It was often tradition at a royal birth to invite Fairy Blackstick to the palace as an honored guest, and usually the good fairy would bestow some special gift upon the new royal child.  Upon the princes, Fairy Blackstick bestowed the gifts of a rose (for Bulbo) and a ring (for Giglio) - these gifts had the effect of making the boys handsome and desireable to the opposite sex, but imparted no other value; both boys basically became spoiled brats, a fact not unnoticed by the wise fairy.  She finally decided that bestowing these little blessings on spoiled princes and princesses was an exercise in futility, and decided instead to bestow upon the next, Calvofiore's little daughter Rosalba, a gift of a different nature - a little misfortune.  This, of course, did not bode well with the parents of the little tyke, and word spread so that when Valoroso's queen gave birth to Angelica, they banned the fairy from even attending.  So, the Fairy, upon arriving, was greeted by the doorman, an uncouth sort by the name of Gruffanuff, and after he was rather rude to her she turned him into a brass doorknocker, leaving his ugly widow behind - this widow had a thing for Giglio, and wanted to seduce him to gain a place for herself in the kingdom.  However, Giglio was smitten with his cousin Angelica, and gave her a ring, which later she cruelly refused and it got carelessly tossed out the window, only to of course be found by the old widow hag Gruffanuff.  The ring made the old crone beautiful, and she used that to her advantage until finally giving the ring to Betsinda, and then all the affections of the male sex were diverted to her.   At the same time, the two despots Valoroso and Padella decided it was time to negotiate a treaty between their nations, and Padella sent his son Bulbo, with rose and all, as a goodwill ambassador.  The two crooked kings wanted to marry off Angelica to Bulbo in order to seal the alliance, but Giglio was in a jealous rage and gets in a scuff with Bulbo, which in turn gets Giglio banned.  Betsinda (who you may have figured out by now is the Princess Rosalba) is now wearing Giglio's ring, and that causes some jealousy among the women of the palace which gets her thrown out.  She somehow ends up back in her homeland, spending the night at a deposed nobleman's shanty in the borial forest named Spinachy, who has the rest of her things and reveals that she is the true queen of Crim Tartary.   Giglio in the meantime is on a coach rolling out of town, and at a stop a strange lady (the Fairy Blackstick in disguise) accompanies him on the remainder of his trip, giving him a nice meal and a pep talk.  Giglio decides it is time to get his life together, enrolls in the university, and some years later he returns to Paflagonia.  Rosalba by now is leading a resistance against Padella, whom she soundly defeats and takes her rightful place on the throne of Crim Tartary, and soon too Valoroso's misdeeds find him out and his vizier, a shark named Glumboso, rats him out.  Bulbo and Rosalba find out about each other, fall in love, and then the Fairy Blackstick pays them a visit - she explains why they went through a lot, and that a little misfortune motivated them to live up to their potential as they were meant to be.  Although a foiled attempt to sabotage that union was launched by old hag Gruffanuff, Blackstick transforms the knocker back into her missing husband, and then Giglio and Rosalba wed, having a happy wedding.  A happy ending also awaits Angelica and Bulbo, who likewise are wed.  All ends well in the make-believe lands of Paflagonia and Crim Tartary. 

The hideous Mrs. Gruffanuff, an original illustration from Thackeray's classic work

A little misfortune - a good message when you think about it, as what Thackeray was communicating was that often adversity builds character.  I shared that story to say that so much of today's education lacks something - it has even changed since I was young, and that was just under 40 years!  Good literature was meant to communicate good values, as well as honing the comprehension of appreciating reading.  And, I have come to believe that reading is the fundamental root of quality education, as it is where it starts.  When I was a kid, I was exposed to good literature early thanks in part to a wise investment on Mom's part in a set of books called My Book House, which is also where I got the story from, as I have enjoyed it since I was a kid.  The My Book House series was a masterpiece of the late educator Olive Beaupre Miller (1883-1968), and the series itself dates back to 1919, when Miller's company, the Book House for Children, first published them.  The current incarnation of the set is 12 volumes, and the latest ones that I purchased back in 1995 are white covers (the original set I had and lost many moons ago was in dark navy and green alternating).  They are organized according to age, starting with nursery rhymes (the classic Mother Goose ones at that!) in Volume 1 (titled In The Nursery) and progressing to epic stories such as works by Leo Tolstoy in Volume 12 (titled Halls of Fame).   In between is a great collection of Aesop fables, Greek mythology, Bible stories, ethnic folk tales, real-life stories of famous people, poetry, songs, and excerpts from classic literature (a neat chapter of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is found in Volume 7, which is titled The Magic Garden).  I still actually enjoy reading those volumes even today, as there is something relaxing in reading those stories that stimulates even the imagination of an adult. 

