Author: cigarman501

Crime Sprees, Black Snakes, and Killer Birds

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Pondering the meaning of life,  why nature can be so cruel, and the evil of man began with the theft of a trailer and continued with the murder of four wren hatchlings we had been monitoring in their little nest perched precariously above the front porch fan.  Four wren hatchlings we had been protecting from attacks from below when we should have been more concerned with attacks from above.

I find I’m much more distraught about the loss of four birds than the pilfering of my trailer.

I watched as a  juvenile black rat snake climbed the front porch swing chain looking for a way to traverse from chain to fan to what his reptilian brain saw as lunch.  I moved him…and later, the big brother he brought with him a half dozen times before my minuscule brain realized that if I took down the swing, he’d have to find another restaurant.

Sneaky snake must have enjoyed our time together.  He still hangs around as if waiting for me to pick him up again.  Ride me, Daddy?

It didn’t bother me the snake was trying to dine on jeune oiseau…after all, he was a snake doing what snakes do.  More importantly, I had stopped him.  The killer birds…I didn’t know I needed to stop them.

I never knew sparrow parents would attack wren young and kill them to ensure there is a steady food source for their young.  They must be new to the neighborhood.  There is no lack of food sources.  My wife has made sure of that.

I saw them hanging or flying around but was too stupid to realize they were up to no good.  We found the little broken and pecked bodies on the porch floor and with their distraught parents flitting about, felt their loss. 

I am telling myself, it is the way of nature.  I haven’t convinced myself.

And then there are the evils of man.  The trailer was just one of several grand heists over the years.    Bad people are found everywhere…and bad birds too.

The thefts began with a tractor stolen from the middle of my “hundred-acre woods.”  I ran out of fuel and didn’t return to where I had left it, literally in the middle of my forest, until a couple of days later.  I couldn’t find the John Deere and Winnie the Pooh wouldn’t help me look.  I guess Winnie was trying to get his nose out of his honey jar.  My nose was just out of joint.

An antique FJ 40 Landcruiser was taken from my front yard.  It was returned much the worse from wear.   A beautiful piece of Japanese engineering turned into junk.  The one time it ran after its return, “Kamikaze Cruiser” caught fire.  I hope the thief joins my beloved cruiser and burns in hell…well…metaphorically, I reckon…may be.

Not that everything has been “take, take, take.”  A would be Robin Hood decided to share the wealth.  A stolen pickup truck with two weeks worth of trash loaded in it, missed the curve at a high rate of speed, flipped and crashed into my creek.  It was laying on it’s top mocking a dead cockroach, two weeks of trash scattered hither and yon.  The old Ford had taken down my fence and my billy goat stood on top of the truck’s bottom as if he had ruled triumphant in a game of king of the hill.

I felt satisfaction when I learned of the malefactor’s capture, a young man found battered and bruised at a nearby restaurant frequented by our local constabulary.  I doubt the owner of the totaled truck got any satisfaction and I was left to clean up the mess that was left and mend my own fences.

There were other occasions to call the authorities.  Enough occasions to put together a pattern.  Every deputy who came out to investigate uttered the same family name.  “I’ll bet you  ‘Old so-and-so’ is responsible.”  “Old so-and-so just got out of jail, bet he’s at it again.”

I’m not going to say the name because I really don’t know if they stole my trailer or not.  If they didn’t it would be a first.  True to form though, as I met the deputy about my trailer, he brought up the same name again.  “You live pretty near Old so-and-so.  Bet it was him or one of his sons.”  Now grandsons.

I still haven’t seen my trailer, but the backcountry crime family tried to strike again.  This time it was my neighbor.  I slept through most of the event despite the blue and red lights flooding my yard at one until three A.M.  My neighbor filled me in.

A young man with the same last name as the redneck crime lord, a grandchild, was apprehended attempting to steal my neighbor’s travel trailer with a truck the boy had stolen earlier and elsewhere.  He even posed for a picture before attempting to flee after he realized no one wanted his autograph.

Attempting to escape in the stolen truck the clown prince of crime found himself reduced to running when the vehicle broke down at the scene and caught fire.  Poor baby.  He was later found hiding in a kudzu filled ditch…kudzu covering blackberry filled ditch.

I wish I had seen his dismay when he dove face first into the ditch only to find his soft landing impeded by blackberry thorns.  That had to smart…I wish it had been multiflora rose.  I do feel great satisfaction envisioning his surprise landing and ask for no forgiveness as I smile.

It seems the torch has been passed from one generation to another.  Grandfather to son to grandchild.  I wonder if the godfather of redneck crime is proud.  The old man showed up and according to my neighbor, just shook his head as if to say, “I thought I taught him better than that.”

My father told me once he could tolerate a thief more than a liar.  The reasons for his comment will remain between my father and me but I was in the wrong.  I understand his sentiment but would pose to him, “One might go hand in hand with the other.”

