Author: cigarman501

I Still Don’t Understand What’s So Bad About Kwanzaa

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“For families across the country, today marks the beginning of a joyous time to reflect on the rich African-American culture and to remember the principles of unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith—principles that reflect our most cherished values as Americans.” — Barack Obama

I originally shared a similar post in 2015. Once again, I made the mistake of reading some of the comments made about Kwanzaa from some of our news sources. Little has changed it seems, so I decided to rewrite and share again.

Kwanzaa is racist. It is contrived. SOME PEOPLE are trying to replace Christmas. The founder was a Sixties’ black militant felon with ties to the Black Power Movement and not even African. Most of these arguments are made by very “hard right” publications like…well all of them. Or made by internet trolls on liberal or middle of the road news sites.

Is St. Patrick’s Day racist? It’s no longer a religious celebration I would say. Is Cinco de Mayo racist? It celebrates a great Mexican victory over the French…Mexico for the most part doesn’t celebrate it. There are dozens of other ethnocultural celebrations, mostly white celebrations, so why pick on Kwanzaa? Are our racist petticoats still showing?

Kwanzaa is contrived. All holidays are contrived. When Adam and Eve were created or our forefathers learned to walk on two feet, did they have a holiday to celebrate? I don’t think so. I don’t know when the celebration of Christmas first occurred. Well, I do. I also know there was no biblical mandate to celebrate the Birth of Christ at all.

Emperor Constantine first mandated the celebration of Christmas on December 25 in 336AD. Constantine didn’t know when Jesus was born. No one knows and Constantine did it as much as a political move as a religious one. Does that detract from its importance? While Christmas was celebrated in the colonies before John Smith raised a glass of eggnog, it didn’t become a national holiday in the US until 1870. Contrived? Made up? Well, the date is.

Again, why are we picking on Kwanzaa? If you are going to pick on a contrived holiday pick on St. Valentine’s Day. The former religious celebration has become an observance of guilt for the purpose of lining the pockets of candy makers, jewelers, and florists.

Kwanzaa begins on December 26 and ends January 1 and is not a religious celebration at all. It is a celebration of family, community, nation, and race and doesn’t compete with Christmas or the dozen other year end or New Year celebrations. Why not pick on them?

I cannot deny that Kwanzaa’s founder, Maulana Ndabezitha Karenga (born Ronald McKinley Everett) was a Sixties Black Power militant, who at the time had never set foot in Africa. Let’s remember this is an African American celebration celebrating African culture, not an African celebration celebrating African culture. He did serve time on felony charges and was paroled in the mid Seventies. His time in prison was well spent. He is now Dr. Karenga and taught African Studies which I guess makes him even worse…a liberal.

The Sixties were a time of social strife. Civil Rights, the War in Viet Nam, gender inequality, the Native American movement, and the Chicano movement were just some of the social issues championed by people like Cassius Clay, known to us now as Muhammad Ali, or Tommie Smith’s and Juan Carlos’s Black Power Salute at the 1968 Olympics.

Kwanzaa was “contrived” just two years after the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and just two years before the assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. African Americans might be forgiven for wanting something positive to hang on to…and still might.

Karenga created Kwanzaa in 1966 to be the first pan-African holiday. Karenga said his goal was to “give Blacks an alternative to the existing holidays and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and their history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society.”

Kwanzaa is inspired by African “first fruit” traditions, and the name chosen is from Swahili, “matunda ya kwanza.” The rituals of the holiday promote African traditions and Nguzo Saba, the “seven principles of African Heritage” that Karenga described as “a communitarian African philosophy”. Thank you, Wikipedia

Those seven principles are: Unity, Self-determination, Collective work and responsibility, Cooperative economics, Purpose, Creativity, and Faith. Radical?

To say it is not African is absurd. There are over fifty countries in Africa and some three thousand tribal units. Many of the countries did not exist at the time Africans were being shipped to the New World. Each tribe has a different culture. Kwanzaa is a blending of those cultures. Many African Americans do not have the luxury of knowing the country or tribe of their origin, so Kwanzaa is not culture specific. Whoopsie doo dah! I would say celebrate to your heart’s content and if you don’t…quietly go about business.

If you would wish to learn more about Kwanzaa, History.com, connected to the History Channel, has a link: http://www.history.com/topics/holidays/kwanzaa-history you might want to visit. I would say “Don’t let the facts confuse you.”

Hope

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Happy Christmas Day. My hope is never to give up hope.

cigarman501's avatarRavings of a Mad Southerner

My holiday wish is hope.

