Perspectives on the Bill Cosby Mistrial

For the past couple of years, I have been watching with interest as Bill Cosby's reputation has been shredded by a series of allegations that he took certain "liberties" with a number of women, many of which allegedly happened over 50 years ago.  I personally think much of this was an attempt to frame Cosby, as a bigger agenda is afoot, and for that we need to examine a few things.

I have been a lifelong Cosby fan, and fondly remember in particular his cartoon series, Fat Albert, which was based in part on his own childhood when he grew up in Philadelphia.  Fat Albert was of course a cartoon that featured African-American characters (I also will be addressing that term "African-American" shortly), but it taught many good values - every episode of the cartoon had a moral lesson to teach its young viewers, and that made it not only an endearing program for young children to watch, but also a safe program.  It is really too bad that more programming geared toward kids is not that wholesome, and America has a lot to thank Bill Cosby for.   Later, when I started collecting records, I discovered that Cosby had a series of hilarious comedy LP's that he made in the 1960's and early 1970's, and one of them was this one:

This LP, released on Warner Brothers Records in 1965, is a classic album - it has clean, decent, yet hilariously funny standup comedy, and it was one of the recordings I found many years ago at the Rio Mall in Rio, WV, for a quarter when I first got into seriously collecting records.  Although my record collection was primarily big bands, I stumbled across this by accident and had to get it - one of the best quarters I ever spent!  Many years later, I found it as a CD reissue, and still have it as part of my collection today.  Cosby was, for me, one of the most clever and talented comedians that ever found fame, and his stand for good values was always a great example for Black kids who were encouraged by Cosby in many of his TV programs and other ventures to better themselves and learn to accept responsibility and not rely on the "victim mentality" that so many Black activists were pushing in those days (and still are for that matter).  It was that conviction, which Cosby has openly expressed many times over the years, which probably caused a lot of the issues he is facing now - the "political correct" liberal establishment sees him as an embarrassment in that he tells Blacks to own their behavior and act better than they often are portrayed.  And, he is right - Black people, as fellow human beings, have all the same potential and giftings to do amazing things, but oftentimes they fall into the "thug culture" or entitlement mentality as pushed by a bunch of racist Leftists who in the name of "equality" goad the negative stereotypes and thus create division.  A Leftist like Nancy Pelosi, by encouraging negative behavior, is actually the worst type of racist - liberal Democrats have a lot in common with madmen like Charles Manson and Jim Jones in that regard, because their "divide and conquer" mentality of nurturing bad behavior and steretypes creates the racial tension such people thrive off of, and that is why they don't like Bill Cosby - he has had a different message over the years, and the Lefties don't like it.  So, they took him down - we've seen it many other times too.

In the early 1980's Cosby also achieved huge success with a Thursday night sitcom on NBC called The Cosby Show, which depicted a stable middle-class Black family in a positive light and also served to help Blacks and Whites get along better - when Blacks and Whites realized that the stereotypes of each other were stupid and didn't define a whole ethnicity, it created a good environment for friendship and encouragement.  Of course, naturally the Liberals didn't like that, so Jesse Jackson then had to make disparaging remarks against Jews to cause tension.  It is interesting that after all these years, there are still people who cannot be happy unless they get people to hate each other, and Democrats are masters of that.  As we'll see soon enough, what they are doing could cause worse damage, and it already has.

Now that we have established my personal history of admiration for Cosby's work and what he stands for, there are a few observations I want to make.  I am bound to create some enemies on this one, and honestly could care less - the truth can be disturbing sometimes, and there are people who will try to suppress it and revise it to suit their worldview, but in the end the truth shall prevail.

The first observation I want to make is something I noticed which was ominously absent from Cosby's whole ordeal.   Usually, when a high-ranking Black public figure is put under the microscope, the radical cockroaches such as Al Sharpton are out in full force, and of course Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan have to run their big mouths about it too, bemoaning themselves as "victims" of "White privilege" and other such nonsense.  Author Kenneth Timmerman (who also happens to be a member of my parish church) notes in his 2002 best-seller Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson (Washington, DC:  Regnery Publishing) that Jesse Jackson is a master at what he calls the "shakedown" - by extortion of corporations and businesses by using "White guilt" tactics, and then also using his "service" to Black communities in major cities as a front to further his own agenda (Timmerman, p. 422).  In reality, Jesse Jackson is nothing more than a Black Walter Mitty, which entails a legacy based on lies and manipulation and not on true service to his own people.  By contrast, Bill Cosby has always tried to foster a positive image of the Black family, and in doing so he has done more for race relations than Jackson ever could, and that - excuse the expression - pisses off the Liberals.  I mean, think about it - if Blacks started to really pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and actually were able to sustain themselves, then who would White Liberal politicians exploit??  And, that leads me to the whole point of this discussion.  There is a racism evident in the treatment of Cosby that is actually real, for the same people who want to hang Cosby are also the same people that think that Bill Clinton is a paragon of statesmanship.   Yet, we all remember Clinton's legacy, don't we?  Even while occupying the Oval Office, "Slick Willie" was so driven by his own libido that he couldn't keep his tackle in the box - remember names like Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, and Monica Lewinsky?  Clinton should have been tossed out on his philandering keister on the street, but because he was a White President, he was excused from his own horniness.  Those now who accuse Cosby of the same things are not as forgiving of him, and it begs a question - is a White ex-President immune from the law while a Black comedian is not?   Again, where are Jackson and Sharpton while Cosby is being accused of things that may not even be true?   From their offices these days, one hears the deafening chirps of crickets.  The easy way to remedy this is that Bill Clinton should be brought to justice just as swiftly - put his sorry butt on the stand and grill him with questions until he is well-done, and then lock him up in retirement at Leavenworth.  However, that won't happen, will it?

The true face of "White Privilege?" 

A second point I want to make is that the bulk of American Blacks are not "African-Americans," and they also don't have a culture unique to them either.  An actual "African-American" is someone who comes here from an African country up until maybe four generations - for example, my parish priest, who is originally from Congo; he is a true African-American.  Also, much of the "Afrocentrism" is actually racist itself, as it fosters stereotypes about Africa and its people.  In reality, Africa is a culturally diverse continent, and there are notable differences between an Amazigh (Berber) in Algeria and a Kalahari Bushman.  Africans, in other words, are many peoples, many ethnicities, with each having their own culture and legacy.  To see what is promoted in some Black communities as "Afrocentric" though, it would lead a less-informed person to assume that every person in Africa wears a dashiki and speaks Swahili while beating on large drums and diddling with chimpanzees or something, and that is a bad stereotype.  Many African people who have come to the US - including my parish priest, as well as my many Ethiopian Christian friends - are actually quite disturbed by the attitudes of American Blacks who stereotype their cultures.  Proper education in this regard is key.

  Years ago when I was a poor kid growing up in rural West Virginia, we read a couple of books in school that have stuck with me to this day because I identified so much with them.  One was Louisa Shotwell's book Roosevelt Grady, about a young Black migrant boy in the 1930's who traveled around with his extended family doing farm work as different crops came into season.  The second book was William H. Armstrong's book Sounder, which chronicled the story of a young Black sharecropper's son from Mississippi or Alabama in the Depression and how a stray coondog transformed his life, even when his father was carted off to jail. Both of these books were written by Black authors, and were about the Black experience of growing up poor in the Depression years, but both related a lot to my own childhood when I was a kid too - growing up as I did with a single mother, and often living with relatives, I would read books like these and actually see myself in the story.   Blacks and Appalachian people share a lot in common, more so than many "Progressives" want to admit, and in many cases ours is a shared experience.  There is a reason for that - we have essentially the same culture.  Thomas Sowell, himself Black and a highly-qualified commentator on current events, notes that Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal observed at the middle of the 20th century that the Blacks he encountered had a culture that bore a remarkable resemblance to that described of Southern Whites, even noting in his book An American Dilemma that "Black English" is simply a variation upon the Southern accent (Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals.  San Francisco:  Encounter Books, 2005. p. 29).   Indeed, many Southerners, both Black and White, share much of the same cuisine, speech patterns, and other cultural norms, something the Blacks carried with them to major metropolitan areas across the US - "soul food," then, is just plain ol' Southern cooking!  As mentioned, I have more in common in my upbringing with the poor Blacks of the South than do many of the loudmouths, such as Jackson and Sharpton, and thus I know what it is like to feel disadvantaged.  As for the mythology of "White privilege," it exists, but not in the way or on the scale the secularized Liberal establishment would have one think.  The true "privilege" is enjoyed by glossed-over criminals such as Bill Clinton, not the average hard-working White (or for that matter Black, Hispanic, or other) guy who supports his family and lives his life minding his own business.  There is also, it seems, more "privilege" being enjoyed by those who holler about it the most, and let me give you an example.  At a law firm in Tampa, FL, where I used to work as an administrative contractor, there was a young Black paralegal who was originally from Washington, DC, by the name of Sean.  Sean was basically a nice guy, but on one occasion in a discussion he started denouncing the United States as a "racist society" that Blacks should not be part of.  So, calmly I asked him about his upbringing.  It turns out that he grew up in a fairly comfortable middle-class environment and never lacked for much, and at the time I worked with him in the law firm, he made about 3 times my salary and he was doing pretty well for himself.  So, I told him about my upbringing, as well as about some of the kids who grew up in the town I lived in for most of my later childhood and early teen years - how many of us came from broken homes, we survived on food stamps and other aid, and many of the neighbor kids around me ended up in dire straights as adults because no one really reached out to them, and all of us were White kids.  After telling him that, I asked him, "which one of us is truly privileged?"  He didn't say a word.  That is why often the talking-heads who get on their media soapboxes with pithy pontifications about "White privilege" don't know what the hell they are talking about, because in many cases they themselves have discriminated against and belittled the kids of the Appalachians.  So, how does this relate to Cosby?  I will tell you - Cosby was an inspiration to me as well, because the example he set served as one motivation among many others to take the initiative, rise above the adversity, and do something about my situation.  He directed that message mostly to his fellow Blacks, who should have listened, but some of his poor White audience actually did.  So, instead of trying to destroy the man, perhaps we should be celebrating the positive impact he's had on so many, whether it was the values communicated by the Fat Albert cartoons, or those later expressed by example in The Cosby Show.  If more kids would take the example of Fat Albert teaching kids about respect and dignity of personhood rather than emulating a jackass like Justin Bieber, our society would recover from the damage it has suffered quicker, and racism would not even be a discussion because people would be respecting each other and getting along.  And, in case some Liberal pansey misses it, when it comes to "race," there is only one, and it has a name - HUMAN!  All others are just ethnicities that express that God loves variety in His creation.  If you want to eradicate racism, that is the attitude that should be promoted, not the mindless rioting and mobs of the "Black Lives Matter" terrorists.  Cosby tried to tell his own people that, and he got punished - it is tragic really.  And, that leads to another point.