The image of the angry bird is from https://twistedsifter.com/2012/04/40-actual-real-life-angry-looking-birds/

Further tomfoolery may be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

“Thank You For Accepting People as They Are”

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There was an envelope in my mailbox.  Addressed to my wife I turned it over and saw “Thank you for accepting people as they are.”  Maybe some of you have received this envelope after having contributed to the Special Olympics.  I didn’t directly contribute but my wife has always made sure we contributed and during our teaching years were actively involved…as in she involved me during her days as an elementary physical education instructor and while cosponsoring the high school’s service-learning program.  I am thankful for that.

She has always been the poster child for accepting people at face value.  Accepting people at what they were.  Offering love and discipline but no criticisms as to what they were or where they came from.

I remember visiting her while she taught on occasion.  Smiling, snotty-nosed children of different genders and races rushed gleefully into her class, expecting to receive and returning hugs, refusing to be denied.  Sneezes, mucus, mud be damned.  Terms of endearment flowed from Miss PE, “Sugar or Honey Lamb, Snookems, Babydoll,” etc.  I saw love and acceptance.

Don’t be fooled.  She could get after them pretty good when they failed to get to or remain on their spots, but she distanced the person from the offense.  She accepted people as they were.  I wondered as I looked at the envelope…and fell down Alice’s rabbit hole.

When I saw the phrase on the back of the envelope, I asked myself, “What if we accepted people as they are?”  Gay, different races, transgender, poor, different religions, forget where they came from and accept who they are as opposed to what they are.

We are quick to criticize people who look differently, speak differently, have different religious beliefs than us.  People who don’t love the way we love or eat the same foods that we eat.  We seem to get upset because we must press one for English.  How many seconds of our life does it really cost us?

We create divides by pontificating loudly and listening little, passing judgment on one before delivering our sentences to all.  Our loud language and sharply delivered words can only be interpreted one way by those they are directed toward.

We are quick to label people with all sorts of names, explain that they are bad or different because they are a product of a lax home environment and because we have thrown god from the halls of education.   We don’t like their pink hair, their tattoo or their nose piercing and we look no deeper.  We don’t make the effort to listen to what they might want to tell us…what we might actually learn.

We make no effort to understand their thinking or consider what they might have woke up to or went to bed to.  We don’t seem to care they might have gone to bed hungry and went out into the world the next morning the same way.  Again, we pontificate loudly that it is not our responsibility.

We dismiss many kids as kooks, fruitcakes, freaks, goofballs, wingnuts, mentally ill and the one that knifes me the most…retards.  Honestly, I don’t like the label “special”, but we must have a label of some type.  After all, we are the normal ones with our normal convictions and conventions.  We must have a way to delineate the differences between us and them to make ourselves feel more important, more worthy.

I hurt for our teens.  Teens at best are troubled and all we’ve done is add to their troubles.  Dealing with those raging hormones is bad enough…and now we call them crazy because…well because.  We tell them they’ll never amount to much.  They are lazy and the worst generation ever.  They are the most disrespectful…but I notice it is always the other person’s child.

If you tell a kid enough times that he is a duck, at some time or another he will begin to waddle.  We get what we expect.  If you expect nothing you won’t be disappointed.  I notice we point our fingers but offer little cure…especially if it costs money.

We bully, we attempt to push their little round bodies into little square holes. As they attempt to find themselves, we attempt to make them into the image of ourselves.

I taught forever plus a day and found that the most interesting students, who became the most interesting adults, were the kooks and fruitcakes.  The ones who thought outside of the box, colored outside of the lines and looked at the world sideways and created something beautiful.  They were the leaders who refused to follow tired old lines.  They were the ones who hated to hear “We’ve done it this way for….”

There was a time when we put a premium on free thinkers.  Now it seems we don’t want free thinkers.  They might be left thinkers and that just wouldn’t be right.

We want our mini-mes to toe the party line, drinking deeply from the propaganda Kool-Aid.  It seems we want everyone lined up in rows like dominos, standing at attention, all boringly the same…and like a row of dominos when one tips over, they all tip over.

What if we just accepted people as they are.  Nurtured instead of ridiculed.  What is wrong with nurturing?  You can be nurturing and not be soft.  Put their little seeds in the ground not caring what the seed might be.  Add water and fertilizer, weed the bed occasionally and see what they turn into.   Provide a fertile bed for plants instead of chopping them off at the roots like weeds.

What if we accept people as they are?

Don Miller’s author’s page can be followed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

 

“No Unloved Flowers”

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“A weed is but an unloved flower.” ― Ella Wheeler Wilcox

There are no unloved flowers on my little piece of heaven.  My bride makes sure.  From wild morning glory to thistle; she loves them all…much to my vexation.

My little piece of heaven is a wildlife refuge; a jungle, the bush, the wilds, at times a rain forest.  Ninty acres of tangles, bramble, and bushes.   No area is more tangled than in my backyard.

No animal is unwelcomed, no reptile reviled, not even the juvenile black rat snake I’ve twice moved from the porch as he tries to find a way to the wren’s nest built on the fan.

Squirrels and ground squirrels battle cardinals for the sunflower seeds I carefully place in the bird feeders…bird feeders Linda Gail…they are bird feeders.  Make that squirrel and bird feeders.