“Listen to the mustn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts. Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me… Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”  ― Shel Silverstein

***

Humanity is capable of such good.  Humanity is capable of flight, capable of putting people on the moon and returning them home again.  We can be so amazing.

I hope we can find our amazing light and shine it throughout the Universe.

Music, art of all types, the application of human creative skill and imagination…mathmatics, science,..we’re problem solvers.

I hope we put our collective minds together, solving more world problems, making life better for all.

Amazing breakthroughs in medicine, evolution in technologies.  Testaments to what humans can do when they embrace a positive goal. 

It is my hope we come together and embrace each other and…

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When Peace Had a Chance-The Christmas Truce of 1914

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“Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.”

― Mahatma Gandhi

On Christmas Eve, 1914, The Great War was still in its preliminary stages. Three more Christmas Eves and most of another year would pass before the guns of “The War to End All Wars” would fall silent in November of 1918.

Late in the evening on a dark and gloomy Christmas Eve 1914…in the dank, muddy trenches on the Western Front of the First World War, an odd occurrence happened, briefly peace broke out. It came to be called the Christmas Truce. It remains one of the most storied and strangest moments of the Great War—or of any war in history.

British troops had spent six months fighting the Germans. In a part of Belgium called Bois de Ploegsteert, the British who crouched in a trench that stretched just three feet deep by three feet wide heard German troops singing Christmas Carols.

In the darkness, some of the British soldiers began to sing back and before you say, “Dash away all”, German and British soldiers were meeting in the middle of no man’s land among the barbed wire and shell holes, not to kill each other, but for a moment, to share a bit of peace and good will toward men, even their enemies.

According to journals written on both sides, there were handshakes and words of kindness. The soldiers traded songs, tobacco, and wine, joining in a spontaneous holiday party in the chilly night. According to accounts, small trees were adorned with candles.

Other accounts tell that there were impromptu cease fires all along the front involving British, French, Belgian, and German troops. On the Eastern Front, Austrian, German, and Russian troops participated but on a smaller scale.

For six months the warring factions had experienced great hardships and tribulation. For a brief time, they put the death, mud, homesickness, and poor food behind them.

In a diary, British rifleman, J. Reading, wrote, “Later on in the day they came towards us, and our chaps went out to meet them…I shook hands with some of them, and they gave us cigarettes and cigars. We did not fire (a shot) that day, and everything was so quiet it seemed like a dream.”

Another British soldier, named John Ferguson, recalled it this way: “Here we were laughing and chatting to men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill!”

The strangest of the strange, a soccer ball appeared, and a soccer match involving hundreds began.  German Lieutenant Kurt Zehmisch of the 134 Saxons Infantry, a schoolteacher who spoke both English and German, also described a pick-up soccer game in his diary. “Eventually the English brought a soccer ball from their trenches, and pretty soon a lively game ensued,” he wrote. “How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was. The English officers felt the same way about it. Thus Christmas, the celebration of Love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as friends for a time.”

Not everyone was happy. Both German and British High Command were horrified when the news of the truce found its way into the newspapers. Any further celebrations were banned, and the Christmas Truce of 1914 would not be repeated. Instead, armies would go about doing what they do best, killing themselves in horrific numbers. Some fifteen million would shed their life blood before the guns fell silent on November 11, 1918.

Unless you are involved or have family and friends involved, I think for our own sanity we see wars being fought with game pieces instead of flesh and bone human beings. The Christmas Truce of 1914 should remind us, war is not fought with “forces” but with humans. Christmas should remind us that we are all members of humanity, and that peace should reign. There is nothing humane about war.

To all who read this, and those that don’t. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Pray that those in places of power give peace a chance. Pray that we love and attempt to understand our fellow man. Tidings of peace and good will toward all men and women.

Thanks to the History Channel for providing most of my information and my images.

Don Miller’s newest fictional novel is “Thunder Along the Copperhead.” An action romance that takes place during the Great Depression, with the backdrop of prohibition and textile strife. It can be purchased in paperback or downloaded at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

The Vet Ride to Adulthood

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“Adulthood is like the vet, and we’re all the dogs that were excited for the car ride until we realized where we’re going.”  Unknown

“If someone gave you a box that contained everything you had lost in your life, what would you look for first?”

What an interesting question. A plethora of pig trails to travel and rabbit holes to fall into. A bit of self-reflection? Let’s see where this goes.

My first thoughts were of lost loved ones. Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, old friends. My first puppy dog, Caesar. Surely, I didn’t name him that. Did I? Everyone who would know is lost to the sands of time like him.