One thing disturbs many of us who have been keeping up with the kangaroo court that is attempting to condemn Cosby.  After all these years, all of a sudden these crazy women start coming out of the woodwork like cockroaches out of a garbage dump, and they all have these "stories."  Are they real?? Evidence seems to cast a lot of doubt on it.  A lot of other things don't make sense either.  For one, Cosby has been out of the limelight for almost 20 years - nothing was heard or said about him for a long time, so why now is all the attention being directed at him?  Also, if these women were so "traumatized" over these alleged indiscretions, why are they now all of a sudden talking about it - I mean, if they were under that much duress, why not deal with it when it happened (if it even is true)?  This and many more questions trouble me about this lynch mob who all of a sudden are wanting Cosby's head on a pike - the hate and fickleness that even professed "Conservatives" are displaying against this poor man make no rational sense.  Let's assume the worst - maybe in his younger years Cosby did mess around a little.  If that were the case, there are some things to take into consideration.  First, most of these allegations have a setting in time of over fifty years ago, and isn't there a statute of limitations?   Second, there is the human factor - Cosby would probably be the first to admit his humanity, and that like anyone else he is capable of mistakes.  So, let's say he had a lapse in judgment and took advantage of a woman then - has he done it recently??  For the most part, Cosby has been free of controversy pretty much his entire career, and the evidence speaks for itself on that one.  If he messed up in younger years, what does it matter now?   And, third - seriously, the man is 79 years old, so are they seriously going to try to lock him up when he may have at most 15 years of his life left??  He's now an old man, for crying out loud!  I find it interesting that they want to lock him up for that, but for some reason one of the most violent and despicable killers in recent history, Charles Manson, still sits comfortably in his cell leeching off the tax payers when he should have been put to death a long time ago - where is the justice there?   Cosby is not near the evil demoniac that Manson is, yet Manson seems to get more "privilege."  No cries of "racism" there, I noticed!  Also, what if these alleged "victims" are committing perjury - I would bet they would just get a "slap on the wrist," unlike the stigma Monica Lewinsky had to endure when Bill Clinton pawed her like a cat turd in a litter box.  I think the true acts of racism are being ignored, and that false accusations of "racism" seem to "whup-up" people more, which is what the Liberals count on - it is their bread and butter that keeps them in office and gives them their power.  And, let's look at a truly repugnant individual who has done something much worse recently, that trollop Kathy Griffin.  Griffin threatened the President of the United States, and she even threatened his 11-year-old son, but I don't hear near the outcry concerning that in contrast to the attention poor Bill Cosby has gotten.  I guess a nasty, foul-mouthed White woman has more value than an elderly Black man - that is the message the "tolerant" Progressive Liberals are sending.  Truly amazing.

I wanted to write this because as I see it, Cosby has been framed on trumped-up allegations, and in time the truth will be revealed.  Apparently, it is starting to reveal itself now as evidenced by the hung-jury that led to the mistrial in his case.  That is a small victory for justice, but it may not be over - Cosby is now an "enemy" of Leftist "Progress" all because he said this:  Black fathers need to take responsibility for raising their children right.  He is not the only Black man who said this, as another Black news personality, Don Lemon, noted something similar when he said this:

  "Black people, if you really want to fix the problem, here's just five things that you should think about doing: hike up your pants, finish school, stop using the N-word, take care of the community, and stop having children out of wedlock."  (http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/bill-cosby-black-fathers-raise/2013/09/16/id/525908/ - accessed 6/20/2017).  

Both Lemon and Cosby are right about this, and they share that sentiment with others such as Ben Carson, Alan Keyes, and Thomas Sowell.  I don't have a place to tell them myself personally, but perhaps they should listen to some of their own people giving them a wake-up call.  The Cosby issue illumines many things, not the least being that racism is real, does exist, but oftentimes it is perpetrated by those who holler about it the most.  By encouraging bad behavior and negative stereotypes among Blacks, Progressive Liberals and their "plantation pimp" cohorts such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are doing more harm to America's Black community than good, and that will have bad repercussions on day if it is not rectified.  That being said, may we all learn something out of this. 

Government Waste and Other Things on My Mind the Past Week.

There are a few things I wanted to talk about this week, and they entail a lot of subject matter, so I will just get started.

The first thing I wanted to talk about is the job application process.  I work at home now (thankfully!) at a very satisfying position, but on occasion if something comes across my path that I think I may be interested in applying for to get a little extra income, I jump on the chance to do so.  Recently, one of those entailed a company not far from where we live that handles a lot of Federal government contracts (for either the FDA or ATF, if I am not mistaken).  The job would have been perfect, and I had all the right qualifications for it.  However, due to a security clearance issue - apparently, if you have a low credit score, you are a threat to national security! - I didn't get the position.  Knowing how this was unfair (and in Maryland law, it is even illegal to pull credit for a job application) I blasted said company, and that forms the basis of my first topic of discussion today.  It is not a huge secret that the Federal government wastes a lot of money on these contract deals - for instance, some of them have budget allowances for $1,000 toilet seats - and that is the first point in this topic I want to address.  In case you haven't read the news yet, there is a national debt that runs in the trillions of dollars, an amount that is inconceivable for even a person like Donald Trump to fathom, as the richest man in the world doesn't even have close to a trillion in assets.  Yet, for some reason, these Federal contractors allot budget items in obscene amounts for insignificant things - $50 for a light bulb, a thousand bucks for a toilet seat, etc.  Yet, when a person who works hard, has the skill, and is a perfect fit for a certain job falls on hard times due to no fault of their own, all of a sudden they are disqualified because of a damned credit score for a job they might otherwise have had.  And, if that isn't bad enough, the recruiter or person reviewing one's application will have the audacity to recommend that you get credit counseling, etc.  This coming from a person who represents a corporate interest that allots a thousand bucks to a toilet seat, and then they have the audacity of accusing you of some sort of irresponsibility just because maybe your family had some medical issues, or someone in your house lost their job, and it caused the bills to fall behind.  A person from one of these idiotic companies who dares to lecture me on my financial situation should maybe re-assess how important those $1,000 toilet seats are - I told a certain recruiter that they would save us the taxpayers a fortune if they just went down to the local Wal-Mart and bought a $5 toilet seat that works just as good.  Talk about credit management.  Of course, when these contractors have the useless swamp leeches we call Congressmen bankrolling their little projects (with our money, don't forget!) as role models, it doesn't leave a good impression.  Any rate, my solution to much of the unnecessary government waste of our tax dollars would be to give the people who are entrusted with those budgets a crash course in how to shop - $5 toilet seats are just fine, for one, and instead of a $50 light bulb, one can buy four times as many for under two bucks at your local Dollar General.  But, we must remember something too - government hacks and corporate bigshots don't think with the same common sense many of us here in the land of reality have to, and so they waste money that doesn't belong to them on a decadent and gross scale.  If we are to reform government, it maybe should start with re-assessing the money that is spent on frivolous expenses.  Therefore, the next time you apply for a Federal contract job and you get rejected because you have less than stellar credit, you have the right to demand a financial statement from that company that accounts for every penny they receive courtesy of our tax dollars.  If one of these companies is smart enough to furnish that (it can be several pages long, so brace yourself!) then it is important to do a line-by-line audit of what is spent, and when it comes to "incidentals," learn how to price them for yourself, give an assessment of your conclusions in writing, and put the company on notice that they cannot waste money you have worked your butt off to pay in taxes while at the same time criticizing your credit history without even knowing a blinking thing about you or the situations that may have lowered a credit score, etc.  I guarantee, if more of us stood up and really asserted our own rights in regard to the way some companies act, things could be different and more deserving people would be working in jobs that they are meant to work in.  Anyway, that is my Economics rant - at some point in the future, I need to also deal with my own position on Economics, which is a view called Distributism.  I may do that in the next couple of months if time allows.