A passing raccoon looks up and briefly contemplates making them raccoon feeders.  I’m sure she’ll be back once she comes up with a plan to scale the deck the feeders rest under.

More importantly and to the point, there is no blossom too small not to be called a flower.  Miss PE has never met a weed; flora, fauna or human.

If it were cold it would be blackberry winter, but it is already blackberry summer.  The white blooms are so bright they seem to glow in the dark.

It is the spring grass cutting season and my bride’s proclivities bring us into conflict.

I have spent a goodly portion of my life cutting grass, endlessly walking or riding in mindless circles.  From cutting hay in fields of tall fescue or oats as a youngster to the well-manicured Bermuda playing fields of my coaching career.  From pristine lawns of zoysia…to, my weed-filled yard.  No more mindless circles with Miss Linda in control… she is, most certainly, in control.

Don’t cut the clover, bees and rabbits love it.  Stay away from the small yellow flowers put off by the wood sorrel that’s mixed in with the white blossoms of the wild strawberries.  Nice little red strawberries that taste…they have no taste at all.

Those little purple thingies…No! No! No!  We have plenty of Vinca minor and periwinkle.  They put off bigger purple thingies!  The wild violets and purple basil, No! No! No! Not unless you want to lose a body part.

Don’t touch the milkweed, butterflies feed on it…except that’s not milkweed, it’s burnweed.  It never blooms and the butterflies have plenty of other plants to feed upon.  We will have these stalky things all over the place.  Six feet tall if an inch and not one butterfly flying about its blooms because there are no blooms.  Not going to argue, who knows it may bloom this year.

We have plenty of butterflies on other blooms.  Butterflies and bees, and yellow jackets building in the ground under the grass I’ve been forced to leave uncut.  Mosquitoes by the gazillions hiding in all our greenery.

Please don’t misunderstand.  I love wildflowers, real wildflowers.  Our trillium, the wild sweet peas, the honeysuckle, wild iris, and other plants I have no name for.

I don’t like pokeweed.  The birds don’t seem to like it either. And dammit, the privet is blooming…it is quite pretty.  Pretty like my bride and a big pain in the butt to control.  You are free to think about what I am thinking but I won’t say it for fear she might hear.

She was right about the native honeysuckle.  I suggested we trim it up a bit…to the ground?  Oh no!  My fences are now covered in yellow and white. The yard smells wonderfully no matter which direction the wind blows and I just saw three hummingbirds and a half dozen butterflies buzzing about.  See, we don’t need those spiky things.

The red-throated anole likes to hide in the honeysuckle.  He suns himself on the gate, bright green in the sunshine. He blows out his little red-pink neck before running for cover when I approach. I hope he continues to hide well. My persistent black rat snake is now stalking him I think.

I must face the music.  She’s right about everything…even when she’s not.

In case there is not enough color in the yard she’s made friends with a local nursery owner…flowers in baskets are everywhere.  She can’t drive by the nursery without turning in.  Cana lilies and begonias because our Tiger lilies and old-fashioned begonias haven’t bloomed yet I guess.  Caladiums in and around the irises that are just now blooming.  Colorful baskets of cascading blooms because…just because.

Despite the color they add, my yard will look like a jungle until fall when she finally lets me clean it up.  Gee.  I was hoping for a long summer anyway.

The image is from https://phys.org/news/2017-05-dandelion-seeds-pipette-lab.html

Don Miller’s author’s page can be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

 

 

 

 

 

Silence as I wander in the Valley of Death

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“Yea as I walk through the shadow of the valley of death…” I hear nothing.

I first wrote and posted about Silence in December 2015.  Here it is May 2019, and the silence persists when I talk to my God.  The silence reverberates even more loudly than before as more hatred floods the airways sweeping up more and more in its wake.

My God doesn’t answer me.  Daily I give him an opportunity.  I usually converse with him as I perform my walkabout.  Out in the open, in the elements, in his creation…it should be a good time to talk, a good time for answers.  Wish he or she would answer a few questions…maybe it’s the way I frame them…I’m sure it is my fault. Sometimes my questions to him just pop out from nowhere…or from everywhere.

There are many times when I wish the voices in my head would shut up, this is not one of those occasions.  I’m waiting for a Saul/Paul moment. Maybe it is the voices in my head asking the questions instead of me or my road doesn’t lead to Damascus.

I grew up in the church…and then like so many young people wandered down a divergent path.  Later I would come back and then diverge again…a couple of times. I fear I might be in the divergent mode again.   

During those divergent days, my issues weren’t with Jesus, it was with organized religion…it still is.  I have problems with the “My God is greater than your god” group.

I have problems with people who are so sure of their beliefs whether it is a minister, layman or political pundit.  My issues were or are with Christians who spread their hate in the name of God, seemingly forgetting the love of Jesus, many masquerading as political pundits.  Is it hate or am I missing the point of Christian generosity? Can you quote from Leviticus and the teachings of Jesus?

My first divergence occurred because of a young minister who was so sure that if my mother truly believed she’d be cured of her terminal disease.  Well, she wasn’t cured, she did believe, and I was an angry young man whose religious beliefs had been shattered.