I’m not sure that was my first thought. I think just before thinking about lost loved ones I might have humorously thought, “My Mind.” Maybe not so humorously for someone who suffers from depression. I certainly haven’t lost any of “those” negative thoughts that usually come around this time of year. My thoughts can often be dark and gray…somewhat like the weather I’m experiencing presently. Yeah, I might look for my mind first.

From the sublime to the ridiculous. The Superman slingshot powered glider. Man could that thing fly. “Up, Up and Away” in my best George Reeves voice…right into the top of the persimmon tree never to be seen again.  That might be the first time I experienced a real, gut-wrenching loss. I don’t guess it was lost; I imagine it was still in the tree when Hurricane Hugo took it and the tree to planet Krypton decades later.

My Captain Midnight Decoder Ring? How much Ovaltine did I have to drink to get one of those? I lost my college ring too. Drinking Ovaltine was much more fun than all the knowledge I drank up to earn the college ring.

Further ridiculousness, my virginity? Right. Truth be known I would have liked to have lost it sooner rather than when I did. Yes, lose my virginity sooner and my hair later.

Lost opportunities. Wow, those are too numerous to list. Every time I turn around in my mind, I run smack into one. Other times they form a chorus in my head. So much discord.

Okay, I’ve figured it out. I knew my pig trails would lead somewhere. “Taaa, taaa, ta, taaa!” My childhood. The first thing I would look for would be my childhood. Those wonderful years between my first awareness that I was a living person and my teenage years when my brain function flatlined. The years when we thought we were Peter Pan before Captain Hook showed us differently. When Decoder Rings meant something…well before the college ring and the sheepskin that went with it.

Those early years when the worst thing facing me was cutting the front yard or hoeing out row centers in the garden. When an eight-ounce Coke and a bag of Lance peanuts were the nectar of the gods and cartoons were still broadcast on Saturday mornings. Along with Sky King, Roy Rogers, and The Lone Ranger of course. Those years when a Schwinn Torpedo would take you anywhere you needed to go.

Chores completed, there were late afternoon trips to the river and the ponds around us. Fresh caught fish breaded in cornbread and onion hush puppies frying in Crisco and bacon grease. A time when I had never heard the word cholesterol much less worried about it.

I mean, there were responsibilities…you didn’t grow up around a farm without responsibilities, but many of them didn’t feel like responsibilities and there was still time to play lawman and desperado using corn cobs as weapons. When it was still okay to play Cowboys and Indians or War. ..little plastic soldier giving their all to defend the American way.

Pick up baseball games in the backyard. Football games on Sunday after church in the front yard. When you didn’t know that childhood would end.

Yeah, I’d look for my childhood first thing because if I were to find my childhood, I would find all those meaningful things I have lost and lose all those nasty responsibilities and the baggage I have toted around since I recovered from my brain-dead teenage years.

Adulthood is never what you thought it would be, and Peter Pan had the right idea. “Never grow up, it is a trap.”

“Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the street and then getting hit by an airplane.” –Unknown

Don Miller’s Author’s Page – https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR3oKgS2EezOMSilHwClD1YNXUSuNkDrshhl1NqxJE3BoDwfxl_1kMtR6QU

Thanksgiving Blessings? It Could Be Worse.

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“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.”-Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance

It is easy to be depressed on Thanksgiving, 2022…or lately any Thanksgiving this decade. Then I think about my Native American brethren and realize that it has been a rough two and a half centuries for them. I don’t know who thought celebrating Native American Heritage Month in the same month as the Native American National Day of Mourning, aka Thanksgiving, was a great idea. Regardless, President Bush signed it into law in 1990.

While I identify with my Native American blood brothers, there are reasons to celebrate and be thankful.

I’m thankful that a (cisgender) veteran attended Club Q in Colorado Springs. They were celebrating Transgender Remembrance Day, a day to remember those lost to violence against or suicide. With the help of a Drag Queen in high heels, they were able to limit the death and destruction that claimed five lives, taking down a shooter armed with a “long gun” and pistol.  I am also thankful for the darkly humorous image of a Drag Queen dressed in his/her finery dancing on the murderer’s head in stiletto heels. Too soon? There is a reason they are called “stiletto” heels.

I’m also thankful that the veteran and his family were at a Queer venue celebrating people who have, for a too long, been considered the others by others who don’t believe people outside of the “box” deserve such basic rights as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” I’m sorry they lost their daughter’s boyfriend to the carnage. I’m also sorry that the best we can offer to the families and friends of those lost in the previous seven hundred or so mass shootings this year is thoughts and prayers.