A second issue I wanted to talk about is when your peers think they are all of a sudden your superiors, when in reality they are not.  Interpersonal relationships are integral to humanity, as we are not meant to be mere "islands unto ourselves."  However, the dignity of personhood (a subject I have addressed at length on my Sacramental Present Truths page from a philosophical and theological basis, beyond the scope of this discussion) dictates that we need to be respectful of each other and that we learn to communicate in such a way that embodies that respect.  I have dealt with my share of jackasses over the years - I have them in my own family (both blood relatives and in-laws), as well as working with some on the job and also even in church settings - and as I get older I find myself having less tolerance for them.   An old piece of Appalachian wisdom applies to me personally on this - if a snake gets stepped on, it will strike, and in the same way if I get stepped on and disrespected, I will have a swift response.   Over the past couple of months or so as I am settling into a new home and assuming new responsibilities with our new parish church, at times everything I have to deal with can be overwhelming, and recently that was not helped much when a fellow church member decided to anoint himself my personal "jackass of the month."  Part of serving in leadership of a small parish church in a lay capacity is doing several minor things, and at times those minor things can be a pain in the butt when you have to deal with rented facilities and such.  One of the other lay leaders in the parish who has been there for a while has been increasingly aggressive in how he talks to me personally, and finally I had to go to our parish priest to straighten it out.  The problem with this particular person is that due to a personality factor, his line of work he retired from, or some other factor, he tends to be bossy and treats others like he is superior to them - for instance, instead of politely asking for help, this individual has a tendency to bark orders, and the situation that brought it to a head occurred earlier this past week, and that is the story I want to relate now as it ties into another of my pet-peeves.

The individual in question had recently had a very important medical procedure done which required him to take an extended time of recovery.  Before I get into that story, let me talk about something that I consider a pet-peeve on a major scale.   If someone is either celebrating something or has an important need, I have no problem making a nice gesture to let them know that I care - it is just common decency to do that.  However, if the person who is the recipient of my act of kindness in any way does something disrespectful, I take it as a high insult.  In the case of this individual I am talking about now, he had a medical procedure done and was recovering.  Despite what feelings I may have, I try to reach out and be encouraging as much as possible.  Many people over the week have been wishing this person well, and encouraging them by saying they were praying for them, etc.  I of course felt led to do the same, and not only did I take time out of my busy schedule to write the person and tell this individual they were in my thoughts and prayers, but I even put them on a prayer list at my former parish too.  With many people who did the same, this person would write back and tell them how much they appreciated the gesture, and then proceed into a conversation about the status of their health, etc.  However, not so with me - when I sent my encouragement to this individual, I get an email back with a flippant "thank you" as well as a bunch of orders being barked at me over cyberspace as well as this person assuming to school me in theology (I mean, who am I - I only have a Bachelor's in Church Ministries, and am finishing up a Master's in Catechetics, so I don't know anything, right??).  The whole tone of the conversation was very insulting to me, and I seem to be the only one this person responded to in that fashion, and I really took offense, so much so that it vexed me almost the entire week.  I was so upset about it, as a matter of fact, that at the end of the week I asked for the parish priest's intervention - our parish priest, who is a compassionate man with a sincere heart, profusely apologized and assured me he would take care of it and have a talk with this person about their attitude.  I trust our parish priest with that too, and am confident he will get the issue resolved, but it still is rattling.  Honestly, I would expect a person who has just underwent a very serious medical procedure to be a little more contemplative with their life and also learn how to adjust their attitude a bit, wouldn't you think?  Apparently this individual didn't get that message, but perhaps they should have.  As a disclaimer, any identity of this person will remain confidential as well as anything which would determine this person's identity (such as gender), but I am sure that if this person reads my words here, they will know who they are.  By the time they see this, the whole thing may be resolved too, and that is what I would prefer.  As insulted and upset as I get at people like this, I am always open to a peaceful resolution if the other party is so moved, and I can readily forgive a person if they choose to deal with the issue and come to me about it.  This is a good rule of thumb too - even the most heinous of personal offenses are forgivable, but the effectiveness of the dispensed forgiveness is contingent upon the person themselves; it's always available, but they have to be willing to receive it just as willing as I am to dispense it.  On a theological level, the same thing applies even to salvation - it is a free gift available for all, but it is up to the individual to accept or reject it.  That could be the genesis of a future SPT post too!  Any rate, it feels good though to vent in a constructive way, and it's also OK to do so - some people are under the mistaken notion that even Christianity makes people suppress their emotions, but Christians are not Vulcans.  After all, God gave us the feelings and emotions we have, and rather than suppress them we should express what we feel in constructive ways.  For me it is writing like this, either for you as the reader to see or in my personal journal.  For others, it may be a 15-minute session with a punching bag in a local gym - sometimes channeling your energy into beating the crap out of a canvas bag full of sand is healthier than driving oneself insane from suppressed tension that keeps building and impairing one's physical well-being as it does so.  Therefore, if I were to give a lesson today on this, I would say find an outlet when people or situations get the best of you, and by all means vent in whatever way helps you!  You'll be better for it in the long run.

The final thing I wanted to talk about today is more on my own inspiration about things.  Over the years, I have tended to be inclined toward a rather eclectic spectrum of personal preferences that have in turn defined my character to some degree.  Whether it is listening to Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, or reading the Georgian author Konstantin Gamsakhurdia's The Right Hand of the Master, many things inspire me in different ways and at different times as the mood strikes.  I have never dealt with this in detail before - mainly because I have never formulated a way to express it in writing - but it is a part of me that has been integral since I was a very young boy.  Even now, I struggle to pinpoint exactly what I want to say, although in my own mind I can see it for myself and perfectly understand it.  My wife and I, for instance, love all the Star Trek series, but of all of them the one which most captures my interest and is by far my favorite is Deep Space Nine.  Much of the story arc of this series centers around the person of Benjamin Sisko, who arrives at the station essentially a broken man - his wife was killed by an evil alien transhumanist species called the Borg at a battle called Wolf 359, and he is reluctant to even be accepting the assignment.   In Sisko, I have seen how I have felt - it is a dark place to be, as you are alone, and you just feel like running away from all of it and starting over.  I have struggled with a lot of that myself over the past several months as well, as a lot of adjustments have taken a toll on me personally and I still am dealing with a lot of it even as I write these words.  Any rate, while he is settling into this new role as commander of a large space station constructed by a Nazi-like people called the Cardassians, who in turn had recently brutally occupied the planet the station orbits, a small planet called Bajor, a series of events end up transforming Sisko and his outlook.  First, an unusual anomaly called a "worm-hole" opens some distance from the space station, and upon exploring it, Sisko and his crew end up at the other side of the galaxy in what is called the "Gamma Quadrant."  However, while traveling through this "worm-hole," Sisko encounters some alien life-forms that the people of the planet Bajor call "the Prophets," and his encounter with them makes him a reluctant religious icon to the people on that planet.  In time though, Sisko actually embraces the role, and he becomes what is called by the Bajoran people the "Emissary to the Prophets."   There is something about that entire story arc that just speaks to me - it embodies the desire of all of us to possess a destiny beyond ourselves, and I believe that is one of the great appeals of this show.  That is something I myself have been pondering a lot recently, and I have had to do some reassessment of my own life, as well as knowing that inside of me is the real essence of who I am which needs to be released.  The question though is, how do I do that?  It seems just as I have one thing figured out, I come up against a brick wall and have to keep looking.  Yet, deep within my own being, I know that there is something specific I need to be doing, and that the status quo is no longer acceptable to me.  It became more real to me in recent months when, like the fictional Captain Sisko, I myself faced a sort of "Wolf 359" of my own.  Just a couple of weeks prior to our move up here, Barbara and I had done a sort of "scouting trip" of the area and also decided in the process to visit my grandparents in Parsons, WV.  The trip actually went quite well, as we inadvertently scoped out the neighborhood we live in now (albeit we were looking at another house at the time further down the street), and Barbara had a fantastic job interview in Baltimore that week in addition.  However, being it was December, we left out that following Saturday in some very frigid weather - there was snow on the ground, and our little Ranger pickup that we came up in had to travel over a steep mountain called Dry Fork, just southeast of my hometown of Parsons, to get back on the interstate.  As we were ascending the mountain ridge, I cautioned Barbara about keeping an eye out for "black ice," and not 30 seconds after I did that, we hit a patch.  Our truck spun in the road, and then it flipped and rolled into the side of the mountain, totaling the car and badly shaking us up.  Fortunately, and by God's grace, we were not injured, but the Ranger didn't survive.  Luckily too, I have a lot of relatives in that area, and one of them just happened to come by - she gave us a lift into nearby Dry Fork to a mechanic's shop, and the mechanic was a very nice guy whose daughter-in-law took us back into Elkins so we could get a rental car (which ended up being a 2011 Mustang - nice ride!) and the trip ended better than we expected.  But, like Sisko, it began a sort of personal transformation in me, and Barbara felt the same way.  From that moment, we resolved never to just merely settle for less when opportunity opens doors, and it has also made me more assertive as well - I find myself being more straight-spoken than I used to be, and not as prone to take crap from people or institutions who should recognize I deserve better than that.  That transformation also helped me to realize that the stability of my own family and household takes priority over anything, and that even includes church work.  In the ensuing months, I have come to a lot of other conclusions as well, but time nor space do not permit me to elaborate on those here, but perhaps at some other time.  When I listen now to Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, or when I read something like William Saroyan's short stories, something within me resonates with a "Yes!" in that those pieces of music and literature are speaking to something at the core of my being.  As I have time (which is a precious commodity these days!) to ponder things, they start to come together.   There are many answers to different things I seek even now, but I also cannot escape the feeling that the answer possibly lies to those situations within myself - the resolution, in other words, is literally right under my nose!  The job now is digging it out.  And, that can be the real challenge!