Now my confidence is being tested by the hatred I see…good people pulled to the fringes of their religion while I, if anything, seem to move in the other direction.   Hellfire and brimstone seem to swirl about me as I ask my questions. The smell of sulfur hangs in the air of my head. The punishing God of the Old Testament seems to be loading up his burning stones and aiming them at anyone not toeing the fundamentalist line…I should be ready to duck.

If you believe in a fundamental, punishing god that is your right.  I will not attempt to convert you. I just can’t believe in or worship that kind of god.  I promise I won’t attempt to transmute you to my way of thinking. Please give me the same consideration.

Generally, I’m not very open about my religious beliefs…nor outspoken at all.  Writing this is an unbelievable stretch for me. Yesterday I stretched even further as I engaged a very good friend, metaphorically laying myself bare.  She is a non-believer…maybe, sometimes I wonder. She has better than a good heart.

After laying myself bare, she attempted to apply a soothing balm, “(You are) a caring human being and a spiritual soul. The goodness I see in you doesn’t require a grand biblical gesture or event to validate or verify what and who you are.”

Her comment lifted my spirits but this morning I wonder.  I don’t feel very spiritual or validated but I do keep asking myself questions and mulling while waiting, hoping for an answer.

Rewritten From December 2015

I worry. Worry for family, country, and friends. Friends of all races, creeds, sexual preferences and colors. I pray. There is no answer, nothing but silence.  

I ask, What happened to “live and let live?”

I agonize over students having to face death in what should be one of the safest places in the world.  Students giving their lives to protect others when the people we entrust with their safety seem to only to offer “thoughts and prayers.”  While we have plenty of suppositions, we offer little else other than “It is God’s will.” It’s this, it’s that, it’s not something else but we do nothing.  The silence is becoming oppressive.

I worry about worshippers of all religions, unable to praise their god for fear of bombings, burnings or the sound of rapid-fire weapons echoing in the foreground.  There seems to be no answer from above or here on earth. Does God help those who help themselves? We might try that.

I wonder. Wonder at how the world has come to this. I pray and then I rage. Rage at Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Atheist, Liberals, Conservatives, anyone in between and any religion I failed to mention.

I pray. Again, there is no succor, only silence.

I hate. Mostly I hate myself for hating. I pray for the hatred to be taken away. From myself and from people I don’t even know.  It does not relent. The silence swells in my mind.

I ask for enlightenment. Understanding, Wisdom, Awareness, and Insight. Why do we do nothing but debate? Why do we do the same things over and over again, expecting a different outcome?  It is insanity.

Why do we do nothing but wait until the next episode of terror…? I pray. There is nothing but deep, dark silence.

My grandmother instructed me to “lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.”

I pray to look “unto the hills” but the silence has become a deafening roar in my ears.

I must keep looking unto the hills. I will keep praying…hoping God will take the silence away.

Thanks, Lynn, for listening.

Don Miller’s author’s page may be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

The image is from https://gravitycenter.com/silence/

 

Apologies to the Church Bus…

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…or Buck Nekkid in the Bean Patch

In honor of World Naked Gardening Day, a short story of semi-nakedly “tripping the light fantastic.”

My apologies.  There are times when it’s okay to show one’s naked, blindingly bright derriere…well, my blindingly bright derriere.  Taking a bath or shower, weighing oneself, sleeping in the buff, skinny dippin’ or faire l’amour…I guess the last two or three could be related.  You’ll notice gardening wasn’t on my list because Southern gardens ain’t a good place to be naked.

I would say, unless you are in a nudist colony, baring your butt outdoors in your bean patch should be avoided.  ‘Specially if your bean patch is adjacent to a well-traveled highway during the height of mosquito season.

I should point out, here in the South, we have some three gazillion forms of stinging or biting insects just looking for the chance to attack a warm, yeasty area of the body.  We have another gazillion insects that are just downright irritating even if they don’t sting.

I digress, back to my point.  My apologies are for the three carloads of folk and the loaded church bus passing by while I was trying to get out of my shorts and skivvies.  My intent was to run and get behind my small stand of raccoon ravaged corn. Best laid plans and all.

I was embarrassed because it’s hard to get out of your shorts if you’re not trying to get out of your boots first and I just didn’t have the time.  I was embarrassed because there were no cheers emanating from any those vehicles as I displayed my butt and other body parts.  I guess it could have been the shock.

I was also embarrassed by the face and head plant into the stand of crooked necked squash plants when my boots became tangled in my shorts.  It could have been worse; the cops could have shown up.

Why was I trying to get out of my shorts and underwear one might ask? I promise yea shall be enlightened.

In a previous post, I admitted to weed-eating while wearing shorts because I found myself to be less susceptible to multiple yellow jacket stings that way.  Well…to be honest I wear shorts all the time this time of year unless I am picking blackberries or raspberries.  I have found yellow jackets to be the meanest of God’s stinging minions and can’t really understand why they were allowed on Noah’s Ark.  They’ll sting you just for the sheer joy of it.