I would like to be thankful for the absence of hatred in the world but instead will celebrate an Iranian men’s soccer team who stood in mute solidarity protesting the treatment of Iranian women at home as their national anthem played at the World Cup and the English team who knelt during theirs supporting social justice for all. The American team did nothing but tie with Wales. Sorry American right-wingers, nothing for you to ridicule and celebrate against. I’m thankful for that too.

These are going to sound like a litany of “hurray for me and the hell with everyone else” and they might be.

I’m thankful that despite inflation numbers and high gas and food prices, I’m doing okay. I have money in the bank and a retirement. I’m thankful inflation will correct itself, eventually. I am thankful that despite gas prices, I will make the road trip to my family’s gathering instead of being sequestered during a pandemic. I’m also unhappy that because of the road trip I will not have the opportunity to sample any brown liquor.

I’m thankful I haven’t lost any family members or friends recently to the pandemic and pray that the building “triple threat” burns itself out quickly.

I’m thankful that I recently came through my yearly bank of physicals and am in “fine fiddle “although with Afib, the fiddle might be a bit out of tune. There are many my age who are not as healthy. I’m thankful I look so much younger than those my age. LOL.

I’m thankful I am sitting in an airish old farmhouse with heat and electricity and a running refrigerator with food in it. I could gripe about the price of electricity, but I could also be sitting in a cold and dark Ukrainian flat as missiles and artillery shells rain down.

I’m thankful I’m not on a dusty South American road trekking to gain asylum in a country that doesn’t seem to want me despite the quote on the Statue of Liberty,

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
― Emma Lazarus

I’m thankful for a family to visit over Thanksgiving and celebrate memories of family members no longer with us. So many folks had less than the childhood I lived. I was truly blessed.

I’m thankful for and proud of my immediate family.

My rock Linda Gail, I can’t contemplate a world without you. The fact we found each other makes me believe there actually is a God.

Ashley and Justin. I am proud of the people you are and the parents you are. I still think you’ve too many irons in the fire. You are wonderful, rocks in your own right.

Kate and Nolan, you are both heart breakers. I’m so proud of your confidence and fearlessness…some of your fearlessness causes my heart to stop but if you survive, it will serve you well.

Steve and Rebecca, I’m proud to call you brother and sister-in-law. I live much of my life vicariously through you…so you went to Folly Beach, did you? I just committed the sin of envy.

Joyce, I’m thankful you treated me much like the son you never had, and for keeping me tied to home, and with it, my mother, and my grandmother.

Kim, Lynn, and Terri, thanks for being the sisters I never had and like your mother, tying me to my home that once existed along a dusty dirt road.

Bob, thanks for being Lynn’s rock, I know it is a challenge.

Lawrence and Stephanie, I’m thankful you have the family you always wanted and am proud to call you kin.

Hawk, I consider you family. Thanks for being there buddy, and thanks for your perspective on the world and God…I don’t necessarily agree but perspectives are like M&M’s, assorted colors, and flavors.

Lynn C, thanks for letting me bounce ideas off your head and your support. Glad we reconnected after such a long time.

I am quite blessed it seems…and I almost forgot. Quigley and Cora, thanks for your unconditional love and the puppy kisses I receive despite knowing where your tongues have been.

To all my friends, known and unknown, especially those of you who take time to read these, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. To my family, Happy Thanksgiving.

***

Postscript

This was written before the murder of six people at a Walmart in Virginia and the suicide of their murderer. Seven-gun deaths means it is just another day in America and I refuse to send empty thoughts and prayers.

***

Don Miller’s most recent release is the historical fiction “Thunder Along the Copperhead” and the nonfiction “Pig Trails and Rabbit Holes.” Both may be purchased in paperback and downloaded on Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR0LGf5HUb84nQnPB-sFQF7KaqSOW6sGsSSu1_ltf1FuWh1Wj2nSIad1uYQ

Chasing Orion

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“There is a light that shines in the darkness, which is only visible there.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark

Too many years of getting up early at early thirty, I guess. I am standing in front of my western facing kitchen sink window admiring the moon as I prepare my morning coffee. It is cold and crisp with a strong northern breeze. The waning but bright “La Luna Llena” seems so close that I might be able to reach up and touch it and I have no clue as to why I think of it in Spanish.

I normally don’t have to set an alarm to wake up by five o’clock despite having no special place to be and an icy driveway that would prevent me from going out anyway. This morning my rambling “dream thoughts” awoke me at four thirty along with a puppy dog wanting to go outside.

It is mornings like this that I am glad my “dream puppy” awoke me. Most mornings in a time gone by I would get up at four-thirty so I could run or walk before school. This habit has been hard to break.