Olive Beaupre Miller (1883-1968), who created the My Book House series

 

This is the inside cover of each of the Book House volumes, which was masterfully done and could spark the imagination of any child.  These beautiful illustrations were found all throughout the series.

 

 

However, the My Book House series was not the only source of quality literature I had.  At one point in time, my mother had contemplated a call to the ministry and I believe even went to Bible school for a short time.  When she pursued this, she purchased a three-volume Bible reference set that included a Bible dictionary, a concordance, and a Bible story book.  The story book I remember well - it had a reddish brown cover and was called Beautiful Bible Stories, published by Southwest Publishing Company.  That book of Bible stories, along with my natural historical curiosity, is largely responsible for motivating me to read the Bible for myself.  And, it was one of the greatest gifts Mom could have given me.

 

 

I had also, when I was around 6 or so years of age, found a small book that provided good basic scientific knowledge for an inquisitive mind as well.  It was published by Child Horizons, and the little book was entitled Questions Children Ask.  I had long ago lost my original copy, but managed to find another one a couple of years back, thanks to E-Bay.  It is a good resource to answer basic questions about how water becomes steam, etc., that a lot of kids ask at certain ages. 

The authors of this informative little book were Edith and Ernest Bonhivert, and it was published in 1967 originally.  It was organized by categories, such as "About Ourselves," which dealt with human biology and opened the book, and covered every category of natural sciences, economics, and history that could be imagined.  Much of the information is still relevant today, although a few things are outdated too. 

As I grew, so did my reading - I was introduced to works like those of Robert Newton Peck, William Saroyan, and others, and they helped me develop better.  As I read, I became interested in other things as well - cooking, music, etc., many of the interests I still possess today.  Now that I gave this overview, let me give you a philosophy of education I have developed over the years.

In order for a child to succeed in his or her studies, their imagination must be stimulated.  Therefore, it is important to realize that they need to be challenged with what they read.  Much of today education is glorified, unionized babysitting, with a bunch of complacent, discontented teachers droning meaningless facts in classrooms in a tone that would make Ben Stein sound hyper.  That, compounded by the short attention spans of many of today's kids (attention-deficit disorder is not an exception, but is the rule nowadays!) as they rot their brains and give themselves carpal-tunnel before they reach puberty with all the texts, tweets, social media, X-boxes, etc.  Many of these kids don't have the patience to sit down and actually read a good book because their educators are too busy either going after a fast buck or messing around with activism rather than educating.  Many kids are masters these days of political correctness, but they are culturally illiterate.  Worse, many have texted their brains out on their smartphones so much that they can't even spell correctly (some even think that "LOL" is an actual word!).  Our kids now can read "classics" like Heather Has Two Mommies as part of the required first-grade curriculum, but heaven forbid you read your kids anything that mentions Uncle Remus!  As for Bible stories, that has become a big no-no - kids are being expelled for carrying a New Testament in their backpacks now, but their teachers hand kindergarteners condoms at whim (what are they going to do with those anyway - prickly, phallic-shaped water balloons maybe?).  We are raising a generation that is, frankly, both sensitive (and not in a good way either!) and stupid at the same time.   Then on weekends kids are sitting there diddling their I-Pods today when back when I was that age I was out catching crawdads, fishing, building forts, and picking berries.  The reason is that these kids today have nothing to stimulate their imagination.   A no-talent twirp like Justin Bieber or an offensive slut like Miley Cyrus have become their role models, and instead of being out building forts and playing cowboys-and-Indians, our boys are subjected to a diet of TV that features a bunch of gay choirboys on Glee or some Kardashian tart's gyrating, half-naked butt that just mysteriously pops up on their Facebook page.  With a decline in good values comes a decline in intellectual development. 