One of the devil’s stinging minions decided my pant’s leg would be a great place to fly up and into.  Note to self, when wearing shorts choose jockey style underwear and not boxer style.  With the little bastard zeroing in on my soft inner thigh, just under my danglys, one might understand why I wasn’t too concerned about embarrassing myself in front of a church bus full of passengers.

Oh well, in case you were wondering, I avoided major injury or a hornet sting to my physical person.  I think the little devil was laughing too hard to sting me.  My pride might have suffered just a bit…and I don’t think some of my crooked neck squash plants will survive…hope the folks on the church bus do.  I’m sure they might have been blinded by the glare.

Hope y’all enjoy World Naked Gardening Day…me?  I’m staying out of the garden today.

This is an excerpt from the book “Cornfields…in my mind” and the book may be downloaded or purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

Image from CNN Entertainment

 

A Question of Education

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I apologize ahead of time.  This may be meandering pig trail, but I feel the need to speak out.  Sorry for the ramble.

My state capital, Columbia, SC, will host a rally for educational reform on May 1st.  A similar rally is being held on the same date in North Carolina and will mirror other rallies that have been held in other states.  I am a retired teacher and feel I should go.  But I can’t.  It is a debate I have had with myself for the past week but I just can’t go.

I’m not the only one debating but at least my debate is with myself.  The Governor has made his feelings known as has the Superintendent of Education.  They are not fans of #ALLOUT…and they will not receive my vote next time around.  Various local superintendents and district spokesmen have made their feelings known and I am not a fan of them either but being retired means I don’t have to work for them or play nice.

What really bothers me is the attitude of everyday South Carolinians.  The rally has been characterized as a “walkout” for better pay by its opponents and maligned by them.  I’ve seen all the arguments.  My favorites are “You knew what you were getting into and if you don’t like it get some other job” and the biggest lie in the world, “You get three months off in the summer and still get paid for it.”

First of all, it’s not a walkout.  You know how South Carolina dislikes anything suggesting a strike.  Teachers are using their personal days or paying for their own subs, and while better pay is an issue, the issues go much deeper than pay…although having to take on a second job to pay for the day you’re taking to go protest is an issue…there I said it.  A protest…but I’ll keep calling it a rally.

The rally is about reducing class sizes, reducing standardized testing and having to teach to the test, not being allowed to teach to anything but standards, not feeling safe or supported in their classrooms, not having the materials to do the job teachers are called to do…not that I really know what that is anymore.  So…keep thinking it is just about pay.

Most importantly, it’s a rally about respect and support, something teachers have lost through no fault of their own.  Something our politicians have given no more than lip service to recently…if ever and which statements like “You knew what you were getting into…” exemplifies.

I am a product of the South Carolina public school system, a product of in-state colleges. I taught in the South Carolina public school systems for forty-five years.  I never considered it a job.  I knew I had been called to teach.

I have been fully retired for four years and it seems a lifetime ago that I last set foot in a classroom.  I saw many changes through the years, a few were good and those that were were fostered by actual educators, even if it was at the request of a politician.

“No Child Left Behind” was not one of the good changes.  The decline in teacher moral escalated with “No Child Left Behind” and the constant testing, teaching to the test, and meeting about the test “ad nauseam.”

Not that “No Child Left Behind” is the only culprit.  South Carolina ranks near the bottom of a bunch of national statistics, education is just one of them.  We rank forty-eighth out of fifty-one in education by pretty much everyone’s ratings.  Fifty states plus the District of Columbia for those who wonder about my own education.

I hang my head wondering how we got that way…oh yeah, we’ve been that way.  I blame it on what I call our “Cotton Mill Mentality” and our Southern desire to maintain a cheap and uneducated workforce.  Too harsh?  Sometimes the truth is just that.

I began attending school in the Fifties, during the hay day of cotton textiles.  Unfortunately, I began teaching as cotton textiles were in decline, finally lost to cheaper foreign labor.

Cotton textiles were a great educational tool for the Carolinas and other Southern states.  Fine people who were not academically inclined could graduate, or not, and still find a position at one of the local cotton mills; make a living, provide for their families and most importantly it seemed, pay taxes.

Unfortunately, those opportunities fled the South and our political leaders were slow to realize that our educational system had to change to meet modern job descriptions.  This was despite warnings issued from educators  I heard as far back as the early Eighties.  I believe we are still paying for that mindset and waiting for cotton textiles to come back.

We have yet to recognize the effect of an educational system hamstrung by backward thinking.   An educational system crippled by politicians and a tax base that refuses to pay for any meaningful change.  A system that is politically driven and slow to involve educators in the process.

An educational system injured by a belief that education is really not important and why do I have to pay when I don’t have a child in school…or why should I worry about what is happening in the I-95 corridor if I live in the upstate.

Recently it seems another fear has emerged from our strongly conservative base, a fear that teachers are teaching liberalism and socialism, turning all our students into little communists.  It seems that to protest or rather rally helps to stoke those fears.

Teachers are asked to do more and more with less and less.  More testing, more planning for testing, more collaboration about testing.  More time pouring over statistics trying to analyze test results you are not allowed to see.