This morning as Quigley and Cora attended their ablutions, I braced myself in the chilly wind and looked heavenward into a sky filled with stars. It was wonderful to see and for a moment transported me to an earlier time. It was nice to see Orion was still hunting across the southwestern sky.

I ran or walked early, before school or before the summer heat and humidity. I always knew that if I waited, my labors would not get done and I really didn’t want to feel that elephant sitting on my chest again that I associate with an earlier heart attack.

As scary as the outside darkness could be, even with my “miner’s lamp” style flashlight, I loved running, probably more so walking, on mornings like this…even with the coldest temperatures of the season.

The light cast from the moon was so bright I really didn’t need to use a flashlight. I would climb up the hill on Airline Road and crossover Highway 11 to the drive leading into Lookup Lodge. It was as if the moon was following me, always right over my left shoulder until it disappeared behind the small mountains to the west.

Above me Orion hunted despite the pre-dawn glow of the still unrisen sun. As I chugged, wheezing and gasping, out of what I called the hole and climbed the asphalt path up toward the lake, I always knew that both the moon and Orion would be waiting for me as soon as I topped the next hill and found my way to the eastern side of the lake. I also knew that I would pause, stop timing my run, and admire the scene of the moon setting over the lake.

I miss running and I miss the cold, morning air with its full dose of oxygen. I miss the feeling of accomplishment. I still get up at dark thirty, but I wait until a civilized hour to walk. It isn’t the same, but it is something.

It is time to feed the puppies and a cup of coffee…and my nose is getting numb in the windchill.

If you enjoy historical fiction with a bit of romance thrown in for good measure, try Don Miller’s latest release, Thunder Along the Copperhead. Available for download or in paperback at https://rb.gy/2s3wbx

Political Merry-go-round

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“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”― Isaac Asimov

Many of the founding fathers believed that most of our population was too ignorant, or not intellectual enough, to trust with the running of our country. It was in fact, one of the reasons our constitutional republic is a representative democracy…an indirect democracy. Well. What happens when the candidates and elected officials act like a crazy uncle two thirds of the way into a quart Mason jar of white lightning? A crazy uncle sporting a rifle…or a hammer.

This seems to be where we have arrived at the point where the candidate that yells the loudest conspiracy theory is the one who gets elected. Candidates have always lied but we have a group who are following Hitler’s and Goebbels’ playbook. No lie too bizarre and we eat it up like a fried apple pie at the state fair.

Politics reminds me of a carousel…a merry-go-round featuring beautifully painted horses in various galloping poses. Beautiful, all shined up to take our minds off what is really happening. We ride them round and round to blaring, garish music, hoping for a chance to grab a brass ring. What do we get when the ride is over? Nothing. We are where we started, nothing has changed.

No matter which horse you decide to ride, you arrive right back where you started, no better than you were when you started. It doesn’t matter how beautifully painted or what pose attracted you. The music may change, you may change the colors of horses, but you end up right where you started and politically, we are in deep doo, doo.

Our political system is on a downward spiral. No matter who holds the power, there are only minor changes on a fundamental level. Fundamental change is too hard. It is easier to just slap a thin coat of paint over the horse you are riding and hope the termites and decay doesn’t cause the horse to crumble under you…just one more ride please.

“Politics: the art of using euphemisms, lies, emotionalism and fear-mongering to dupe average people into accepting–or even demanding–their own enslavement.”― Larken Rose

We’re two days away from the mid-terms and the end of political commercials that rely on fear and hatred of the other candidate rather than substance as to what you will do to correct what ails us as a country.  They rally their colors with buzz words used to insight anger, fear and division; fascist, communist, woke, Dumocrats, Repugs, etc. Just a little paint to cover our rot.

I don’t know who will win any of the elections this mid-term, but I know who will lose. We, the riders of this system. Our election system may be the best in the world, but it is flawed because we buy the dog and pony show that is being advertised. Geared to emotion instead of intelligence, our partisan two-party system is turning us into the “shithole” country that we so fear.

I’ve fretted about where we are heading as a nation, but fretting is just as bad as spending good money to ride the merry-go-round. We will either grab the brass ring or not, a brass ring that is worth little anyway. The Brass Ring is just a symbol and like the symbol we once were, it is becoming increasingly tarnished. It is a shame; the shining light is growing dimmer. The horses need more than just a coat of paint to keep the carousel from spinning out of control. Maybe a toilet is a better metaphor.