I feel as if I have indulged enough today in my observations, but at some point there is another aspect I will discuss separately, and that is what dreams tell us sometimes.  Did you ever have those dreams where you can see every detail, and the dream sticks with you for days after?  Or, let's say you have had dreams about things for years, and there is like a common backdrop for the dream.  All of a sudden, you go somewhere and you see almost the exact building or landscape feature that was in the dream!  Since we have moved here, that has happened a lot, and maybe at some point I will discuss that, as it would be an involved discussion in itself.

Thanks again for allowing me to rant and go on, and as always I always appreciate you dropping by for a visit on this, my virtual "front porch."  Come back to visit again sometime, and I wish the best for you as you go about the activities of your week and managing your own responsibilities.

Perspectives on a Popular Disney Cartoon

Over the past few years, Barbara has gotten into watching a relatively new cartoon on Disney called Phineas and Ferb, and recently I have taken note of some things about the cartoon itself.  I am by no means a connoisseur of contemporary culture - most of it is just too bizarre these days for me.  So, for me to take an interest in a cartoon like this is going to probably come as a surprise to many who know me.  For that, you can thank my wife.

When Barbara started watching this Phineas and Ferb cartoon some time back, I would occasionally sit and watch some of it with her. While it is a somewhat amusing and clean cartoon, I never took much of an interest in it.  However, in the past couple of weeks, I learned a few things about it that fascinated me, and that inspired me to write this.

As I understand after doing a little research, this cartoon first aired I believe about ten years ago, and the last episode of it ended the series in 2015.  I had gradually began to lose interest in cartoons over the past several years as they have gradually disappeared from the traditional Saturday morning lineups that many of us grew up with - Saturdays, sadly, have not been the same since.  I, as an aging Gen-Xer, grew up in an era that produced cartoons such as Scooby Doo, The Flintstones, The Smurfs, as well as classic Warner Brothers and Hanna-Barbera creations from ages past.  When I was around 7 or 8 years old, it was something to look forward to in waking up on Saturday morning after a busy school week and watching cartoons while eating a bowl of dry peanut butter Captain Crunch cereal or a couple of blueberry Pop-tarts for breakfast, and those were fun times.  However, as I grew up, went off to college, and started to get into a life routine, Saturday morning cartoons went from a nice wake-up diversion from a busy workweek to being practically non-existent as in recent years kids really don't watch cartoons as much, and what they do watch is honestly far short of the fun and creativity of the cartoons many of us grew up with.  Many kids unfortunately are so engrossed in social media and gadgets that cartoons are not even part of their lives anymore, and it seems like an era of creativity is dying with the younger generations as a result.  But, on occasion, there are those bright exceptions, and little did I know it but my wife happened to stumble upon one of those when she tuned into a program one day called Phineas and Ferb, and it was reminiscent of those older cartoons of ages past.  That being said, let me now get to a couple of interesting things I wanted to point out about this interesting little cartoon.

The first is its creators, Dan Povenmire and Jeff "Swampy" Marsh - I want to particularly talk about Marsh.  Anyone who knows me by now doesn't need to be made aware that one of my great passions is the music of the great dance bands of the 1920's-1940's.   One very good band was led by a young Pennsylvania-born saxophonist by the name of Les Brown (1912-2001) (not to be confused with the popular African-American motivational speaker - they are different people, as the Les Brown I am talking about is a White guy).  Les Brown, starting around 1936 or so, led two bands - the first was a college orchestra out of Duke University called the Duke Blue Devils, which he led for the better half of the latter 1930's, and the other was his more famous orchestra of the mid-1940's and early 1950's which was called Les Brown's Band of Renown.   This was a band that in its height of popularity featured a young girl singer by the name of Doris Day, who cut a record with the band called Sentimental Journey in 1945 that became a classic hit and one of the biggest records of the era.  Brown also had a stellar theme song too which he recorded around the same time entitled Leap Frog (which was composed by Joe Garland, who also wrote Glenn Miller's classic hit In the Mood several years earlier).   So, what is the connection between one of the greatest big bandleaders of the 1940's and a Disney cartoon that is popular today?  The answer is Jeff Marsh, who happens to be Les Brown's grandson.   Marsh is the brains behind Phineas and Ferb, and I just found that out the other day when I was messing around on my Facebook page and just happened to come across Les Brown Jr's recent posts (Les Jr., now in his 70's, is carrying on his father's legacy by continuing the orchestra, which still tours and performs today).  I happened to see a picture on Les Jr's page that had his family posing with two Phineas and Ferb characters, and when I saw that, I was intrigued and wondered what on earth that was about.  That was when, after digging a little further, I found out that Les Jr. is Marsh's uncle, and thus making the late Les Sr. his grandfather.  All-in-all, it was a neat piece of trivia.

A second thing that got me interested more in what Phineas and Ferb is about has to do with something that sort of made me think of my own childhood.  For those of you who may have casually tuned into snippets of the cartoon with your kids or grandkids, the plot of the whole thing is these two step-brothers who basically are on summer vacation and they, along with a pet platypus (the co-creator of the cartoon, Povenmire, said they chose this because there had never been a platypus before on TV - that is not exactly correct, because a Warner Brothers cartoon in the early 1990's, Taz-Mania, featured a pair of twin platypus brothers called just that, the Platypus Brothers!) who also moonlights as a secret agent who sort of monitors the activities of a bumbling mad scientist who serves as the main antagonist in the cartoon.   As part of their summer vacation, the two boys keep themselves busy coming up with these grandiose inventions that kids my age used to dream about doing - it is like vicariously living out childhood fantasies, and many of us relate well to that.  In explaining the who creativity angle of the cartoon, Povenmire notes "When I was growing up, my mom always encouraged us to something creative with our time rather than sit around being bored.  She used to say, 'Summer's short.  You've got to make every day count."  And that's exactly what Phineas and Ferb do." (Michael Levin, "What Makes Phineas and Ferb the  Most Original TV Show Since Ernie Kovacs? at www.huffingtonpost.com/michaellevin/what-makes-phineas-ferb_b_5398580.html - accessed 5/29/2017).   Marsh adds another important aspect to this as well, as he says that "We both commiserated about how we used to go off and do crazy stuff in the summer, while kids today were just sitting around playing Xbox and watching videos."  Marsh struck a nerve with me in his comment, as he is spot-on - what has happened in the past 20 years or so to most kids??  They don't do nothing but sit on their butts on phones and other gadgets, and there is no real creativity going on with many of them.  When I was their age, I had a pretty full agenda in the summer months, as I was either out tramping around in the woods, building forts with friends, fishing and catching other critters in the creeks and ponds around the area, picking berries or digging wild garlic, and when I was indoors, I was reading a lot of books and magazines or working on a large record collection, as well as teaching myself how to cook.   Creativity was all I had then, especially when money was in short supply and I was growing up poor in a single-parent home in a tiny obscure town in the hills of West Virginia.  These kids have access to so much more today, but they don't do anything with it except sit around on their butts pushing buttons - that is one reason why there are more fat kids in today's schools than there was in my day.  I was so busy during the summers in my childhood that I never had time to gain any weight, and I didn't get the spare tire I have now until my middle-age years.  Like Povenmire says in another article, many of us understood the power of imagination, and doing fun activities is a way to tap into raw creativity.  Today, there is not much the kids on Ipods and cellphones can tap into - the most effort they do is push buttons, and that doesn't even encourage good grammar!  One of the reasons that Phineas and Ferb achieved the popularity it has in the past five or six years is that there is a void within many young people that they don't even realize, and the innate desire for creativity is aroused by seeing cartoon characters come up with crazy yet innovative ideas and then make them materialize.  Povenmire and Marsh know what they are doing, in other words, and it is brilliant!

The cartoon has a surprising appeal to adults my age and even older, in that for us it is re-acquainting many of us with our childhood memories.  When I watch Phineas and Ferb create a whole beach scene in their backyard or a huge space elevator contraption, I am reminded myself of the time I tried to create my own island in the middle of Grassy Lick Run in downtown Kirby, WV, based on things I read in some book.  Or, I recall the way I turned the drainage ditch that separated our front yard from the Westfall's cornfield into an outdoor lounge area just for the hell of it.  I am sure others who watch this cartoon have similar flashbacks to their youth and things they did.  The childhood imagination is a great thing, and what I regret about it was not picking up the art of journaling sooner, as it would have been great to go back and read some of the stuff I wrote down and came up with back then.

There are some people who watch Phineas and Ferb and are impressed with the musical score it has, but not me.  The music is actually one of the weaker parts of the program, and given Marsh's legacy as being the grandson of a true musical legend, it comes up sort of disappointing for some of us.  But, even there, it is not without its genius.  I briefly caught an episode of the cartoon once where the boys decided to create a one-hit wonder as a summer project, and I chuckled at the genius of the creators of the cartoon as they were taking a well-aimed potshot at pop culture on that one.   The boys came up with some stupid song that consisted of a bunch of meaningless syllables, and it ended up being a hit, and then they decided to "retire" from the music business at the height of the popularity of that song.  The whole plot made fun, whether accidentally or intentionally, of many no-talent hacks out there (that idiot Justin Bieber comes to mind!) who have all the musical talent of a cat with its tail caught in a meatgrinder, yet for some reason their tone-deaf audiences are gobbling it all up like there's no tomorrow; that is, until the next hack comes along and gets the young girls all a-twitter and screaming like crazy.  A lot of today's music also displays the same lack of creativity the creators of Phineas and Ferb purposefully wrote into that episode (again, this is brilliant on their part) and there is no thought put into lyrics, no real musical chemistry, and essentially much of today's pop music is about selling image rather than actual talent.  It really is not just about a bunch of monsyllabic lyrics either, as better music from ages past also incorporated to a degree some vocal improvisation, but there was always a purpose behind it.  One example is the iconic "Vo-do-do-dee-oh-do!" of a lot of the music of the 1920's - the seemingly nonsensical lyric was actually a rhythmic accompaniment to a dance step.  Another example is the late bandleader Kay Kyser's hit 1939 recording of a children's ditty called Three Little Fishies, which was written by Hal Kemp's reedman/arranger Saxie Dowell in the mid-1930's - part of the lyrics of this song consist of a phrase that goes "Poop, poop, diddem, daddem, waddem choo!"  which actually mimics what humans think fish sound like.  Then, there is the 1942 hit by the Merry Macs called Mairzy Doats, which has this lyric: "Mairzy doats and dozie doats, and liddle lamzy divey, a kiddley divey doo wooden shoe..."  That particular tune was based on a nursery rhyme phrase that a little kid might misinterpret, and it actually says "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivey, a kid'll eat ivey too, wouldn't you?"  In this case, it was just a cute nursery rhyme that was sung in a way that a toddler might understand it, so it was within a good context.  Then, of course, there is David Seville's (he was creator of the Chipmunks - his real name was Ross Bagdasarian Jr., and he was a cousin to author William Saroyan) classic Witch Doctor from the year 1958, which imitates a fictional tribal language of a goofy witch doctor in the way a Westerner might misinterpret the language as a bunch of goofy syllables.  It is possible that Marsh, who probably grew up with knowing a lot of these songs, used the ideas to also lampoon modern pop culture with its lack of creativity by having Phineas and Ferb come up with a goofy "one-hit wonder" that got the girls atwitter yet only lasted until the next fad came along.  I kind of see it as a slap against tone-deaf "experts" such as that jackass Simon Cowell as well, who think they know music but really don't.  I cannot say whether or not the creators of the cartoon meant that to be their idea, but I can personally see it as a good parody of celebrity culture that lacks real talent.  The true talent is in the parody itself, and it showcases the gifts of both Povenmire and Marsh well.  A final example of where music can be expressed creatively in monosyllabic lyrics is the twin arts of "scat" and vocalese.  Scat-singing and vocalese are part of the repertoire of classic jazz, as well as the more sophisticated pop songs of the 1950's which often featured choruses who sang a lot of "doo-dah's" and "ooooh's" as part of instrumental recordings - classic examples of these from big bands include Tommy Dorsey's classic 1953 recording of The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, his brother Jimmy's 1957 recording of So Rare, Ray Conniff's 1956 hit recording of S'wonderful, and Lawrence Welk's 1961 gold record of Calcutta.  In records like those, the vocal sounds become in essence an extension of the orchestra, so they accent the instrumentation of the orchestra itself and make a great chemistry.  As for "scat" itself, it sort of does the same thing for a soloist, and good scat-singing is phenomenal in that it is raw improvisation at its best - the late legend Louis Armstrong was the master of that art. The dumb lyrics of many of today's "pop stars" lack that imagination and instead highlight the lack of talent and laziness of the "artist" themselves - essentially, the music business has changed to one of what one sees rather than what one hears, and as long as the "singer" is considered "eye-candy" by the public, it doesn't seem to matter what they sound like.  It has even gotten so deceptive that now artificial enhancements manipulate recorded soundtracks to make them supposedly sound "better," all because it is the image rather than talent being marketed.  A few generations back, Justin Bieber and Katy Perry would not have stood a chance - Bieber is no Sinatra, and Perry is no Doris Day.  Marsh knows what real talent is about I believe, because his own grandfather discovered and nurtured it over 70 years ago when Justin Bieber's daddy was not even an afterthought yet.  And, that is the message I think Marsh and Povenmire wanted to convey to their viewing audience when they created the "musical episode" of the cartoon series. Again, it is genius.

In wrapping this all up, an appeal to my own childhood imagination from many years back as well as an unexpected connection to one of my own interests is what compelled me to take a cartoon like Phineas and Ferb, which I normally would not even take an interest in, more seriously.  Also, the fact that it is a clean cartoon that hones in on the innocence and creativity of childhood imagination rather than trying to push agendas like so much else of today's entertainment (the LGBT lobby in particular, which now has to stick "token gay" characters into plots where they otherwise would not have any relevance - even the iconic Star Trek legacy was infected by that in the last motion picture) rather than just simply being entertaining, is a factor in why I believe it is a good program to watch.  It is surprisingly appealing to adults too, as it makes us look back to some of our own childhood adventures, and sometimes it is good to just do that.  Therefore, if you want a good, clean, wholesome, and just entertaining cartoon for your kids or grandkids to watch, this is a fine example of a cartoon which has returned to the original purpose of what cartoons were aired for - creativity and entertainment.  Not since the Veggietales has such a good children's program been available to a wide audience, and therefore Disney is to be commended for getting something right for a change, while Povenmire and Marsh should be encouraged to keep up the good work.  Anyway, that is my rant for the week, so I will leave it there.

Artistic Differences - Contrasts

I wanted to write this week because of the fuss made recently over a rock singer named Chris Cornell who died tragically at apparently a very young age.  I am not personally into that type of music, but due to the fact this guy was a human being, his family does have my sympathy for their loss.   Have you ever noticed how many of these rock stars die so young?   Many of them have led tragic lives (not saying Cornell necessarily did - I don't know enough about the guy to make that judgement) and they die young.  It of course is not endemic to just rock stars though - great big band musicians have also died young (Bix Beiderbecke, Bunny Berigan, Orville Knapp, Fats Waller, to name a few) as well as legendary actors (Marilyn Monroe, James Dean).   But, it does seem as if the lion's share of premature celebrity deaths involve rock stars for some weird reason.   I was sort of inspired to write this because of two things.  First, there is an author who posts these amusing videos I love to watch every week on Facebook by the name of Susannah Lewis (otherwise known as "Whoa Susannah").  Susannah is mountain folk like myself - she is a native of Tennessee - and she has that homespun sense of humor which is enhanced by that Southern accent that just makes her endearing to so many of us.  If you get the chance, you should really check her out sometime on social media (she has also written a number of books, and although I haven't had the opportunity to read any of those myself yet, if they are as good as her videos then she is one hell of an author!).  This week for instance, she was talking about this dog of hers named Pepper, who apparently has a stomach that could rival the exterior of a Sherman tank, and this dog eats everything.  This week, she was talking about something concerning this dog eating a Bible, and the gist of the conversation on that one was that her dog "ate the Word of God and is spreading the Gospel across the back yard."  It takes a special talent to come up with that stuff impromptu, and that is why I say she must be one hell of an author!   Any rate, Susannah, who is in her mid-30's I would estimate (if you are reading this Susannah, I apologize for trying to pinpoint your age, as you do look amazing - it is relevant reference point to what I am doing here though), is apparently a big fan of '80's rock, which would have been popular at around the time I was actually in high school (to make Susannah feel better, I am actually much older than she is obviously!).  I never got into any of that stuff, and to this day I still don't like it at all, but for those that do enjoy it, that's your thing and by all means enjoy.  My music, since I was at least 10 years old, is vintage big band, and I said all of that because just a week or two before this Chris Cornell guy passed away, another music legend celebrated her 100th birthday on April 30th.   The person I am speaking of is Bea Wain, who in the late 1930's and early 1940's was a much sought-after girl vocalist with many great orchestras - notably Larry Clinton's, with whom she made the record that put his band on the map as well as defining her career, that being a 1939 recording of the standard ballad Deep Purple.   She also sang with some other great orchestras - I have video footage in my music library of a 1942 "Soundie" she was in with Johnny Long's orchestra in which she did an excellent recording of the Judy Garland standard You Made Me Love You.  I also believe, if memory serves me correctly (I had better consult Mr. George T. Simon's The Big Bands to be sure though!) she sang with Artie Shaw as well.  For a great legend like that to still be alive is amazing in itself, as very few of those legends from that great era of quality music are still with us.

The legendary Bea Wain today

Bea in her heyday as a girl band vocalist

A couple of years back, the legendary bandleader Orrin Tucker also joined the "100-Year Club" as well, although he passed away a year or two later.  Bea Wain's centenarian birthday celebration and Chris Cornell's tragic death are cause for reflection - as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, having an appreciation for great music is a gift God gave us, and the quality of the music as well as its timelessness are life-enhancing.   As callous as it may sound, I would rather rejoice over this great lady making it to 100 - and still in good health! - rather than lament a premature passing of a rock star I didn't even know anything about until he popped up in the news last week.  For one thing, I was listening to Bea Wain's records back when most of my Gen-X peers were into Prince or Michael Jackson, and when my classmates in high school were into Guns and Roses (is that how to properly punctuate that group's name?  I really don't know!) I was collecting Guy Lombardo and Freddy Martin records.  I remember those Sunday nights in Kirby, WV, when I would lay on my bed listening to WBT-AM in Charlotte, NC, listening first to Henry Boggen for many years, and then later to the great Chuck Cecil's "Swingin' Years" program - when I started collecting records, I would actually sit there and count on my fingers which one's Henry or Chuck played that I had - today, with a CD collection of over 1200 and an LP collection of almost a thousand, I could probably count on one hand what I lack.   It was fun, those days - many a night too, I would sit at the kitchen table in our mobile home there in Kirby, with just the stove light on, listening to that great music on the radio while either creating drawings or later journaling my own thoughts.  The cool West Virginia summer nights, with the breeze drifting in the open windows while I would actually sit at the table sipping sugar-laden instant coffee or nibbling a bag of Utz Chips, made life so simple - it was a neat little respite from the poverty that surrounded us in those days.  I listened to those shows well up into my early college years, but then life took over and the responsibilities with it sort of made me forget those simpler times for many years, until I took up journaling again and remembered them.  Then, you listen to the reflections of others, such as Susannah, and it makes you really come back to that.   One other stimulus is that after living in Florida for over 27 years, we have recently moved back to my home turf, and as I am sitting here typing this on a Friday night in Hagerstown, MD, in my living room, I am enjoying that nice summer breeze again - going through my mind now are those great songs I used to love to listen to on the radio which I now have in my own library - Count Basie's April in Paris, Charlie Barnet's Skyliner, Freddy Martin's stellar rendition of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto, and Les Brown's great theme song Leap Frog (interesting enough composed by the same guy who wrote In The Mood, the definitive big band iconic anthem made famous by Glenn Miller's 1939 recording).  With the neighborhood ducks quacking in the background (along with my mother's more annoying quacking every few minutes to look at them eating bread - when you see a waterfowl eat bread once, you pretty much know how it works, so certain people need to get their own hobby), it makes for a nice evening as May begins to transition to June - man, it's good to be back home again!

Those are just a few reflections I wanted to share before the weekend makes its debut in a few hours, and hope you all have a good holiday weekend as we commemorate our armed forces, in particular those who gave their lives for our freedom - there are not many World War II vets left, but if Chuck Cecil's show were still on the air, I am sure he would be playing Glenn Miller's American Patrol this weekend in honor of them.   May we never take that for granted, even if we see this weekend as an extended holiday after a long work month and are looking forward to the burgers, dogs, kabobs, and steaks that will be sizzling on outdoor barbecues around the country this weekend.  Take care, and we'll see you again soon when you stop by my virtual "front porch" to "sit a spell" with me and indulge my personal recollections or philosophical pontifications.  

Reflections on 25 Years of Marriage

As I write this today, Barb and I are celebrating 25 years of marriage together.   It has been an eventful quarter-century of our lives together, and there is a lot to reflect on concerning it. I am going to focus today on the challenges and joys of our married life, and hopefully I can be an encouragement to others.

Barbara and I were married on May 22, 1992 in the little First Assembly of God Church in downtown Graceville, FL.  Our wedding was not overly spectacular, as we had only a few friends that came, and I actually catered the wedding myself.  But, it was nice in its simplicity - we were entering into a sacramental covenant bond for life, and it was a bond that a deep love for each other made possible.  The pastor who married us, Rev. John Broome, was a friend of ours for several years previous - I had been acquainted with him since I arrived in Graceville to start college at the old Florida Baptist Theological College there, and his church had a good group of folks who were members.  Although our actual church at the time was a Foursquare congregation in nearby Dothan, AL, we chose Pastor Broome and his church because we actually felt closer there than we did in our actual congregation - we were not on the best of terms at that point with our own church, as there were some issues that made trust a problem, and therefore it was probably a wise decision to do this as we did.  Also, Graceville was more special to us anyway, as that was where we met and had gotten to know each other.  My old Appalachian "sense of place" therefore played a pivotal role in our choice of wedding venue too.

I want to now relate the story as to how Barb and I met, because it is actually quite interesting.  I started school at FBTC in August of 1989, just a few months after graduating high school.  At the time I was only 19 years of age, and it was an adjustment settling in a new state and new town after growing up the majority of my life in West Virginia.  With good friends such as Steve Viera, a resident of Bermuda who sort of took me under his wing when I got to campus and "showed me the ropes," I was able to make the adjustment much easier.  My first semester at FBTC was relatively uneventful, as it entailed me getting used to college life, especially living in the dorms.  I was also a shy kid with an unusually high-pitched voice, and although I sort of wanted to find a girlfriend, it was not something that I expected to happen.  However, some of my new classmates invited me out for bowling and pizza one weekend, and I sort of was able to go on my first double-date with a sweet local girl who had started school there by the name of Rachel King, and that ended up being fun.  It was good to be part of a group of people my own age for probably the first time in my life to that point, and I enjoyed it.  Rachel lived across the street in the girls' dorms, which were apartment-like dwellings that later became housing for married students, and she shared one of those with two other girls.  After getting some semblance of a social life, my semester that year began to take shape, and after Christmas break and the start of the Spring semester in January 1990, I was confident enough to actually one evening rouse the courage to ask Rachel on a real date, so I went to her dorm and knocked on the door.  At that point, God had other plans, and that was when a new direction started.

When I knocked on the door - these apartments each had their own front door, and although guys couldn't go inside, we were allowed to have conversations with the ladies standing outside - one of Rachel's roommates answered, and it was an older girl who had been in school there for a few years at that time whose name was Barbara Webster.  When Barb came to the door, she was eating the stinkiest can of sardines, and also I believe had just washed her hair and had it bound up in a towel drying.  Although she told me Rachel was not home, for some reason we got to talking, and the conversation was so nice that we began talking more and more.  Within a short time, we became good friends.  Barbara was originally from a small town called Oregon, WI, but when she was very young her dad, who she really thought a lot of and who impacted her life significantly, died in a tragic motorcycle accident.  When she was in her early teens, one of her sisters led her to accept Christ and she became a committed Christian after previously having a somewhat rebellious life brought on by the sudden loss of her father, and part of that involved even some dabbling in occultic practices.  She had also been involved with some rather unsavory relationships with other guys - one was a petty thief who ended up essentially being a bisexual occultist himself, and the other one was a "wolf in sheep's clothing" who was actually on the campus in Graceville and was trying to manipulate young vulnerable female students to follow him in what was essentially a rudimentary sex cult - and that left her somewhat scarred.  By the time we had met, Barbara had sworn off dating guys and had essentially decided to focus on the reason she was there.  That didn't mean, however, that some of the more assertive male students didn't try!  When one of those approached her at some point, she flatly told him she was "celebate" in order to repel his advances - it worked somewhat, but then what she told him was embellished into a story that she was becoming a nun (which is odd, because Barbara was part of a Baptist church then!) as well as some other crazy stuff.  If you are not familiar with Bible college campuses, not all of them are "heaven on earth" and they are definitely not always filled with pious kids who just "love Jesus" and blissfully have a cloistered community.  On the contrary, in those days gossip and wacky theories were popular fare on that campus, and a lot of things got said or done which, well, would not have endeared some of the students to local churchgoers had they known.  Any rate, at this point in time, Barbara was sworn off dating, but luckily she was not opposed to having a good friend of the opposite sex to hang out with, and that is what we became - good friends.

To be honest, I was not really all that interested in Barbara romantically at that point either - I was a new student, and had recently gotten heavily involved in my new Foursquare church and that pretty much permeated most of my life.  I thought a lot of Barbara as a friend, but that was it.  It went on pretty much that way until around December of 1990, when we were actually sitting in a small diner after church one night in Dothan, AL, having a late-night snack with one of our church folks (by this time, Barbara had started coming to our Foursquare church too, and had joined us) by the name of Patti Thomas (now Metcalf).  In those days, many of us were highly involved in our Pentecostal life, and we also believed in exercising our spiritual gifts we believed we had any chance we felt the Holy Spirit moving us to do so.  That night, Patti felt a stirring in her spirit about something, and she essentially said to us that God was going to reveal to me who my life-mate was going to be.  By this time, it was no secret that Barbara and I were really close, and speculation among church members was that we somehow were brought together by God Himself (on that they were right) and were supposed to be married.  However, I was not exactly sure at this point, and God more or less used Patti to reveal that to me.  When Patti told us that, I asked Barbara if I could talk to Patti for a second, so Barbara went to the restroom.  So, I outright asked Patti, "Is it Barbara?"  With a confident smile and a nod of her head, she gave me the answer.

The feeling I had after that revelation hit me is still with me to this day - I was so overwhelmed at that point I just didn't know what to say.  I was thinking, "I have a girlfriend!"  That night, I was so keyed up that I didn't even get any sleep, as so much was going through my mind then and the emotions were so indescribable that to this day I cannot really explain what I was feeling - the best I could say was that it was a combination of joy, fear, uncertainty, excitement, and even a little relief.  But, that moment redefined our relationship in a major way.  As it was almost Christmas break, lucky for me I had some time to actually absorb it all when I flew home that Christmas to West Virginia - I told Mom, but as usual, no response except a couple of stupid, inappropriate comments from her alcohol-induced frame of mind.  But, I honestly didn't care - I had a girlfriend now, me being the little geeky kid with the high-pitched voice from small-town West Virginia!  That was a time I will always remember too.

After Christmas break, I went back to school for the following semester, and Barbara and I began our dating relationship in earnest.  It would be at least a couple of months before we even had our first kiss, and that was nice but awkward for me.  It was made more challenging though because Barbara was compelled to move to Dothan during that Christmas break because she was on the verge of losing her house in Graceville that year.  She first lived with Patti at her house in Pinkard, AL, and later moved in with Karen Strickland, our pastor's daughter, who had a husband and six kids at that point.  In living with Karen, Barbara had to work a night job at a local convenience store chain called Hobo Pantry, and she also was made de-facto babysitter to Karen's kids, which actually created challenges when we saw each other once a week for church.  Eventually, over the summer of 1991, when I made my last trip to West Virginia as a single man to spend the summer at Mom's in Terra Alta, she was able to get her own place on Lena Street in downtown Dothan, and while it was not a glamorous place by any means, it was hers and it gave us time to really develop our own relationship.  But it was not without its challenges, as 1991 was a tough year for both of us - I was talked into moving to California to attend LIFE Bible College, as our pastor then thought the Baptist college where I was didn't meet his standards, and on December 31st, 1991, I was on a Greyhound bus headed for Los Angeles.

Prior to leaving for LA that December, Barbara and I had some time to spend together, and it was a nice thing for both of us - we became very close during that couple of weeks, and when I boarded that bus on December 31st in Ocala, FL, bound for Los Angeles, it was tough!!  To make a long story short, LA didn't work out - I was only out there just over a month, and it was obviously a mistake going, so the church sent me a bus ticket and I headed back to Dothan.   Barbara and I had gotten formally engaged just prior to my going out to LA, and we now were talking wedding plans.  After returning to Dothan and getting my life back in order, I was able to enter a program called JTPA which paid me to train as a chef, and that gave me a steady income for a while so we could start planning our wedding.  We finally set a date - May 22, 1992 - and started to get things prepared.  Most of it fell into place with no problem, but what really bugged us both was the lack of support we got from our families, which is what I want to talk about now.

Our marriage faced a lot of obstacles, mostly from our family.  My in-laws were giving us a lot of flak, as many of them had never met me but had made it up in their mind to hate me despite not even knowing what I looked like yet.  My own family was very apathetic - Dad didn't care to come, Mom was not coming because she thought Dad might be there, and we didn't even get wedding gifts from any of them I recall.  That lack of support from our families has always been a bit of an issue for me, and although I have tried to rise above that, it still even bothers me to this day because both Barbara and I deserved better than the treatment we got.  Over the coming months, my in-laws in particular were doom-talking us, saying we wouldn't last, that we were young and stupid, and of course they hated me.   But, the wedding happened, and 25 years later as of today, we are still happily married and our love for each other has grown.  I say to certain ones of my in-laws that opposed us and gave us grief over the years - get bent.  God's plan is above my in-laws' likes and dislikes, and also above my own family's lack of interest, and we have found that we didn't need them in our lives to be happy honestly - actually, we were happier when they were out of our lives.  Of course there were exceptions to this - for instance, Barbara's two older sisters, Tara and Sue - both of them have been amazing, and although initial "bumps" happened with them, over the years they got to know me, I got to know them, and those two are practically like sisters to me and I love them dearly.  Also, Barbara's mother has really been a great blessing to us as well - she had her issues at first too, but today we get an anniversary card every year from her, and that means a lot (she also remembers my birthday too like clockwork, and that brightens my day as well now).  The rest of the apathetic and opposition, they don't matter to us.  What matters is that we are committed to each other, and what God brought together no man can tear asunder, no matter how hard they try.

As for Barb, she is a precious and very integral part of my own life now, and after 25 years of marriage it would be inconceivable to not have her part of my life.  She is not only just part of my life, but she is part of me now, a very important part of me.  The love and appreciation I have for her grows greater with every passing day, and although I don't always feel it there, it is there;  Barb is my soulmate, my best friend, and she will be so until they stick my dead carcass in the ground.  There are many important life lessons I have learned after 25 years of marriage, and I want to share a couple of them now in conclusion.

There are two real factors that have made our marriage work for 25 years.  The first is that God Himself ordered the events that brought us together in the first place - who would have thought that a Polish girl from Wisconsin and a shy West Virginia boy would ever meet up in a small college in a rural Florida town?   Only God could make that happen.  Although it has had its challenges, our marriage has worked because we have kept God at its center - marriage is not just a piece of paper, and it is not even about a man and a woman just loving each other, but it is a sacramental union that is made possible only by ordination by God Himself.  It is important to understand that even non-Christian marriages can be long and happy, but ultimately somewhere and at some point God has to be acknowledged as being the source of that happiness.  Understanding that will make your spouse be seen in a new light - a precious gift God gave specifically to you.  And, as a precious gift, it is to be cherished, loved, and protected with one's life.

The second factor that has made our marriage work goes back to how we met.  Barbara and I were actually close friends at least 18 months before we even started dating, and initially we never had romantic intentions toward each other but did see something in each other that drew us together.  Even after we started dating, it was almost a year before we even got engaged, so we took it slow and steady.  Many people who know us - especially those who have caused us the most issues - don't understand that part of the story.   The way we built our relationship was as best friends, and to this day Barb and are still each other's best friends - we can tell each other anything, and we know we are there for each other if we need the other one.  Friendship also builds the basis of trust in a future marriage, as you have a foundation to work from, and it makes the eros that comes with the matrimonial bond more meaningful.   Too many people see breasts, asses, or other body parts and never get to know a person outside external looks, and then when those breasts sag, or the butts and other parts wrinkle or deflate, there is nothing left except externals.  When you are friends first, and truly learn to love each other, the outside doesn't matter as much - it can be enhancing, but externals fade.  It is the spirit and soul that truly matter, and being able to be friends as well as lovers is what makes a marriage strong.  Also, others base their love on material wealth - that is futile as well.  Some of the best and richest marriages consist of couples who have very little in terms of material wealth, yet they have a strong love for each other because they see each other as human beings and not as a bank book.  Wealth can also fade like looks, and in the greater picture of things wealth is irrelevant.  Therefore, to younger couples I would advise getting your minds off each other's butts and bucks, and instead get to know each other as persons.   Barb and I were blessed with being able to do that, and it has meant a great deal to both of us that we accept and love each other for who we are instead of what others expect, or how much money we make, or how tight one's butt or perky one's breasts are.  Therefore the secret to a great marriage is loving each other as God created them to be, not trying to conform one's spouse into one's own image.

The other aspect of our marriage as well is faithfulness.  Do we both think about "what if's" at times?  We do, but here is what happens in my case - often if a thought comes across my own mind about "what if I had married so-and-so years ago?"  it is quickly dissipated by a couple of things.  First, what of this other person?  Could they truly have been happy with you, or could you have been happy with them?  Then, as you think more about it, you begin to realize things, and although hard to explain you start to understand that the alternative scenario of being hitched to someone else would not have worked for whatever reasons.  Thinking that,  I myself begin to think then about how great Barb actually is, and how blessed I am to be married to her, and I then say to myself, "I already have the best, so why speculate?"  About marital fidelity, one of the best pieces of advice I got years ago was from an elderly Assemblies of God minister who told us a couple of months after we married the following gem of wisdom - "If you ever even think about cheating, just remember that all donuts have the same hole!"  To the point, pithy, but actually good advice!  That has stuck with me since too.

I guess now I want to say that Barbara is my best friend, my soulmate, and we are going to be together for as long as God allows breath to expel from our lungs, and my love for her has grown beyond emotion and "tingly feelings" - it is an integral part of who I am now, and in many ways we bring out the best in each other.  I am looking forward to another great 25 years with that best friend, soulmate, and spouse I have, and may she always know she has my unwavering love and she is the greatest part of my own life now.  I wonder what I will write here when we get to our 50th?  My guess is that it is going to be pretty much the same sentiments, but probably richer as we will definitely grow in love for each other more.  So, Happy Anniversary baby, and I hope to have many more blessed years with you.

Noblesse Oblige - Meeting Life's Expectations in a Qualifying yet Realistic Way

Some years ago, while doing some genealogy research, I came across a term that got my interest and wanted to find out more about it.   My ancestors, as I have noted before elsewhere, were of French Huguenot heritage on my father's side, but there is more to the story than just that - those same Huguenot ancestors have a heritage that spans back well over one thousand years, and gives me direct descendance from the bloodlines of many lines of European nobility.  In looking at it, a lot of things over the years began to make sense to me.  What I found out was that somehow the concept of what is called Noblesse Oblige was hardwired into my very fabric of being, and to be honest it is not something I view as a bad thing either.  Today I want to deal with that topic specifically, and also how this code that I had adhered to for many years of my life yet didn't have a term for has shaped me in so many ways.

If you look up the term Noblesse Oblige in a dictionary, it can be literally translated as "nobility obligates."  What exactly does that mean??  Essentially, it just means that something compels one to act according to their station in life - nobility is supposed to reflect honor, in this case, so the person who bears it is to act honorably.  It is a concept rooted in the ancient codes of chivalry, and to be honest it does make one more responsible for their own actions when one realizes that they represent something and therefore should represent it in the best light.  In Christian praxis, this means that if one says they are Christian, one must act, believe, and profess honestly the Christianity they claim to embrace, something that our Evangelical friends (to their credit) do take seriously, in principle if not in practice.  However, as I understand it as well, one who has Noblesse Oblige as part of their personal code must also display a grace to others - the privilege of one's heritage must be balanced, to use the dictionary explanation (in this case, Wikipedia),  by duty towards those who lack such privilege or cannot perform such duty.  In other words, in strictest terms Noblesse Oblige is rooted in a Judeo-Christian concept of dignity of personhood, and it means that a person who possesses such privilege or adheres to such a code must understand the following things:

1.  As a potential leader, it means setting a good example of behavior for others.
2.  The avoidance of pretension and conceit - you don't lord your station over others.
3.  Minimal standards of decency are to be exceeded, and excellence in morality is a goal of the person who has Noblesse Oblige as a code.
4.  The leader takes responsibility for wrong actions and mistakes, and for the greater good of his or her society they take the blame when something goes wrong as a result of them.
5.  Exemplary leadership implies being a servant rather than a master in many cases.