Less time to prepare for the actual class.  Paying for materials out of their own pockets or doing without.  Open disrespect and a lack of support.  This what the rally is about and if it inconveniences someone…well good.

More teachers are leaving the profession and fewer students are picking education as a life’s work.  Why would they?  Fewer teachers mean more students per class which means less time.  If you believe the student per teacher ratio means anything, I’ve got some land I’d like to sell you.

Curriculum requirements have changed but the time to teach all that is needed has decreased.  Fewer resources, less time to do their jobs. Less time for teachers to make a meaningful dent in the problems facing our youth in a modern world…a world they didn’t create but will have to pay for.

Who suffers in all this…besides the teacher?  The one most significant change I suffered as class sizes crept up was a loss of contact with students.  I didn’t get as close to my students because I didn’t have the time to get close to my classes.  I didn’t get to find out what was bothering Bobbi Jo or Tyrek.  I tried, but it just isn’t possible.  Someone slides through the cracks.  That might be the greatest loss of all.

Okay, I guess I have ranted enough.  I pray for positive change.  Our children are our futures…they are our legacies.  They deserve our best efforts and teachers deserve the tools to make those efforts…they deserve the respect.

I should be there, marching, “rallying”, channeling my inner hippie…my inner liberal…my inner communist. LOL.

The picture is from the Post and Courier, Charleston, SC

For further ramblings please follow my author’s page at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

 

Hunkerin’ Down

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If watching the local news didn’t worry me enough my throbbing knees do.  Bone rubbing on bone from too many years of athletic abuse, I am usually able to control the pain with Voltaren gel and Tylenol Arthritis pain relief…not this morning.  My aching knees are much better predictors of impending violent low-pressure weather than any meteorologist.

My little piece of heaven is hunkering down awaiting a little piece of hell.  Violent weather has already killed two and it is on the way here.  Long lines of thunderstorms with predicted high winds and a worry that they may become circular in motion.

My home has weathered storms since 1892.  I have been privy to them since 1987 and we have dodged several weather bullets.  Whether tornadoes or straight-line winds, we have been a near miss or a glancing blow on many different occasions.  I haven’t cleared all the downed trees from our last brush with fate, this past winter’s ice storm.

The floors and cabinets found in the newer addition came from our first near miss.  An ancient pecan came down next to the house…followed by an ancient black walnut that blocked traffic for hours on Highway 11.  Later our renovator would turn them into pecan floors, black walnut cabinets, and countertops now gracing our home.  I’d just soon have left them upright and in the ground.

I just stepped out on to the porch.  The air is humid and the breeze tropical.  Every time the wind ceases, I wonder if this is the calm before the storm and check the color of the western sky.

A couple of decades after our first brush with fate, I arrive home one evening to thick, hot and humid, still air and a sky that had turned a brassy, sick green.  I took my bike off my car as nearby thunder rolled; I heard a locomotive coming over my western hilltops…there is no railroad beyond my western hilltops.

I barely made it inside and hunkered down in a hallway with my bride and two puppy dogs before all hell broke loose.  Thirty or so downed trees stacked like Pick Up Sticks in the nearby ravine greeted me the next morning along with a storage building ripped open by the falling top of a tulip poplar and a fence line smashed by a persimmon tree.

On the eastern side of the high rim of hills, the local camp, Lookup Lodge, found themselves trapped with their charges and spent a night without power, their escape routes blocked by downed trees.  My little piece of heaven had dodged another direct hit.

We have a wildlife wilderness filled with pecans, persimmon, black walnuts, hemlocks, tulip poplars, and oaks.  That’s just around the house.  We love them…most of the time…but not during the season of spring and summer storms.  Big tall trees that could easily reach us if they were to come down.   I can’t help but wonder if this will be the big one.

So, we are hunkered down watching the line of thunderstorms march from Atlanta on tv, keeping up with tornado alerts, making sure our cellphones are charged and water is taken up…just in case.  Sometimes I think I liked it better when we didn’t know…days before Doppler radar and other improvements in weather forecasting.

Those thrilling days of yesteryear when forecasting was “Red sky in morning, sailors take warning” or a falling barometer meant “Batten down the hatches matey, we’re in for a blow.”  Days when my knees didn’t ache so much…or at all.

I don’t wish ill on anyone so I don’t know what my prayers should be.  I guess I’ll pray for it all.  “Please keep everyone safe and undamaged.”  Just in case, make sure all of you in the line of fire are hunkered down someplace safe.  Wise men have said, “God takes care of those who take care of themselves.”  Please, “Take care of yourselves.”

Please follow Don Miller’s author’s page at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM.

Image from https://stockhead.com.au/resources/stormy-weather-washes-away-profits-at-alkane-resources/

 

 

 

Jackie and Pee Wee

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Today is Jackie Robinson Day.  A day celebrated in major league baseball stadiums across our land.  A celebration that I’ve seen little hoopla about, just some passing mentions.  I don’t think anyone is ignoring it for any nefarious reason, it is tax day after all…and Tiger did win the Masters, and Notre Dame Cathedral is burning.