 “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.” – FDR

***

Thunder Along the Copperhead is Don Miller’s latest novel. The year is 1933 and life around Copperhead Creek is harsh. Farm foreclosures, a looming textile strike in nearby Greyston Falls, and violence threaten both Lucas Perry and Sela Jean Morrow’s budding romance. Download or purchase in paperback at https://rb.gy/2s3wbx

Happy Halloween-Southern Style

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‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ – William Faulkner

To me there is nothing better than Southern Gothic Horror…on Halloween or any day. To quote 11 Southern Gothic novels every horror fan needs to read (southernthing.com), “In the world of the Southern Gothic, the Deep South is a deeply weird and haunted place: one of tumbledown mansions sinking into swamps, wild-eyed snake handling preachers, mad dog killers, restless spirits, old families with dark secrets, and closets full to bursting with skeletons. It’s spooky stuff …”

And don’t forget the dark. In the dark Southerners embrace darker themes. Throw in a bit of Voodoo or Hoodoo, ghostly strands of Spanish moss hanging from fog shrouded cypress trees, the sounds of what might be tortured slaves carried by the breeze, you get the idea. Much has to do with our suspect history.

It might ‘be in your face’ horror but much of it is subtle ala Flannery O’Conner’s A Good Man is Hard to Find. In some there is violent horror, in others it is the plot and flawed character development that makes the horror. They are scary but not scary like Michael Myers ‘slasher’ scary. Still, there is usually violence in a rural setting even if it is the mental or emotional type.  

Who can forget the immortal words in Deliverance, “Squeal like a pig?” Thank you, James Dickey, or In Cold Blood by Truman Capote…I know it took place in Kansas, but it fits. I mean having your brains blown out by a shotgun held inches from your face is horrific. I don’t know if non-fiction can be Southern Gothic but there’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt. It takes place in Savannah and yes, I know, Berendt is a ‘damn Yankee.’ Like all good novels, these were made into good movies.

I can tell you exactly when I fell in love with Gothic Horror, specifically Southern Gothic Horror. That would be June 6, 1961.  It was a Monday night in front of a black and white TV.  I watched and listened to a lisping Boris Karloff introduce this week’s Thriller episode, “Pigeon’s from Hell.”  Murder by ax, Voodoo, Zombies, the Blassenville family with a closet full of skeletons…literally and figuratively, all with bad Southern accents dripping from the screen like Spanish moss hanging from cypress trees.  

A pair of New Englanders find themselves lost, stuck up to the axles of their ’56 Ford in the middle of a Southern piney woods.  The light is quickly failing over a dilapidated Southern mansion sitting at the end of an overgrown drive.  The brothers discuss what to do and decide to spend the night in the abandoned mansion.  Never an intelligent move if you are familiar with Southern Gothic.

I jumped when the character, Johnny Banner, is caught in a spooked flock of pigeons, pigeons that represent the lost souls murdered in earlier days. Later, I hid my eyes when the same character attempts to split his brother Timothy’s skull with a hatchet.  He does this after having had his own skull split by persons or “things” unknown. 

Many years later I would read the short story with the same title the TV episode drew from.  It was written by pulp fiction icon and the creator of Conan the Barbarian, Robert E. Howard.  The story was published posthumously in Weird Tales, a fantasy and horror magazine in 1938.  Despite “Thirties noir speak,” it is a good short story and a better story line than the TV version. 

There is something baleful about abandoned Southern mansions, with or without pigeons or Zombies.  Doors and shutters hanging askew, broken windowpanes, paint peeling to expose the silver of many layers of whitewash underneath, old chimneys collapsing under their own weight.  Columns…one can almost hear the voices of the dead and abused in the breeze especially if you have an active eleven-year-old imagination…even an active seventy-two-year-old imagination. Old mansions…why do people always run up the stairs trying to escape? Do they expect to grow wings?

I hope none of you have outgrown celebrating Halloween and accept with glee the little ghost and goblins that will come calling. I don’t live in a mansion; I live in a one hundred- and twenty-year-old farmhouse that sits midway up the side of a tree-covered hill. We don’t have a swamp or Spanish moss swaying in the fog but in the thirty-five Halloweens we have lived here, we have not had one trick or treater. We do have the ghosts of the four families who lived here but no vampires or Zombies that I know of. 

Still, Happy Halloween to you all.

I have released a new novel, Thunder Along the Copperhead. Not Gothic horror, it is a historical romance with plenty of history of the depression year of 1933. An almost destitute farm woman, a damaged World War One veteran who moonshines on the side are the primary characters. Please help a struggling author by downloading or purchasing it in paperback. Thanks, I know you will.

Thunder Along the Copperhead

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Thunder Along the Copperhead will be published either October 26 or November 2. Until then enjoy this excerpt.

Chapter Two

Hours earlier, a mile to the east on Copperhead Creek Road a man also dreamed…a dream that was always the same.  Lucas knew he was dreaming but could do nothing about it.  Realizing it was a dream didn’t make it any less terrifying…or any less heartbreaking.  It began…

…with the broken rolls of barbed wire tearing at his battledress. Ghostly, broken trees were backlit from fires started by the late evening’s artillery barrage and from star shells bursting overhead.  Patches of yellow-green mustard gas were carried by the breeze, rendered by the concussions caused by exploding shells.  Machine gun fire, sporadic due to the hundreds of high explosive rounds that earlier rained down on the German positions, kicked up mud clods around him.  Mortar rounds burst ahead of him…the cries of the wounded swelled in his head.

A thousand Marines had stepped off at seventeen hundred hours to plug a gap torn in the French lines by an unexpected German assault.  It was now midnight the following day.  For nearly thirty hours they had fought almost nonstop.  The battalion had been raked by machine gun and mortar fire, become entangled in barbed wire but had blunted a German counterattack. 

His squad had engaged in hand-to-hand combat as they forced the Germans out of their positions or held on to their own.  Many of the men had been reduced to fighting with bayonets or rocks as ammunition ran low.  Food and water were nonexistent. The Marine’s advance had ground to a halt and despite their best efforts, the fight had become another stalemate.

The Third Battalion; Sixth Marines had been shattered but the remnants were still fighting.  As darkness had captured the second day, Lucas had no way of knowing but four hundred of his fellow Marines had been killed or wounded.  Still, the Americans had a foothold…maybe just a toe hold in one of the most decisive battles of the Great War.  Just six months past his eighteenth birthday and already a two-year veteran, Corporal Lucas Perry was the highest-ranking Marine remaining at the foot of a low, unnamed hill in Belleau Wood. 

“When in doubt, advance,” rang in his head and was what he was doing.  Rallying the dozen or so Marines near him, they advanced from shell hole to shell hole, shattered tree trunk to shattered tree trunk to take the low-lying hill still bristling with machine guns, mortars, and who knew what else. 

His vision is limited by the gas mask he is wearing, and he could hear his own breathing above the sounds of explosions and screams of men.  He wills himself to breathe.  The air in the mask is humid and has a chemical smell. 

For the thousandth time, he checked the Winchester Model 1897 trench gun.  He is down to the five rounds chambered in the shotgun but still has his M1911 along with a Springfield, picked up on the hillside, strapped to his back.  Private Jackson is to his left and slightly ahead.  Lance Corporal Patrick is behind and to his right.

Lucas knows what happens next and tries to scream himself awake but can find no voice.  He knows he is holding his breath, almost smothering himself.  

As a star shell explodes, a silhouette in a strange helmet suddenly appears and is just as quickly shredded by the buckshot from Lucas’s shotgun.  As he turns toward Jackson the mortar round lands at the doomed Marine’s feet turning the young private into a pink mist.  Milliseconds later the concussion filled with blood, bone, and shrapnel knocks him down.  The last thing he sees is Patrick holding his throat where a piece of shrapnel has ripped it open.

Facedown in the mud, Lucas feels no pain and seems to be encased in silence.  His head is too heavy to move, and his eyes won’t quite focus.  It is as if he is looking through a broken window.

Something new…Lucas can hear Nate calling his name.  “Why is Nate in my dream?”  Suddenly he is awake staring into Nate’s face.

“Man, you with the living?  You groanin’ likes you about to die.”

Lucas could see Nate’s concern in the low light provided by the gas burner and kerosene lamp.  The book he had been reading is lying open on his lap.

“What time is it?”  Lucas’s head ached and there was a foul taste in his mouth.

“Twelve thirty.  You wuz groanin’ in your sleep.  Good thing you ‘vested in this gas burner or we’d be having to make this run again.  Head temperature sittin’ right on one seventy-five.  I cut it down just a bit.  The tails should bes fine.  You know with this set up there’s no reason for us to keep cookin’ at night.  Ain’t no smoke for the gubmint man to see.  We invest in a submarine still en it would cut our time down even mo and increase the output.  This ole turnip seen its better days anyways.”

If you want more, you will have to wait. Thunder Along the Copperhead is coming soon. Available in paperback or to download. https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR0wwP8j5Yo5wuctkwPAluIXwfiO77_nKyJv8c5beGqmSiCejNHKmoY_2aY

Memorial to My Sense of Humor

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“I have a knack for finding humor in all sorts of things, no matter how grim. My sense of humor is wry and a bit on the warped side. (Well, more than a bit, depending on whom you ask.)” ― Gerri R. Gray

Once I had a sense of humor…mostly teenage kind of humor, bathroom, potty mouthed, laugh at farts kind of humor. “Here, pull on my finger.” I would like to think I have evolved but I still get a good laugh when someone slips on a banana peel…I make sure they aren’t hurt first. I have evolved.

I found humor in the grim. You know, hiding my fear and pain behind a suspect joke at the expense of a dearly departed friend or family member. From my home state’s Department of Social Services, Greenville, South Carolina: Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 2023 because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances.

My problem is I’ve become too fearful or the grim has become too grim and I believe I’m not in a small boat in my thinking.

American politics were once a perfect target for humor. During the worst times, even our politicians could poke fun at each other. Their constituents could still laugh at them or themselves. Now any joke is taken as a challenge to a duel.

I’ve become too politically correct. No, I’ve always been too politically correct. I’ve never wanted to hurt someone’s feelings just for the sake of hurting someone’s feelings but “roasting” someone was always fair game. Now there is a movement that uses political correctness to become incensed over every little thing and another movement that uses its distain for political correctness to bully.

Americans have lost their sense of humor. I miss George Carlin’s, Dick Gregory’s, Lenny Bruce’s, and Richard Pryor’s sharp and irreverent wit poking fun at society and government in the Sixties and Seventies. We need Laugh-in’s “Laugh-in Looks at the News” or “The Wonderful World of Whoopee Award” or the political satire and irreverence of the Smothers Brothers. I miss Johnny Carson wise cracking, “There is a power struggle going on between President Reagan’s advisers. Moe and Curly are out. Larry is still in.” Somehow it was funnier when he said it, cha ching.

According to Mark Twain…or maybe Steve Allen, “Humor is tragedy plus time.” I don’t guess we have had enough time to find the humor of today’s tragic political environment. I fear in today’s environment, Mark or Steve would be cancelled the way CBS smothered the Smothers Brothers.

Now we have Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson…what do you mean? They aren’t comedians?

Even our politicians were funny…I’m not talking about their lawmaking abilities; some of those are quite hilarious. Some were funny not meaning to be, like Gerald Ford slipping and falling and Chevy Chase making a career spoofing it.

I swear I didn’t laugh until I knew he was okay.

I’m talking about the ability to turn a phrase or humorously bash their opponent. The comedic looking Winston Churchill for instance, speaking of politics in general, “Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.”

My favorite humorous Churchill quotes involved Nancy Astor, Lady Astor, an American who married an English nobleman and had been elected to Parliament. They didn’t like each other very much and were always good for a humorous quip.

Lady Astor: “Mr. Churchill, you’re drunk!”

Winston Churchill: “Yes, and you, Madam, are ugly. But tomorrow, I shall be sober.”

I’m not sure that one would fly in today’s political environment. Still, it is funny.

Another and then I shall move on

Lady Astor: “Winston, if I were your wife, I’d put poison in your coffee.”

Winston Churchill: “Nancy, if I were your husband, I’d drink it.”

Politicians from another age knew how to think and realized well thought out words carried more weight than stupidly bludgeoning opponents. Simple barbs yet thoughtful that were more intelligent than name calling or disparaging someone’s wife.

Some favored quips

Bob Dole on Carter, Ford, and Nixon: “History buffs probably noted the reunion at a Washington party a few weeks ago of three ex-presidents: Carter, Ford, and Nixon — See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Evil.”

Pat Buchanan on Bill Clinton: “Bill Clinton’s foreign policy experience is pretty much confined to having had breakfast once at the International House of Pancakes.”

Senator William E. Jenner on New York Governor W. Averell Harriman: “He’s thin, boys. He’s thin as piss on a hot rock.”

Texas Governor Ann Richards on George W. Bush: “Poor George, he can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”

Politicians were more creative…. about many things.

Maybe it is just me. I guess I should cremate my sense of humor and put the ashes in a pretty urn. I’ve let mass shootings, politics, the impending doom of Climate Change, inflation, etcetera suck the humor out of my humor. If it is a humor vampire, I’ll hang a bobble head of George Carlin around my neck instead of a cross to keep it away.

The truth is, we have lost the ability to poke fun at ourselves and the only humor we find funny must be directed toward what we perceive to be the opposition.

Don Miller’s latest offering is “Pig Trails and Rabbit Holes” and may be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR0yXYm7o67oNCZe580f0IHGFtOAndQ4-x_K4txNuTEUZlTfZIvoD-apLtU