For many critics of this mindset, the biggest contention they have is that fulfilling a duty in appearance seems to justify privilege of the one possessing it, and it often gets misinterpreted by some as what is called jural correlative - if someone has a right, someone else owes a duty to them as a result.  I have found, though, that the critics are often the ones who carry this to extreme rather than those who adhere to Noblesse Oblige - we have seen that in recent years when whiney, immature "progressives" have, under the guise of such things as "political correctness," tried to justify stifling freedom of thought and speech by silencing those who disagree with them in violent ways, such as the nonsense we saw at Berkeley recently as well as that whole "Black Lives Matter" scam.  This, for me then, would make the critics inconsistent, as socialism and "progressivism" often seek to subjugate the convictions of the individual by making them conform with the accepted "groupthink" they themselves are propagating.  Noblesse Oblige, in its truest sense, would oppose such behavior - rather, it affirms that the dignity of personhood is paramount, and with that dignity of personhood comes responsibility to act as a civilized human being, no matter what one's station in life is.  Nobility, in that case, is not confined to just aristocratic titles, but rather extends to those who act nobly.  Often, the poorest among us have a better concept of Noblesse Oblige than do the elites, and in my own case, I have the aristocratic blood but have spent much of my own life on the "wrong side of the tracks," and this for me has created a synthesis of Noblesse Oblige with another code - the Appalachian Code.

Being raised in West Virginia in a poor household with a single alcoholic mother, you learn quickly about self-sufficiency, and as a result one develops a set of standards to help one not merely survive their circumstance, but to rise above it.  I had to do that on so many levels, and although often not appreciated or taken seriously in many cases, I have accomplished much.  That is because in addition to that ingrained Noblesse Oblige mentality I have, I have also learned to live by a few other standards shaped by my upbringing.  Here are a few of those:

1.  An adverse situation can be made better by exercising ingenuity, and it is the responsibility of one to be ingenious (this is called, in Appalachian vernacular, "Making Do").
2.  If someone does something for someone else, there is an unspoken obligation of the one receiving the favor to reciprocate in some way.
3.  If one promises something, it must be honored - time factors don't matter, but fulfilling the promise does.
4.  Consistency in behavior is essential - if one is striving to project something, one must be consistent and not contradict or neglect the process of achieving that behavioral goal.
5.  One must, regardless of station in life, always look out for the less-fortunate - doggedly stand up for them, help them as able to do so, and always remember one can become less-fortunate themselves.
6.  Learn to be multipotential - know a little about as much as one can, and it can be an asset later on.
7.  Never forget where one comes from - although stations in life change, we all have roots, and we have to accept and understand both positives and negatives.

I would add one other to this based on personal experience - although one may not always live up to these standards, it is important to try, and also to admit where one falls short and move forward.  The downside to any codes like these is that often times we raise the bars on ourselves so high that we fail ourselves more than we do others, who can be more understanding.  I have done that many times in my life, and it can be a difficult thing to deal with.   However, in time as I was reassured that it is OK, I was able to recollect myself and try again, and having a little more insight helped me to be more realistic about my own limitations and I was able to accomplish my goal better.  Also, patience plays into these issues as well, something else I have struggled with over the years.  I am one of those people who, when I get something in my mind, I want to make the big picture manifest itself immediately.   However, there are other factors involved which may limit the vision to being more like a puzzle - you receive a piece here, a piece there, and your job is to make the pieces fit together and that can take a process of time too.  It is the struggle of potentiality (what the ideal is to be) vs. actuality (what the situation is) which can be hard.   You know that you have this inner desire to be there, but limitations in resources and appreciation of others are binding you here, and that can be frustrating.  This is where two things help out - the Noblesse Oblige principle of setting good example plus the Appalachian ideal of using what you have and the intelligence God endowed you with to "make do" and find the solution to the problem.  Proactivity is paramount, and it becomes the bridge that connects the pieces of the puzzle.   As mentioned, we are often our own worst critic, and our own expectations can be unrealistically high, so we have to sometimes step back, lower the bar somewhat, and move onto Plan B.  This realism sort of tempers the more lofty aspects of Noblesse Oblige and it makes them more attainable by redirecting our focus on what resources we do have to work them as well as how to use them to the most efficient advantage.  And, that is the hard part - we must contend with impatience, opposition from others, and disadvantage when material resources are not adequate to carry out the goal we need to achieve.  Cultivating this patience doesn't in any way contradict Noblesse Oblige, but rather makes it more doable in that we now can realistically meet reasonable expectations and can minimize frustration and disappointment of ourselves and others.  It was the Appalachian influence that helped me do this in many cases.

So, how did I achieve that, you probably ask?  I point to one thing - imagination.  Imagination is often dismissed as being unrealistic and an exercise in futility, but it must instead be seen as a gift we are endowed with to motivate us.  When I was a kid, I read a lot, and I also fantasized about many things too - I wanted to set up my own kingdom, and had it in mind to carve up the eastern part of Brazil as my own little empire (yes, I thought like that between the ages of 9 and 11!).  As I formulated those plans, I would incorporate things I had read, and in my mind I could see it happening.  Of course, it never did - I am not wearing a crown today, and actually live very modestly on a personal domain that consists of the household my wife and I built together.  However, reading that stuff did help me in other ways - it often made a rough childhood go smoother, and an active imagination encouraged me to explore and seek out things, whether that entailed tramping around in the woods that covered the surrounding hills of our house in Kirby, WV, back then or voraciously reading that whole set of World Book Encyclopedias as well as a gourmet cookbook, a set of story books, and even stuff my mother had about the Jonestown murders, the Charles Manson issue, and other weird material I was reading at that age.  Much of that knowledge would serve me well later actually, which is why I am now finishing up a Masters degree in about 6 months.

The natural bi-product of seeking out knowledge and digesting it is also the ability to regurgitate it into the form I can express and make practical use of it, and that is why early on I got into writing down personal thoughts, as well as engaging in a practice called "self-directed speech."  In case you don't know what the latter is, essentially it means I talk to myself (see a previous article).  A behavior that "normal" society condemns often as being the manifestation of insanity is in reality the expression of creativity - "talking out" your ideas, thoughts, etc., often aids in problem-solving and also eventual implementation of ideas.  When you are not taken seriously by anyone around you a lot of times, this becomes a necessary discourse for self-expression.  That is why today I value time to myself, and I often get short-tempered and impatient with people - like my meddling mother, who can be a pain in the butt! - who get in my way.  This is why personal journals (soon I want to cover that as a subject in itself here) and self-directed speech are to be encouraged.  If you are a parent and you have a child that does this, don't punish them or make light of them, as they may be developing their own future success in life.

I just went down a short rabbit-trail to connect self-expression and self-expectation as they relate to personal codes of chivalry and ethics.  Knowing one's self is the key to meeting realistic expectations of our own standards, and it may provide valuable insight into how to practically carry out those objectives without over-extending ourselves or facing disappointment.  The "entitlement crowd" of "politically-correct," socially-irresponsible Millennials (and the loony Boomers and Xers of previous generations who empower them) whining about "safe spaces" and the "privilege" of others has created a lot of unnecessary and loud static which inhibits and even prohibits true creative self-expression and behavioral growth.  This post-modern iconoclasm has in essence sought to suppress individuality while claiming to embrace it, and it has generated an atmosphere of irresponsibility, laziness, and intolerance for others who have unique perspective, and that is the failure of these movements like "Occupy Wall Street," "Black Lives Matter," and the whole culture of "political correctness."   The "safe spaces" of its proponents are in reality some of the most oppressive of suppressive acts, and it also promotes selfishness and depersonalization of others.  That is why I continue to embrace what many "progressives" would call an antiquated, archaic chivalric code, because at least with standards I can respect the "progressive" better than they can respect me.  I also have the clarity of knowing when to either shut up or to tune out the din and clutter of post-modern society in order to refocus myself when the need arises, and that gives me a perspective that many of this generation lack because now they somehow mistakenly think it is a "good" thing to deprive themselves of that.  It is imperative that we as a society get a priority of establishing boundaries and standards back, but at this point it may even be necessary to let the society implode upon itself, as many of its participants are beyond reason and may need to learn a hard lesson on their own.  If that is the case, and if America's fate is self-implosion into its own shortcomings, then those of us who are not part of that melee need to separate ourselves from it, stand back, and let things take their course, as there may be no other way.   At the same time, we need to insure we have the liberty to lead our lives, be allowed to hold our convictions, and exercise our own self-expression without anarchic mobs of immature "radicals" trying to exterminate us for doing so.  This may in time mean that many of us may have to disconnect from the surrounding society, and maybe find our own true "safe space" to re-establish order, decency, and standards of self-conduct becoming to who we are.   However, I am starting to venture into the political realm, and that is a discussion for another time.

It is time to conclude this discourse by summarizing what we need to take from it.  First, standards are important, and by all means preserve them.  However, we should know our limitations too - the true essence of Noblesse Oblige is responsible action based on realistic expectations to fulfill the obligation of acting appropriately to our station in life.  We use what we have been endowed with, making wise choices and the most out of those endowments, and we do it for the betterment of the society around us as well as of ourselves.  If we can master that, then there is hope for our communities, families, and even our nation.  Thanks for allowing me to pontificate, and until next time, keep yourself in perspective with realistic expectations and responsible action.