I wrote this piece a couple of years ago as part of a celebration for Black History Month and decided to rewrite it in honor of Jackie Robinson…and Pee Wee Reese.

Athletics in general and baseball specifically have played a very important part of my life. I coached at the middle or high school level for forty-five years, thirty-six coaching baseball, all forty-five coaching kids.

I began my coaching career at the end of segregation and the beginning of integration in the South.  The opposition to black and white kids going to school together was still high but in athletic locker rooms around the South, young people figured out a way around their prejudices…at least for a few hours daily.

I have very strong opinions about the state of race and bigotry in the United States and am sure professional baseball locker rooms of today are no different than the general population of today.  What is different, they find a way to overcome it, a way to make it work…kind of like Jackie and Pee Wee.  From two years ago….

“I do not care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fuckin’ zebra. I’m the manager of this team, and I say he plays. What’s more, I say he can make us all rich. And if any of you can’t use the money, I will see that you are all traded.”  A short speech by Leo “the lip” Durocher, manager of the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers, letting his team know that Jackie Robinson was in the big leagues to stay…with or without them.  I’m sure Leo said more, he was, after all, a man of many words…many “colorful” words.

April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first African-American to break the major league baseball “color line” since the 1880s.  The “color line” was a “gentleman’s agreement” among major league owners to not allow Blacks to play.  Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodger owner, would scuttle the “gentleman’s agreement” signing Jackie Robinson and putting him on the field.  I would be remiss not to mention that Larry Doby would be the line breaker in the American League with the Cleveland Indians and for some reason flew under the media radar.

Normally a middle infielder, Robinson started at first base his first day in the “Bigs” because All-Star Eddie Stanky was playing second, and Pee Wee Reese was playing shortstop. While not getting a hit, he did walk and scored a run. Facing ALMOST universal racial prejudice, Jackie finished his initial season hitting .297 in one hundred and fifty-one games and received Rookie of the Year honors.  Not bad considering the weight of an entire race that he carried.

I was too young to care much about Jackie Robinson the player and his trials and tribulations.  I hadn’t even been born yet and when I was born, I wasn’t much of a Dodger fan…at least that is my excuse and I’m sticking to it.  Much later, the old newsreel films I watched incessantly proved him worthy of six all-star appearances, a league MVP award and an election to baseball’s Hall of Fame.

Today I celebrate the way he revolutionized the game and the trail he blazed for the stars of my own youth and for those who followed. I cannot fathom what baseball might have been without the likes of Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Bob Gibson, Hank Aaron, Ozzie Smith, Frank Robinson…you get the idea. There were a bunch of others.  Today I am also aware of his many trials and tribulations.

When I said almost universal prejudice there were a few opposing players and teammates who came to Robinson’s defense while offering him a hand in brotherhood. One of those men became an all-time favorite of mine as a broadcaster. He was Robinson’s former teammate and Dizzy Dean’s “Little Partnah”, Pee Wee Reese. Many of my youthful Saturdays were spent sitting with my father watching the Falstaff Game of the Week with Dizzy and Pee Wee bringing the play-by-play.

During the trailblazing 1947 season, Reese was quoted as saying, “You can hate a man for many reasons. Color is not one of them.” Pretty profound for a white guy from Kentucky in 1947. During the Dodgers first road trip as Robinson was being heckled during pre-game infield, Reese, the captain of the Dodgers, went over to Robinson.  Engaging him in conversation, Reese put his arm around Robinson’s shoulder in a gesture of support which silenced the crowd. An eight-foot bronze statue located at the minor league, Brooklyn Cyclones’ stadium commemorates that moment. A plaque states as follows:

“This monument honors Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese: teammates, friends, and men of courage and conviction. Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball, Reese supported him, and together they made history. In May 1947, on Cincinnati’s Crosley Field, Robinson endured racist taunts, jeers, and death threats that would have broken the spirit of a lesser man. Reese, captain of the Brooklyn Dodgers, walked over to his teammate Robinson and stood by his side, silencing the taunts of the crowd. This simple gesture challenged prejudice and created a powerful and enduring friendship.”

Image result for statue of jackie robinson and pee wee reese

Simple gestures can solve major problems.

Don Miller writes on many varied subjects.  His author’s page may be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

 

Silly Little Birds

/ cigarman501 / 6 Comments

 

With forecasts of impending storms this weekend, we decided to move Linda’s spider plants indoors from the front porch to avoid the possibility of hanging baskets being blown all over “hell’s half acre.”  As soon as the plants were tucked away safely in the hallway two silly little birds began to flit and flutter hither and yond leaving my bride and I to shake our heads and question, “Again?”

Opening doors and turning on outdoor lights while extinguishing indoor lights solved the problem.  I wonder where they will spend the night since we moved their first choice of accommodations.

It is an act that plays out often around our house, usually in the late fall rather than spring.  A silly little bird hunkers down for the night in a spider plant, waits patiently as we move the plant indoors and then decides to take flight.  I should probably say something about the silly little man who forgets to check the basket to see if there is anything in it besides a spider plant.