If any of this generation is to be salvaged, it is time to take them back to the basics - make those kids read Hans Christian Anderson's Snow Queen, Dickens' Oliver Twist, and regale them with the great Greek myths of heroes like Hercules, or better yet, Biblical stories of real heroes.  Get those kids off their butts, out of the house, and put them to work - incentives help too.  When I was in school, for instance, we had pretty clearly-defined systems of reward and punishment.  For instance, in my third-grade teacher Mrs. Moran's class, if you got out-of-line, you had to hold up to six large dictionaries in a corner for 20 minutes or you wrote 100+ times sentences stating "I will not______".
But, if you excelled, you got rewarded - one teacher I remember gave us tokens which at the end of the week we could redeem from the Weekly Reader book catalog - the more you read and applied yourself, the more tokens you earned.  However, that same teacher - my 5th and 6th grade teacher, the late Guy Dispanet (1939-1993) -  would make you run laps around the back field at our school (Oh, how I hated that!).   Although it took some work on the student's part, it paid off - you learned character and responsibility that way.   Also, in those days teachers were not shy about applying a little corporal punishment - 5 whacks in the principal's office with a heavy wooden paddle was a good motivation to behave oneself!    And, perhaps if our kids had more role models like Mr. Rogers or Captain Kangaroo (or Miss Sally from Romper Room for the really young tykes - any of my fellow geezers remember these?) they might turn out better than they have in many cases.

Another issue today is this whole deal with entitlement.  People don't want to apply themselves, invest the effort, and enjoy the fruits of their labor - rather, they go to school, take courses in basket-weaving and "How to Love Your Lesbian Dad," and then they think they have a right to demand everything be handed to them on a silver platter (thanks Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the two original "plantation pimps" of entitlement!).   Lawrence Welk, an unlettered scion of Volga German immigrants from North Dakota who later became one of the most famous big bandleaders of all time, stated it best in his book This I Believe (Engelwood Cliffs, NJ:  Prentice-Hall, 1979) when he said on page 27 when he observed the following:

"Actually, I believe they (young people) know it instinctively.  Most young people are itching to 'do,' to 'act,' to learn for themselves.  The problem is that we make it unreasonably difficult for them, with our child labor and minimum wage laws.  And we stop them at just the time in life when they learn quickest and best."

Welk wrote this in 1979 - he would be turning over in his grave today if he witnessed what has happened in the 21 years since his passing in 1992!  Phil Robertson, of Duck Dynasty fame, adds a little personal perspective as well when he wrote in his book, Happy, Happy, Happy (New York: Howard Books, 2013) this:  "we didn't have much, but we loved each other and found ways to keep each other entertained.  We didn't have cellphones or computers, but somehow we managed to survive.  As far as I know, none of my brothers or sisters has ever owned a cell phone...I can promise you one thing: you'll never find me on Twitter or Skype.  If anyone needs to talk to me, they know where I live." (pp. 20-21).  Tying those two diverse backgrounds together, here is what I get out of it - young people want to learn for themselves, and can use their time constructively to do so.  However, Corporate America (the bane of true intelligence) has manufactured a number of convenient distractions that stifle this natural inquisitive nature and resourcefulness, and the result has been devastating.  And, parents and teachers alike have encouraged this mental laziness.  So, as our kids sit around getting fatter and stupider, Corporate America fiddles like Nero.   Like Welk also said, we stifle kids' natural self-sufficiency too.   I can relate to all this.  When I was growing up, computers were the stuff of science fiction, and I wasn't exposed to my first one until my 6th grade year in 1983. I didn't even use one until much later, when I was 28 years old in 1998.  I am still more comfortable today with hard-copy and bound books than I am with all these Kindles and such, and if someone sends me something online, it does me little use until I can actually print it out and hold it in my hand.  Many people are even less computer-literate - my mother has never touched one hardly, and she's actually sort of afraid of them!  Computers have sort of become a fact of life now, but my concern is that life is often built around them way too much.  Sometimes it is good to just step away from the computer a while and let the brain do what God created it to do.  Good parents will admonish their kids to do just that.  Reading books is indeed a lost art, and what a tragedy it is too.

Math skills are also not as great among the younger generation.  As a kid, I hated math, and thanks be to God for strict teachers that made me stretch my brain, I learned it fast - one of those teachers that comes to mind is Dorothy Schwer (whose last name in German, ironically, actually means "difficult" - the joke in German class when I was in high school concerning her was "Ist Frau Schwer schwer?")
However hardnosed she seemed to be then, however, she knew how to make students apply themselves.  As I get older, it is ironic that the meanest, strictest teachers I had throughout my formative years (Dispanet and Schwer come to mind!) turned out being the ones I appreciated the best later.  Good teachers don't do what they do to be liked, but rather to make the students learn, which is their job.  Not all good teachers are that strict though - I have had other teachers, such as my high school English teacher, Mrs. Vivian McConnell (1920-2012), whom I kept in touch with for years because she made her lessons come alive and become applicable to their students.  Then, there is Thomas Englemann, a tall (over 6-foot) lanky guy with a long ponytail in honor of his Indian heritage, who gave me a listening ear and tremendous encouragement at a time when I was in junior high school and often looked down upon because I was somewhat eccentric then.  A good well-rounded education needs both the McConnells and the Schwers, the Dispanets and the Engelmanns, because all of these educators contribute something to a kid's development that they need.  Some teachers one may hate at first - doing math problems on a certain type of paper or running laps at recess around a field in your street clothes may not initially endear the educators instituting those measures well at first, and I can attest - but as one does grow older and wiser, reflection brings appreciation when something that teacher said or did 30+ years ago all of a sudden clicks - the classic "AHA!" moment, which I sure you all can relate to.   Take time, therefore, to appreciate your old teachers.  Some of them may no longer be in this life, as they may have passed onto their eternal reward, but you are their legacy, and that is honorable in and of itself. 

I hope you didn't mind indulging me these ramblings tonight, as I have been thinking about this subject for a while and wanted to write about it.  Many of yesterday's kids are now today's parents - have you asked your kids about those teachers they have instructing them, and have you encouraged them to maybe keep a journal or something of those observations?  If not, please do so - I honestly can say I regret not keeping journals earlier than what I have, and what a loss of perspective that was.  Your kids need to chronicle what is important in their life now, and they need to start preserving the legacy they have today.  Good teachers are some of the architects of that legacy, and if we encourage kids to appreciate that more, it might give hope to this generation yet.  Take care until next time.

 

Recent Ramblings and Ponderings

Well, I don't know how to really start except to go impromptu on this one and see where it goes.  A lot has been on my mind lately, and as I sit here at 11:30 at night I wanted to see if I couldn't make some order out of all those random thoughts in such a way as to inspire inspiration.  So, I suppose a good place to begin would be to start with what comes off the top of my head.  My writing mentor, Robert Newton Peck, encouraged me to do it that way, as that is how he writes too.  He notes in his book, How To Write Fiction Like A Pro (Gainesville, FL:  Maupin House, 2006) that writing is "show business" - you don't tell it, in other words, but you show it.  I am not sure what I am showing you this late hour, but I will give it my darndest try!

One thought that comes to mind is the past week.  I have unfortunately been laid-off from work for a while, and to be honest we have hit a bit of a dry spell.  My mother has also been out of work too, and her situation is worse (long story there!), and to be honest, when trying to rise above my own limitations it sort of drives me nuts to hear her lamentations.  In order to create a little diversion for both of us lately and to diffuse the situation, I have introduced Mom to Google Maps, which honestly is a fantastic innovation since it has street views and you can practically do virtual trips while sitting at the comfort of your computer desk.  For some who know me, I have been on this little adventure of self-discovery - family genealogy, researching things from my own past, etc. - and have used tools like Google Maps to aid in that endeavor.  One day, I hope to compile all that information into a memoir book, and in a sense writing stuff like this is like a test run of the bigger project.  Introducing Mom to Google Maps actually helped her a little, as she was able to also help me with some things, particularly where we used to live in Baltimore when I was a kid, among other things.  When she comes up of a day to visit, the amusing little joke we have now is her asking, "So, where do you want to drive today?"  It has been fun, but also some other inspiration came out of it too.  One thing I recall from my days in Kirby, WV, was the local radio station, WELD-AM in Fisher, WV, a little town on a backroad between Moorefield and Petersburg.  Although a country station back then (and I am not a huge fan of country music, save Western swing of course!) WELD was also a source for much of the local happenings.  And, music aside, there was a sort of comfort to listening to that little station - it was as if you got to know the announcers.  Some of you old fogeys like me remember the local AM stations, so I know you understand what I am talking about.  That was in the days before greedy corporations swallowed up the local stations and screwed up their formats.  It was the same on Sunday nights, which as you may recall from my earlier work I listened to Henry Boggen on WBT-AM out of Charlotte, NC, the station that basically introduced me to vintage big band music and is largely responsible for the 1170+ CD collection I have over here to my right today.  Good music is so hard to find these days on the radio dial - I honestly hardly listen anymore to radio save the rare occasion I can pick up XM stations, which do broadcast a lot of what AM used to.  Local AM radio though was so comforting then, and like Saturday morning cartoons now it is unfortunately a fading memory that only a few of us share, as the Millenials don't have a clue in most cases.  It is a shame what they miss out on, isn't it?

The old WELD radio station, Fisher, WV

 

 

Speaking of things committed to memory, I heard in the news this week that the old Piggly Wiggly stores are closing.  We never had many of those in northern West Virginia where I was from, but I do remember them vividly when I used to visit Dad in Brunswick, GA, as a kid.  Also, back in my early college days, there was a Piggly Wiggly near the campus in Graceville, FL, many of us students relied upon for our shopping needs.   I always liked the Piggly Wiggly stores, as they were a lot more homey and less frigid than your typical supermarket.  Back when I was a kid, there was a similar chain with a store in Martinsburg, WV, called Acme Grocery.  Last I heard about the latter, it was bought out by Albertsons, which itself has downsized here on its home turf in Florida.  Things I remember which are now closed or forgotten - must be my age, as I am sitting on the doorstep of 44 now.  Grocery stores, AM radio stations, restaurants...so much good stuff, and so many good memories too.   

 

What is even more shocking is the number of people in recent years I have known a significant part of my life that have passed away.  Recently, due to having the time to work on it in lieu of my unfortunate layoff, I compiled all the obituaries I have collected over the years in a large GBC'ed book that I am placing on the shelf with other memorabilia for easy reference.  It seems like the older I get, the more obituaries I collect.  I have gotten to the point that I look through local papers of places I grew up in to see if anyone I know has met their maker yet, and then I print out the obituaries to add to my book.  Bizarre and pathetic?  Maybe, but at the same time it is also a humbling reminder of my own rapid approach of the half-century mark in a few short years - well, that and the rapidly-graying hairs on my head and my expanding middle - I don't even look like the same person I was, as I looked almost malnourished when I was in my teens and twenties.  The recent change of seasons has also awakened another harbinger of my approaching agism - for three weeks I have had probably the worst aches and pains in my right arm and elbow, largely due to an injury I suffered as a toddler in which I broke my right elbow.  Who needs Al Roker when you have Art Thrytis, right?

 

On a more serious note, it really gets to a person after being laid-off for a while too.  You work your butt off to hone your skills, have good and raving reviews from your former bosses, and also have striven to get a higher education, and no one pays attention.   I plan on soapboxing on this a little, because it has really been sticking in my craw for a number of years -it isn't going to be the most politically-correct thing to say either, but who cares.   It is no big secret that Corporate America is all about big bucks, and they don't care what they do or who they step on to get that wealth.  Originally, capitalism was designed for the cottage industry, the "mom-and-pop shop," and the ambitious individual who wanted to make a living by turning a passion for something into something profitable.  Then, two things happened - the Industrial Revolution and Big Government.  Many of the biggest and oldest corporations today were birthed by "Robber Barons" who drove the Industrial Revolution, and they got where they are by the worship of the Almighty Buck.  Quality took a back seat to mass-production, and what happened was that cheaper, inferior quality products flooded the market and made the rest of America lazy.  In the process, we lost quality.  These corporations have gotten so greedy now that in Bolivia a few years back one greedy corporate raider in San Francisco started "patenting" water, and as a result many native Bolivians were wrongfully arrested, their properties confiscated, and their livlihoods ruined all because they collected rainwater in a barrel.  My question to the greedy potz in San Francisco who caused that mess is this - how can you patent a basic element of life that God created?  Yet, a greedier government upheld the corporation, and warred against its own citizens because of it.  In the US, the consequences have been even more dire.  If it weren't for corporations, and the bureaucratic mess in Washington, DC, that empowers them, we would not have had the ugly racial issues that have plagued us since before the Civil War.   What I am saying is this - we were taught wrong about the Civil War.   It was not fought to liberate slaves; it was fought because Federal government couldn't regulate the slave trade, and Northern corporations that wanted a piece of the action incited the events that led to the Civil War as a result.  I truly believe that had the South been left alone, slavery would have ended on its own - many states in the South had ended the slave trade by the time the Civil War started, and it would have been only a matter of time before true emancipation of the slaves would have taken place (example - Wilburforce in England).  But, greedy politicians and corporate executives had other plans, and didn't have the patience to wait because they wanted to take over the South for themselves.  As a result, what followed the Civil War was 100 years of race tension, and today it has encouraged a mentality of entitlement in some sectors of the African-American population, which "plantation pimps" such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, James Cone, Jeremiah Wright, and others have made a lot of money profiting from exploitation.  Now, you have some Blacks acting the same way some Whites treated their forebears, and we have Washington and Wall Street to thank for it.   Does it sound like a conspiracy theory?  Maybe, but evidence speaks for itself.  Unfortunately, this facade of entitlement - under the guise of other names such as "affirmative action" and "political correctness" - has cost some hardworking people dearly.  There are many White families now - in particular my native Appalachia - that cannot get jobs despite having the good qualifications to do so, and it stinks.  Why is that?  Well, to avoid appearing too "discriminatory," these companies like hiring some fat Black chick who likes wasting more time talking on the cell phone instead of doing the job she is paid to do, and God forbid she gets fired - oftentimes, such a person is not even qualified for the job, and they get it based on skin color rather than skills and experience so that some idiotic "affirmative action" quota can be met and the company can avoid litigation over alleged "racism" should a termination be warranted.  All the while, qualified candidates are passed over.  Some other corporate execs like hiring attractive young 20-ish women so that they can ogle their body parts  - this is called "image consulting" by the talking-heads who claim to be "human resource experts," but the only consultation happening is some horny old millionaire exec ogling his hot young secretary's cleavage.   Yes, feminism and "women's lib" have come a long way (a lot of radical feminists are lesbians anyway, and they support this crap because they like ogling too - there, I said it; ooohh, call the "hate crimes" police!).  Again, truly skilled and qualified people who worked their butts off get passed over for mere erotic aesthetics.  Welcome to 21st century postmodern America!  I could say more about this, but I won't - I will be devoting a whole article to that in the future to be sure anyway.  

 

What do we talk about next?   I need to go a more positive direction now as I have soapboxed and may get myself into hot water if I say much more!    We mentioned Robert Newton Peck, an author I became familiar with in the fourth grade and later got to know personally as a mentor and friend.  The book that introduced me to his work was part of a series of small children's stories based on his childhood called Soup.  The Soup books were something I could relate a lot to - the exploits of a small-town kid and his buddy going on adventures, getting into mischief, etc.  What I was reading, as a matter of fact, was in many cases what I lived, although 50 years difference - the Soup series is set in 1930's rural Vermont, and I grew up in the 1970's and early 1980's in rural West Virginia.  The title character, Luther "Soup" Vinson, actually reminded me a lot of my old 3rd grade buddy Sim Taylor in Brunswick, GA, and as I read the books, I pictured Soup as looking a lot like Sim.  Wild imaginations, fishing, doing outdoor stuff - essentially, that is what I did as a kid too.  As a kid, I read a lot - my elementary schoolmates today still razz me about reading the whole set of World Book Encyclopedias in our 5th-6th grade classroom then, and I also had read entire cookbooks, a bunch of stuff on World War II history, a whole set of storybooks, and a 3-volume collection of Bible reference books Mom owned.  At the age of 13, I had read the entire Old Testament as well, and appreciated its history too.  I also loved atlases - to this day, I love just sitting down and taking an atlas or map, and studying it.  Back even in the late 1970's and early 1980's, kids were still encouraged to read - what on earth happened in the past 30 years??   Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the true American success story family on the popular Duck Dynasty series, said that although he grew up in the 1950's his family lived like it was the 1850's (Phil Robertson, Happy, Happy, Happy {New York: Howard Books, 2013] p. 9) - in my case, I grew up in the early 1980's and we lived like it was the 1930's.  I am one of the few kids my age from my era to attest that I attended elementary school in a 3-room schoolhouse, for instance.   I also am very familiar with outhouses and other such "luxuries," as we often had to live like that for periods of time.  Also, we didn't have much television, and oftentimes I entertained myself with reading books, listening to AM radio, and it also allowed for the burgeoning musical interest I developed later.  However, in the day hours, especially in the summer months, my time was spent outside.  At that time, I could read something in a book, it would spark an interest, and then I would try to re-create it somewhere.  It was called in those days imagination - many kids today, made into couch potatoes with their gadgetry, don't know the meaning of the word.  To them, creativity means wearing skinny jeans in a Starbucks somewhere and coming up with new text codes to share on their Facebook or Twitter accounts.  And skinny jeans - seriously, what on earth???  I am in agreement with my mentor Robert Newton Peck when he wrote on that subject this gem - "I'm sick of seeing blue jeans.  Denim bores me almost as much as a Meryl Streep movie.  why, in any one school, are some teachers dressed so neatly and others dressed as slobs?"  I have never worn blue jeans in my life, save when maybe I was very young, and find them somewhat distasteful.  And, now there is this skinny jean phenomenon - a man's 'nads were not meant to be scrunched up like that, and besides, they look pansy.  Again, this may get me some 'hate mail," but I could care less - skinny jeans look ridiculous.  As for Peck's observations on schools, it equally applies to churches, especially this "contemporary" crap - boys, tuck in those shirts and pull up them pants, and girls, dress more appropriately for the Lord's house, please!  Anyway, those are just some observations.

 

My friend and mentor, author Robert Newton Peck

That being said, the hour is late and I have rambled enough, but will return soon. 

The Old Spinster Teacher

Irma R. Schumacher (1916-2001)

Over the years, I have come across a number of fascinating people.  As I was digging through and organizing some personal memorabilia recently (being laid-off from work gave me the time to do so, but that is a whole other issue!) I came across some old articles from the retirement community, Carpenters Home Estates, where I worked as a security guard back around 1995-1997.   I make a habit of saving tidbits of information about people I come across in my life's pilgrimage, and when I worked at "The Estates," I came to know several fascinating individuals.  One of those was a sweet Minnesota-born old spinster and retired schoolteacher  by the name of Irma Schumacher.  

The old Carpenter's Home newsletter, The Shavings, used to highlight one of the residents every month in each issue, and in October 1997 they featured a good article on Ms. Schumacher where I am getting a lot of the material for my own little tribute to her here.  Ms. Schumacher was born in Minnesota, and was never married.  She was raised rural (which I can appreciate) as her father was a farmer by trade, but God had greater plans for young Irma, which started humbly with her vocation as a country schoolteacher near where she grew up.  In time, she would attend both Columbia University as well as getting a Master's from the University of Minnesota, and soon afterward her world literally opened.

A young country schoolmistress off the Minnesota farm, young Irma was soon commissioned in a civilian capacity to teach the children of servicemen who were on active duty, a position she worked in for many years until her retirement.  Her travels in this vocation took her to several lands, including the Phillipines, Morocco, and other nations of Europe, Asia, and Africa.  What fascinated me the most was her tenure in Ethiopia, which she wrote of and spoke of quite fondly and frequently.  She had the privilege, while educating schoolkids in Asmara, to even meet in person the late Emperor Haille Selassie of Ethiopia.  She truly had a rich and full life.

When I met Irma personally back in 1995, I was working as a security officer at the front desk at Carpenter's Estates in Lakeland, and being I worked on the evening shift, it was often quiet and some of the people would just come down to chat.  I got to know Irma pretty well at that time, and she would always capture my interest in those nightly conversations as she recalled many of her adventures overseas.  She was an incredibly articulate lady, very well-read, and she also loved to write - as a matter of fact, she did publish a book of her memoirs entitled Words In Edgewise, which was an apt description of her as she loved talking to people.  She lent me a copy of that fascinating snippet of her life, and I almost could not put it down because she wrote so positively and detailed of her experiences that it automatically captured the reader's attention.  In the personal copy she had, she also included a number of handwritten notes as supplementary material.  I would love to find a copy of that book today honestly, but unfortunately very few of them exist and it would be a miracle of the Almighty to find one.  Perhaps though one day I will come across something - who knows?  I have found rare stuff like this before, so anything is possible. 

A copy of one of Irma's articles from 1996 - the artwork was hers as well!

In an article she penned for the Shavings back in February 1996, she briefly recounted some of her experiences, but she also focused on a current dilemma she had at the time.  When she wrote that article, she was preparing to attend a reunion of her former students in Washington, DC, that they titled "Celebrating 50 Years of the Brat Experience" as a theme.  Her main issue in going was her hair color - should she go copper-colored, or remain naturally silver-toned?  She kinda did an unofficial poll at the time among her fellow residents and some of the rest of us, and I remember telling her to stay natural.  Her nephew told her it wouldn't really matter anyway due to her then-43-year-old yellow trademark hat that her students fondly recalled her wearing.  I don't remember myself what she decided upon, but she made it to the reunion and by all reports she enjoyed herself.  She deserved to - she impacted a lot of people's lives, and they are probably better because God blessed them with the privilege of her mentoring. 

Two things I remember personally about Irma Schumacher were her always-positive attitude (I don't think the lady had the capability of negativity, honestly!), and in contrast, she also suffered from a debilitating bone disorder that made her neckbones very rigid and brittle.  As a result, she never wanted to be hugged or touched by anyone, save a sincere handshake, because she feared suffering damage to her neck.  It was a shame too, because she was the type of lady you just wanted to hug - a sort of favorite sweet old aunt, in a way.   But, everyone respected her, although she would have to admonish newcomers that she was "fragile" and therefore it would discourage any backpats or hugs.  Perhaps she was just too overly cautious, but who's to say - she had her reasons, and that was OK by most of us who knew her.  Nonetheless, she was still a very loving individual, and as far as I can recall, no one really had anything bad to say about her.  People like that are a rare species, and it is always a blessing to get to know them.

Another interesting thing was that she had an interest in the ducks in the little pond out in front of the Estates, and one in particular that caught her attention was a drake duck she called "Daffy."  Daffy was unique - unlike a typical duck, Daffy had a cottonball-like topknot on his head that looked like a tiny wig, and it made him unique, but he was a cute duck.  Ms. Schumacher loved him, and often she would go out and feed and talk to him near the pond.  Unfortunately, in 1995 he met his demise when some unknown predator decided to have duck tartar for dinner, and Daffy was chosen by the critter to be the main course.  He was missed, and a gentleman at the Estates wrote an epitaphic poem about him and published it in the Shavings that month, per Ms. Schumacher's bidding.  I had thought up to this point that she wrote the poem - she could have honestly - but rather it was a gentleman by the name of David Ayers that penned it.  Here is a caption of its reproduction below:

In short, Irma Schumacher lived a full, vibrant, and very interesting life.  She never married, and never had kids - most of her maternal direction she reserved for a nephew, Frank, who kind of took care of and looked out for her.  Frank, as of 2001, lived in Nebraska, although he kept in regular contact with his aunt, and she spoke highly of him all the time.  As all good things must come to an end, so did the legacy of Irma Schumacher.  She developed dementia over the ensuing years, and due to complications from that she passed away on Tuesday, July 3, 2001.  And as legacies go, she has left a rich one.  I know I have said this on many occasions, but indeed the cliche that our loss is heaven's gain applies to Irma Schumacher.  When I see the sorry turn much public education has taken these days, it makes me long for the day when caring teachers such as Irma Schumacher and so many others imparted real education - not political soapboxes, not basketweaving to merely earn a paycheck - to students, and students learned something.  Robert Newton Peck, one of my favorite authors and also a personal writing mentor, said it best when he said this: " I respect teachers, so much so that I intensely distrust their unions who prey upon teachers and rob them of their money. Worse yet, when a teachers union hops into bed with a political party, education gets a slap in the face".   Irma Schumacher was one of the least political of people I have known, and she was also one of the most positive - she didn't soapbox about dumb issues, nor did she bemoan current administrations or other such crap.  She was just an old spinster schoolteacher from Minnesota who loved her life and treasured her blessings, which we could all learn a lot from.  God bless your eternal rest, Ms. Schumacher.