I don’t know how many generations of Carolina Wrens we’ve raised on our front porch, but they come back, year after year, to lay their eggs and add to the population that brings joy to “God’s half acre”.   I’m sure we have become multi-generational…to the point, we’re running out of room.

I make primitive art out of interesting pieces of hollow wood and old tin.  Interesting to me at least.  More primitive than actual art, and more decorative than with actual functionality…except to our silly little birds.

What was to be bird feeder became a bird house before I could even fill it with seed.

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A painted gourd that looks like it might have been created by a three-year-old has raised multiple clutches over the past decade…except for this season.  They have avoided it this year…so far.

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A sheared off piece of wood with a hole makes a great place for a nest.  I think they like my artistic endeavors…although they did make a nest in a discarded boot I left unattended for a minute or two.

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Now the silly little birds have moved beyond my ability to create.  They have built a nest on top of the fan that helps to keep heat, humidity, and mosquitoes at bay as we sit on the front porch.  Don’t believe the fan will keep anything away this year…except maybe us.

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Addendum, I found this today.  Won’t be using the chipper any time soon.

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Silly but fun to watch.  Silly but they bring much joy.  I just hope their latest construction lasts until the end of hatching season.

Please take time to drop by and follow Don Miller at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

…For Your Age

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“Gee, you don’t look your age.”  Thanks!  Just what I wanted to hear from a cute, brunette nurse.  Cute, YOUNG, brunette nurse.  I was having a checkup and she had noted I was a day shy of the annual celebration of my birth.  When your birth year ends in a fifty it’s easy to make the calculations.  At least I’m not too old to enjoy her feminine form, dark brown hair and the splash of freckles across her nose.  At least she didn’t say, “You don’t look that old.”

Buffett sang in my head, “One day I’ll soon be a grandpa.  All the pretty girls will call me ‘sir’.  Now, where they’re asking me how things are, soon they’ll ask me how things were.”  I am a grandpa and the cute nurse did call me ‘sir.’

There was a time when my birthdays were fun.  Frolicking in the glow of birthday candles before the need to have a fire extinguisher at the ready.  Back before every move was accompanied by sound effects.  Snap, crackle, pop, groan….  Now celebrating the memorial of my latest trip around the sun is…well…painful and not as much fun as it was fifty years ago.  It is more a memorial to lost youth…and hair.

I should be thankful.  I could have lost more than my hair.  I have most of my body parts remaining…battered, wrinkled and scarred as they are.  “You don’t look that old”…just almost that old.

Everything works…much more slowly and in one case much too often…geez, I just peed and now I must go pee again because I thought about peeing.  Oh God, now it’s raining.  There is something about the sound of falling or running water.

Did you know your nose and ears continue to grow right up until the day you die?  Great, I’ll be Dumbo’s stand-in in heaven.  To make things worse, it seems another body part is shrinking.  I can’t wait to be welcomed into the great beyond with the biggest ears in the universe and the smallest…well…you know.

“Consider the alternative.”   Okay, I get that.  I am certainly not actively awaiting or embracing the “Great Wink Out.”  Here today, gone, and somewhere else tomorrow…or in the next second or two.  Somewhere else with dirt in my earthly face.  No, I’m going for the smoking, hot body…cremation!

Will I be welcomed into a warm, welcoming light or will the light be accompanied by a blast your face off gust of heat?  A bearded guy in a white gown by the name Saint Peter or an impish fellow dressed in red with a tail, horns and a pitchfork?  Satan! How the hell are you?  Whatcha got on the barbie?

I guess it is normal to contemplate one’s life whenever one celebrates a birthday.  What you’ve accomplished, what you haven’t.  New friends, old friends, dead friends, family and such.

The killer, a poor choice of words.  The killer about getting older, at least for me, is a loss of energy…no a loss in the desire to be energetic.  I’m in good shape…for my age, but I don’t have the stamina I once did.  Keeping up with a two and five-year-old grandbabies are near impossible.

Often I hear, “You are (fill in the blank) for your age.”  “You move well for your age.”  “You still get stuff done…for your age.”  “I’m not as good as I once was but I’m as good once as I ever was”…sometimes.  That pretty much sums up my entire life now.  “I’m not as good at (insert any activity) as I once was….”  That even includes sleeping…ah, but you can sleep when you are dead.

I’m not really obsessed about age or death.  I rarely think about it…except on a birthday or a random dream.  I may be more concerned about age than death or the prospect of aging gracelessly or dying badly.

Every time I look in a mirror, I realize I don’t have a portrait hidden away aging while I maintain my youthful and dashing good looks.  Okay, let’s be real, I didn’t have dashing good looks when I was youthful.

I’m trying to take Shakespeare’s attitude when he wrote in the Merchant of Venice, “With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”  I guess it is just as easy to laugh as it is to cry…and both cause wrinkles to come.   Happy Birthday to Me.

Song excerpt, Nothin’ but a Breeze, written by John Denver but the Jimmy Buffett version played in my head.

 

Check out Don Miller’s author page at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM