history

There is no Spring in my Spring Forward

/ cigarman501 / 4 Comments

“I don’t mind going back to daylight saving time. With inflation, the hour will be the only thing I’ve saved all year.” — Victor Borge

There are many perks to retiring. A huge one being, I am not held captive by the clock…except when I have a doctor’s appointment. Doctor’s appointments are one of the non-rewards of retirement because to retire, one must get old. I don’t wear a watch anymore. If I could figure out how to get rid of a calendar, I would. But then when would I know we were getting ready to change to Daylight Saving Time and back again? Note: I have trouble knowing which day of the week it is since I retired…don’t care, either.

When I was a child, I didn’t remember much about Daylight Saving Time except when Mr. Gordon walked into our church service with a bewildered look on his face as we stood and began to sing the benediction. Mr. Gordon, like my family, tended to get up with the crowing of a rooster and went to bed when the chickens came home to roost. Unlike us he had missed the news flash about the then April change in time.

I remember asking my parents why we were changing the time. They stared off into space and no explanation was forthcoming. There still is no explanation but the difference is, I just don’t care.

My lack of care today was not the case when I toiled in the then hallowed halls of education. Working people and students will wake up on Monday morning and spend the day yawning because in springing forward, they will lose an hour of sleep. Nowhere is this more evident than in a high school teaching environment. Teens are notorious for finding ways to stay awake well past their bedtimes and Sunday night, March 12th will be no different, except it will be worse. On March 13, Little Johnny and Juanita will sleepwalk through the halls of learning even more stupefied than normal. So will their teachers.

No one has been able to give me a good reason as to why we need Daylight Saving Time and Dave Berry agrees, “You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight saving time.” Another quote attributed to “a wise old Indian” states, “Only the government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket.” I see nothing faulty about his logic.

So, why do we have it?

According to a CBS Boston article, “Daylight Saving Time has its roots in train schedules, but it was put into practice in Europe and the United States to save fuel and power during World War I, according to the US Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics.” Train schedules? Must be of German origin. Don’t their trains always run on time?

While in Paris, Ben Franklin proposed the time shift change in 1784. In a satirical letter to a Parisian newspaper, Franklin suggested that waking up earlier in the summer would economize on candle usage; and calculated considerable savings. This makes no more sense than train schedules. I’m trying to decide if this is contrary to his Poor Richard’s quote, “Early to bed, early to rise….”

To continue, “The US kept Daylight Saving Time permanent during most of World War II. The idea was put in place to conserve fuel and keep things standard. As the war came to a close in 1945, Gallup asked respondents how we should tell time. Only 17% wanted to keep what was then called “war time” all year.”

“During the energy crisis of the 1970s, we tried permanent Daylight Saving Time again in the winter of 1973-1974. The idea was to conserve fuel. It was a popular move at the time when President Richard Nixon signed the law in January 1974. But by the end of the month, Florida’s governor had called for the law’s repeal after eight schoolchildren were hit by cars in the dark. Schools across the country delayed start times until the sun came up.”

I remember 73-74 well. Waiting in gas lines only to have them run out as you finally got to the pumps. It was my first-year teaching and I remember gym duty before school. We corralled our little charges in one place, so they didn’t get lost in the darkness outside. Seven hundred of the devil’s minions in a gym.

“By summer, public approval had plummeted, and in early October Congress voted to switch back to standard time.”

So why do we need Daylight Saving Time? In two words, we don’t…unless you are going to utilize that extra hour of daylight after work or school. It is geared toward industry or those with typical “9 to 5” jobs. An extra hour of sunlight to drink another martini on the veranda in the glow of the sun.

My biggest argument against it? Daylight Saving will kill you. It seems to do damage to the human psyche and our health. Studies over the last 25 years have shown the one-hour change disrupts body rhythms tuned to Earth’s rotation. We have more car accidents when people lose an extra hour of sleep. We also know that people suffer more heart attacks at the start of Daylight Saving Time.

But for every argument there may be a counter argument. People seem happier with the extra hour of afternoon daylight, heart attacks be damned, and robberies decrease. Robberies decrease? Candles aside, the biggest argument for it is for saving energy but studies have shown there is little energy saved. And yet we continue to spring forward and fall back.

Arguments to keep it come from the recreational sport world, think driving ranges that want golfers to stop by after work, an extra hour for fisherman to go out and hook a monster, or the Little League world. Arguments against come from farmers who have a harder time getting their dairy products and vegetables to market, usually done in the early morning. Farmers and ranchers are governed by the sun and not a time piece.

So, your feelings about Daylight Saving depends on who you are and what you do. I’m retired. I go to sleep when I’m sleepy and get up when I’m not…well, my puppies have replaced my childhood roosters. I’m sure my puppy dogs wild dictate when I get up. They may not be able to tell the time, but they know when it is mealtime.

Note: 2022 poll by Monmouth University found 61 percent of respondents want to stop switching, while only 35 percent want to keep things the way they are. But those who want to end the madness are divided: 44 percent said they want permanent Daylight Saving Time and 13 percent want permanent Standard Time. With the political madness on display every day why would I guess otherwise?

***

Don Miller’s last nonfiction was “Pig Trails and Rabbit Holes” and may be purchased or downloaded at https://www.amazon.com/Pig-Trails-Rabbit-Holes-Southerner/dp/B09GQSNYL2/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3K12GNSMDT7T0&keywords=Pig+Trails+and+Rabbit+Holes+Don+Miller&qid=1678534404&sprefix=pig+trails+and+rabbit+holes+don+miller%2Caps%2C186&sr=8-1

Of Fish Camps and Hush Puppies

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“Good food should be joyful. There should be laughter and chatter, not people sitting there like they’re in a funeral-parlor waiting room.”- Jim Harrison

I’m having a moment. My wife brought me a meal from a local meat and three. Bless her heart. I applaud her efforts but the BBQed chicken gave its life for naught it would seem. The cabbage slaw, way too sweet. The hush puppies were awful, hard on the inside and even harder on the outside, but they triggered a memory which led to a pig trail. I’m sure there is a rabbit hole to fall into at the end.

Hush puppies are fried balls of seasoned cornbread batter. I like mine sans sugar with finely chopped onion and garlic mixed into the batter. A Southern staple served alongside anything fried or BBQ, they should be a golden, crispy brown on the outside and a creamy, moist yellow or white on the inside.

Supposedly hush puppies were fried up and fed to dogs to keep them quiet while fish were fried on the riverbanks where they had been caught as friends and family fellowshipped with each other. Thus, the name, “Hush puppies.” (According to Wikipedia, the name “hush puppy” or “hushpuppy” first appeared in print in 1899)

An alternative theory, a theory that is just as likely to be true, is that escaping slaves used fried cornbread to silence pursuing hounds and to throw them off their scent. Both work for me but the first theory follows better with my pig trail.

At some point hush puppies became a fish camp side dish, and my rabbit hole led me to a seafood platter featuring deep fried flounder or catfish fillets and Calabash shrimp along with mayonnaise slaw and hush puppies.

Fish camps gained popularity before World War Two and owe their beginnings to gatherings on the side of rivers or coastal shores, “creek camps” if you will. Everyone chipping in with fish caught that day, deep fried in seasoned batter, or pan fried after dredging in a seasoned cornbread and flour mix. The main course was served alongside cabbage slaw and hushpuppies. Simple food prepared cheaply, and might I say majestically, with a good dose of fellowship to go with it.

Enterprising souls saw a business opportunity, threw up rough structures, and served up deep fried fish on Friday and Saturday nights. As roads and transportation improved local catfish, carp, and crappy were replaced by flounder, shrimp, and oysters. The ocean’s bounty was transported to the upstate and served on Fridays and Saturdays.

Fish camps once were numerous on both banks of the Catawba River where I grew up. Cute names like “Catfish Cove” or simple ones like the Riverview Inn were prolific. The Riverview Inn featured its own pirate, Captain Windy, complete with a real peg leg but missing the eyepatch and parrot on his shoulder. I really don’t remember it as an Inn and my family was not there for the view. They once served a ton of flounder over one weekend.

In the Carolinas, upstate fish camps were tied to textiles and families. Many were family-run businesses that opened on weekends after the shiftwork of the week was completed. Textile workers flocked to the fish camps and visits to the fish camp became as routine as church on Sunday.

Unfortunately, fish camps are as scarce as hen’s teeth in my part of the world in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. Coastal Carolinas and Georgia have the fish camps, I’m sure Florida does too, but inland fish camps have dwindled into obscurity or become the pricier seafood restaurants.

I’ve been to some of the local ones claiming to be fish camps and if there are good ones, they remain hidden to me…nothing cheap or majestic about their offerings. My taste has changed or I’m still looking for the one perfect fish camp that existed in the late Sixties or early Seventies.

My fondest memory was a wreck of a building at the end of a hard-packed dirt road. A graying whitewash lapboard building covered by a rusty metal roof. Picnic tables with holes in the middle over a trash can to throw shrimp tails or oyster shells. The choices were simple; shrimp, fried or boiled, oysters fried or roasted, and the catch of the day which this day was deep fried flounder fillets. Sides were cabbage slaw, fries, and hush puppies with a hint of onion fried into them.

Squeeze bottles of tartar sauce and spicy cocktail were spaced conveniently around the table along with cheap paper towels to wipe your hands. Sweet tea or iced down PBRs washed it all down. Boiled shrimp and roasted oysters were served on newspaper, the rest in paper “boats.”

I remember a couple of “church” fish fries as a child. My humble Methodist church was a bit more “hellfire and brimstone” and had taken a page from our Baptist brothers. The best way to gather new members was through their stomachs. We just drew the line at requiring a casserole dish to enter Heaven’s Pearly Gates.

From down the road from my home, if the winds were right, late summer would bring the smell of fish frying during the annual camp meeting at the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church that sat just off the Catawba on one of the creeks that fed it. Later, snatches of them making a joyful noise unto the Lord would be carried by the same breeze. Judging from the smell and the sound, they knew the way to heaven, even if it might have been heaven on earth, deep fried and seasoned by angels from generations past.

Fish camps and their predecessor, “creek camps” bode to a simpler time. Life revolved around work, family, and friends. Fishing was a form of recreation in addition to adding protein to the table. It was also a form of creation as many stories were told on the riverbank about the one that got away.

Combining necessity, recreation, and fellowship can’t be bad. Throw in a “jug band” and a bit of amber liquid and you might have hit on something.  

Don Miller’s Authors Page https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

“Why Should the Devil Have All of the Good Music?”

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“Why Should the Devil Have All of the Good Music?”- Variously attributed to Martin Luther, John Wesley, and Salvation Army founder William Booth

First let’s put that myth to bed. There is no evidence Martin Luther, John Wesley, or William Booth said such but according to my parent’s generation we were all going to hell listening to the Devil’s own rock-n-roll.

It would seem each previous generation thought the same thing all the way back to the Middle Ages. I wonder what my grandparents thought about the “torch singers” of the Forties or their parents thought of the Jazz and Blues in the Twenties? I wonder if my mother sat under an “apple tree” with anyone else but my father during WW 2 while listening to Glenn Miller or The Andrews Sisters.

Reading the reactions to Sam Smith and Kim Petra’s performance at the Grammy’s and Rihanna’s performance during the Super Bowl another older generation thinks the younger generation is on the slippery slope to hell and these performers are minions of Lucifer providing a helping hand to their downward haul. It also gives, in Sam’s and Kim’s case, a convenient “Satanic” target for those not happy with the “woke” support of the LGBTQIA+ community and who, in Rihanna’s case, might believe that “Negro” music and the “Devil’s” music are the same.

This is not an opinion piece on how good someone’s music is or is not. I was unimpressed by both performances, but Sam, Kim, and Rihanna were not singing to people in my age group demographics any more than Perry Como or Dean Martin were singing to mine during the Fifties. Many of the singers who sang to my demographic are molding in the grave…except for Keith Richards and Willie Nelson, of course. They will outlive my grandchildren it seems.

To quote Tom Taylor, a writer for Far Out, a site in the UK, “From utterly insane tales of Kiss front man Gene Simmons having a cow’s tongue to the satanic panic of Judas Priest sneaking hidden messages into their songs, the devil is often depicted as the despicable puppet master who makes the marionette of rock ‘n’ roll move. It was yelled at Elvis Presley when his hips were first thrusting pop culture into existence, and it continues to this day in the mutated form of musicians being accused of being in the Illuminati. We may have secularized the slander, but rock ‘n’ roll has always been tarred with the brush of Beelzebub.”

I would have to add Jerry Lee Lewis’ “great balls of fire,” Little Richard “banging your box”, Chuck Berry’s “little ding-a-ling”, and Lew Christie’s “rhapsody of teen-age love gone too far in the rain.” I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Tina Turner seeming to make oral love to her microphone while shaking it in the oh so short skirts and high heels.

Several of these performers were banned from mainstream radio play at various times and Elvis’ hips were not visible on the old Ed Sullivan Show as he was purposely filmed from the waist up. Somehow banning sounds familiar in the light of today. How many from my generation slowed down their forty-fives trying to figure out exactly what “Louie, Louie” was up to on that Kingsman record.

I’d say much of my generation’s devil’s music was more metaphor than ‘out there’, but it was there. And when the late Sixties hit with the dope smokin’, go, go girls dancin’ in cages, and the braless halter tops, it was obvious that Satan had us by the hand and was seductively drawing in another generation with his music instead of using a serpent to tempt with an apple.

Unfortunately, much of the devil’s music railed against by my parents’ generation had to do more with who was singing it rather than what was being sung. The “whitewashed” rhythm and blues and Rock-a-Billy of Elvis, Jerry Lee, and Carl Perkins was bad enough, and don-t get them talkin’ bout those longhaired British boys, but white kids crowded around a bandstand featuring African American singers and cheering while dancing “The Dirty Dog” was proof that Satan was moving among us.

That reminded me of a few “PJ” driven Frat and Sorority parties. PJ stood for Purple Jesus, a fruity concoction involving grape juice and grain alcohol or moonshine that would leave you uttering Jesus’ name in vain from the next morning’s hangover. Jesus’ name but it was Lucifer’s brew.

I never danced The Dirty Dog but my crew cut was present to hear James Brown and Fabulous Flames, Eddie Floyd, Billy Stewart, Otis Redding, and Archie Bell at venues where the performers themselves were not welcomed had they not been singing. Big haired white girls in Bobby Socks jumping around cheering for “The Godfather of Soul” as he pranced about singing “Try Me” was more than some of the previous generation could endure.

In my research I found the “Devil’s Music” moniker dates back much farther than just my lifetime. During the Medieval period music that was not church music nor followed the church’s rules was the Devil’s music. Gregorian chants or be damned!

Madrigals were considered the Devil’s music because they sang mostly about having sex. Ending a piece on a minor chord was also forbidden which gave us the Piccardi third (raising the third of the final chord of a piece in a minor so it cold ended on a major). The tritone was also banned. (I have no idea what a Piccardi third or tritone was or a cold end, but failing to use them must have been bad sending the performer straight to the bowels of hell.) Did you know that most of our concepts of Satan and Hell comes from Dante’s The Divine Comedy and not the Bible?

In modern and American terms, the Blues was considered the devil’s music by both the White and African American religious communities at the turn of the 20th century because of song content tied to drinking and dancing. The Baptist, especially, considered any dancing “dirty dancing” and only one step above the horizontal rumba.

The association of the Blues and Jazz with the Devil carried over to rock and roll and Elvis’ hips. Didn’t Blues great Robert Johnson sell his soul to the Devil? Well…that’s the legend at least.

Drinking, dancing, and forbidden sex were the original reasons. Voodoo New Orleans musicians didn’t help the cause nor did the fears I addressed earlier by middle Americans about their white kids listening to “black” music. Then there was Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath…and now Sam Smith, Kim Petra, and Rihanna. My guess is that protests will continue and someone else will take their place in future generations.

John Lennon of The Beatles didn’t endear himself to Christians in 1966 when he made his infamous comment that The Beatles were, “More popular than God.” Christians everywhere added to the air pollution as they burned their vinyl Beatles records. It was a comment taken out of context and judging from The Beatles’ lasting influence and the decline in the Christian church, he might have been correct.

My generation, the latter-day Boomers who are the standard bearers, along with the Gen Xers they produced, for the “our off springs are turning to Satanism” group. I find such comments humorous. I remember the heat we took for growing our hair long, platform shoes, miniskirts, hot pants, and go-go boots…the Devil’s weed, “Make love not war” and “the summer of love.” Yes, Satan was behind our every move, I guess. Now we do what our previous generations did, point and cry out, “You are going to hell and your music is taking you there.”

I do think we had cooler cars with better music blasting from our AM radios or eight tracks. We dressed cooler with our bell bottoms and flowery shirts with long, pointy collars or Nehru jackets. Grandma before she was Grandma looked great without a bra on under her sweater and in her miniskirt and boots, a Salem 100 held between lips or fingers featuring bright red lacquered fingernails and lipstick. Red, the color of the Devil, right Sam? Right Rihanna? The devil dressed us too, I know our parents believed it.

Those horrible dances we did…unscripted like Pagan fertility dances…some of which were successful, and I wonder how many Gen Xers were conceived in the back seats of cars listening to Chicago Transits’ “Memory of the Coming Good” or Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman?”

Remember the angel and devil scene from Animal House? I had a few of those conversations, the angelic voice on one shoulder was usually drowned out by the devil’s on the other. Some of my escapades didn’t hold up well in the light of day but at the time….

I don’t think my music and the performances of the day took me down the primrose path to destruction. They simply made me hard of hearing. I don’t think Satan had much to do with it. Satan is more about punishment and the evil and temptation he punishes comes from within us.

Generations of young people have wanted to explore the secular world and have run afoul of societal norms written by the previous generations. Is that a sin? Maybe but again, I believe Satan has little to do with it. It is too easy to blame our evils on the Devil and not on ourselves

There “would be hell to pay when he got home. But the devil was in the back seat, keeping time to the music, and hell was a long way up the road. — T.C. Boyle

From 1968, a bit of my own Devil’s Music

Don Miller writes at https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Famazon.com%2Fauthor%2Fcigarman501%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR1tgjq5rieg3xT9P8sXpjmjtFvzyIbFO720vp2Mz92TDSp1MxyErONZwOA&h=AT0Nf5rzG7Hx_ZPo_ty1cKqJ6SGltRu7IY-Jnw-wg___W5vdYUSezDC7BJE_g_xUfqUDzy_a-i6RGmKwlZkcZ4rUqe3qZkbC2AZDJnH3niSQNdKFPtitUgkJcTo9PLA_y1fJ8NbdkqLNqLg_YDQPFQ

His latest novel is “Thunder Along the Copperhead”, a depression era historical romance

Valentine’s Day Horrors

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“On Valentine’s Day, the Spirit Club plastered the school with red streamers and pink balloons and red and pink hearts. It looked like Clifford the Big Red Dog ate a flock of flamingoes and then barfed his guts up.” ― Carolyn Mackler, Vegan, Virgin, Valentine

“Cupid, draw back you bow”

Note to self if you drop a rose bush don’t try to catch it. I’m now oozing blood from five spots on my right hand. Roses have thorns even those purchased from Valentine’s Day.

It seems, every Valentine’s Day is my own version of The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre or a Valentine’s slasher movie. I am sure I will have shot myself in the foot by day’s end but at least my bride hasn’t beheaded me like the original St. Valentine. I’m also sure she has considered it.

When it comes to Valentine’s Day, like Midas, I have a special talent. Everything I touch turns into poop.

I haven’t had a successful Valentine’s Day since grammar school. We filled out cheap, little Valentines for everyone in class. Short little sayings like “Be Mine!” I remember looking at “Be My Valentine” from Big Lamar, the class bully that should have been two grade levels above us. We had yet to become creative with little poems like, “Roses are red, violets are blue. Your feet smell like cow poop and your breath does too.”

My first negative memory of many was a Valentine’s Day preteen party in the early 1960s. The Church sponsored event was supposed to be a dress up, Sunday best kind of gala. A Kool-Aid and cupcake affair. We were Methodist so dancing would be allowed, and I prayed my two left feet would somehow transform themselves. A cute little blonde girl had agreed to “hang out and talk.” My first date.

The day before, the world’s largest zit appeared in the middle of my forehead.  It didn’t matter. I’m sure the dance was great, but I have no memories of it because I didn’t get to go. My anxiety over my “first date” was so great I threw up and was kept home, in bed, covered in Vick’s VapoRub, the cure-all of the day. It might have been a stomach virus, but Valentine’s Day has been its own virus since. VapoRub was not the cure.

The dance worked out well for my date. A friend took advantage of the situation, and they became a couple. This weird Cupid moment might have been the high point of my attempts at being a romantic Valentine.

Can you imagine? On average, fifty-eight billion pounds or two point two billion dollars’ worth of chocolate will be sold the week leading up to Valentine’s Day. Over two-hundred and fifty million roses are produced just for Valentine’s Day. That is two point three billion in flower sales. A whopping six point two billion dollars are spent on jewelry. I have contributed with little success.

Love-struck Americans dole out almost twenty-four billion dollars on Valentine’s Day with men spending twice the average. Men will spend on average, one-hundred and seventy dollars to prove their undying love. Women? Half of that.

I’ve all but given up on making Valentine’s Day a special event. Attempts at romantic dinners have ended with food poisoning. I’ve tried poetry, “Roses are red, violets are blue, pizza is hot, and so are you.” I’ve tried to create artistic and rustic birdhouses with tin hearts or a couple holding hands. Most fell apart as quickly as my attempts at romantic expression.

I’m waiting for a masked psychopath to show up to carve out my heart in a real-life Valentine’s slasher movie. Blood splatter replacing rose petals scattered on the bedroom floor.

Speaking of bloody, how did the violent death of a Catholic saint become a celebration of love anyway? There are three suggested stories about three different Saint Valentines. What do they have in common? Martyrdom. Violent death. Two of the accounts involve beheading. Somehow beheading seems apropos. How many of us have lost our heads over someone we shouldn’t have?  

That still doesn’t explain cards, candy, flowers, and jewelry but a historical change in Nineteenth Century America does. Prior to this time most marriages were economic rather than romantic despite what romantic writers would have us believe. Even the poor founded their marriages more as economic alliances than romantic love. “Two can live as cheaply as one,” I was told once. Someone lied to me.

This changed in the mid-1800s from economics to romance, or at least combined the two. It also triggered an increase in the giving of tokens of love and it has snowballed from there.

I have taken to giving rose plants as a token of my undying affection. My bride and I plant them in a rose garden next to my vegetable garden in hopes they will bloom as our love has. I dig the holes and let my bride plant them and as soon as she does, they become her responsibility. If they die, it’s on her.

My Midas special Midas touch is still in effect. Damn rose plant has thorns and they have already bitten me. This Valentine’s Day is in fact a bloody one.

Don Miller’s author page may be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR3yEfoldEBWs3ZbA6bCCQc13npcCrXWdZl0pVYvdbsRMQ86SppPZQVl3SE

Teaching How, What, and Why

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“Very few college professors want high school graduates in their history class who are simply “gung-ho” and “rah-rah” with regard to everything the United States has ever done, have never thought critically in their life, don’t know the meaning of the word “historiography” and have never heard of it. They think that history is something you’re supposed to memorize and that’s about it. That’s not what high school, or what college history teachers want.” ~ James W. Loewen

I wish I could have taught like Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine in the segment “Peabody’s Improbable History” from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show. “Moose and Squirrel” said in my best Boris and Natashia accents. “Improbable History” seems to be anything taught by a blue voting, ‘woke’, ‘libtard’ teacher.

My dream course would pick serious issues facing the United States today and then, using my own form of the ‘Wayback Machine’, follow threads, tracing backwards to how these issues got to be issues and how they might be related…and avoided. Social justice, Civil Rights, Labor, lack of confidence in national institutions, war, etcetera kind of issues. Critical thinking kind of issues.

I don’t know. Some of these subjects I wouldn’t want to touch with a ten-foot Pole or a fifteen-foot Czech in today’s teaching climate. With our notorious lack of geography knowledge, I’m not sure how that joke will go over. Can you find the Czech Republic on a map? Poland? Iran? Iraq? I wouldn’t have wanted to teach them in today’s teaching climate but would have.

The fly in the ointment of my teaching history in reverse using critical thinking is the controversy created by all the propaganda directed at education and the teachers toiling within those ivy covered “enlightened” walls of “larning.” (larn is said as lard except with an ‘n’ instead of a ‘d’. That is so you know I ‘spelt’ it the way some say it down ‘heah’ in the “foothills of the Blue Ridge.”)

I’m sure if I suggested such a course, many people would think I had been abducted by woke aliens, brainwashed, and sent back to warp the minds of little Johnny and Jane. Not all parents, but enough to make teaching more of a challenge than it already is.

Down ‘heah’ in the heart of red voting America. Many parents (not all) and most politicians don’t want teachers to get too far past ‘readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmatic. Low paying jobs don’t require more than that and an educated voter base is counterproductive to certain politicians.

That is a problem with social studies in general and history in particular…at least in my mind. It is also a problem in a world which is controlled by technology and the people trained to operate it and, in our state, we don’t produce enough of those types of graduates.

Who, what (as in the event), and when is easy in history. You are simply memorizing facts, “Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts,” in my best Joe Friday voice. “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue” kind of facts. The message boards and comment sections echo, “Just teach the facts, I don’t want ‘Little Johnny’ brainwashed by some Marxist spouting libtard teacher even if the facts I want taught are at best debatable or at worst wrong.” (In 1492…is about the only truism in Jean Marzollo’s poem)

My problem is the how, the why and sometimes the what. “How did this happen and why did it happen?” “What caused it to happen or did it cause some other event to occur.” “What effect did it have.” That goes far beyond ‘facts’ and can move into a debate.

For instance, are we still haunted by the Viet Nam and Cold War years? Who and when are easy but…what caused it, how did it happen, why did it happen, what effects are we still experiencing because it happened. I see many pungi sticks to be stepped on or armed ICBM’s ready to launch.

What about the Civil War? Remember, I taught in the Deep South. “The Lost Cause” is still “strong” and you know where we are headed from there. “Forget Hell.” Arguing the cause of the Civil War versus “The War of Northern Aggression” is likely to devolve into a fist fight.

Antebellum South v North to Civil War to Reconstruction to Jim Crow to Civil Rights to…oh shit. Except in my course, it would be oh shit to Civil Rights to Jim Crow…. I need to rethink this.

Well, there is good news. I’m retired. There will be no accusations of warping the minds of our youth. The ghosts of my classroom failures simply surround me, not the students themselves. The How’s, the What’s, the Why’s…those ghosts. I have deep regrets that I couldn’t have been more and taught in a way that would drive Ron DeSantis or Greg Abbott out of his mind.

I don’t think I was a bad teacher; I just could have been better had I taught more the How’s, the What’s, the Why’s.

***

Don Miller taught history, social studies, and science for thirty-nine years and coached for forty-four years before retiring to the foothills of Blue Ridge with his wife Linda Porter-Miller to their hobby farm which has turned into a wildlife preserve in the middle of golf courses, gated communities, and gaudily attired cyclist. It was turned into a wildlife preserve due to the laziness of the retired folk who live there.

Don’s author’s page may be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B018IT38GM?ingress=0&visitId=47ebc75a-d4b2-4d7f-8c81-2ada38516214&store_ref=ap_rdr&ref_=ap_rdr

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

/ cigarman501 / 1 Comment

“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.”

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

Rant Alert: Why Teachers Have it so Good

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“Teachers got it good they [teachers] get a great pension they never pay in the social security they get free lunches they only work 9 months a year and have weekends off.” – Facebook PhD

Note to self, don’t read the comments, it will take time out of your life you can’t get back and cause irritations you simply don’t need. Mr. Facebook PhD, “Have you ever used commas or periods?” Names have been changed to protect the mentally deficient.

I feel the need to clarify…no, I feel the need to rant since Mr. Facebook PhD refused to engage. Remember, don’t read the comments!!!!

Teachers do have pensions. In South Carolina where I taught until retirement, we contribute seven percent of our salaries to have a pension. Seven percent. Even after I retired and “double dipped”, a misnomer, I paid seven percent into my pension which didn’t increase my retirement one penny.

We also contribute to our own healthcare after retirement to the tune of $100.00 per month on average. It is, with Medicare, great healthcare unless you are becoming deaf, going blind, or losing your teeth.

Nationwide, most teachers pay into social security although there are some teachers that don’t, about 1.2 million. Their states chose to roll the dice that their state offered pensions would pay better. A few rolled ‘seven come eleven’ and others have thrown ‘snake eyes’.

Free lunches? “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” and most teachers have little time to gulp it down anyway. I’m sure there are school districts that provide teachers with free lunches but for over forty years I bought mine or carried a paper bag with a sandwich, yogurt, and a pack of Nabs. Oh, for those days of rectangular pizza slices with a side of corn and a cup of peaches.

I normally ate on the move making sure little Johnny or Jenny Sue didn’t do something stupid. My favorite duty station was restroom monitor…eating my turkey sandwich while breathing in ‘ode de urine’ making sure little Johnny wasn’t lighting up a blunt or flushing someone’s head in the urinal.

The final nail that caught my attention, the fallacy of having three months off in the summers and free weekends. “There ain’t no such thing as a free summer or weekend.” There are courses to be taken, instructional workshops to attend, standards to be reviewed, and yearly plans to be made during the summer…and now you must review your syllabus making sure nothing you teach or none of your reading material suggests CRT, Marxism, or why little Johnny has two dads or two mothers.

Weekends? Papers to be graded, grades to be recorded, and lesson plans that must be turned in first thing on Monday morning.

But what about your planning period? Parents to contact or professional learning communities or data meetings to attend…a quick trip to the restroom? Planning? Rarely does planning happen. Did I mention that most weekday evenings suck too?

As a side note, because many are confused, teachers are paid for the one hundred eighty days they teach and whatever planning days are added in. In our state, South Carolina, it is one hundred and ninety days. Federal holidays? Nope. Summer? Nope. Our one hundred and ninety days are divided into twelve months so that we don’t starve in the summer. Still many must take summer jobs just to supplement their families’ income if they can work it around workshops, we aren’t paid for…or paid little, to attend.

So, while we are paid over the summer, we are not paid FOR the summer. Further note, many school districts are moving to year-round school. Did the pay go up…nope, nope, nope, they are still on site for one hundred and ninety days.

Much is being written and there are myriads of opinions about teacher shortages. Good, experienced teachers dropping out, few new teachers entering the profession. Anyone who slept through my US History class has offered an opinion.

Many teachers have pointed to the increase in lack of respect from politicians, administrators, parents, and students. While lack of respect has certainly increased, it is not new. Teachers have never been recognized as ‘real’ professionals…we aren’t even recognized as real state employees unless it benefits the state.

When I first faced a class of smiling faces some fifty years ago, I was an anomaly of sorts, a male in a profession populated by females. At the junior high school there were only four males on staff. A principal, an assistant principal, a physical educator, and yours truly.

Male teachers were recruited to coach, not to provide mentorship in the classroom unless it was a blue-chip athlete. Coaches with history degrees were a dime a dozen which is why I added a physical science certification to put beans on the table…ridiculously small plates of beans. Yes, I was originally recruited to coach but am proud of my teaching career. I didn’t teach to coach, I coached to teach.

Why might you ask? Teaching was viewed as women’s work, a nice side job to keep the ‘little lady’ out of trouble and supplement the household income provided by the male who ‘did the real work.’ This was an improvement over the days when ‘schoolmarms’ had to quit if they got married. The view that teaching was a side job is one of the reasons teachers haven’t been paid as professionals until recently, if at all. Presently, women make up seventy-five percent of the nation’s teachers.

Another problem in what was once ‘textile country’, you don’t need to have much education to run a machine and uneducated workers don’t expect to get paid as much. “Keep ’em stupid, keep them poor” might have been a mantra.

That belief is a holdover from the textile days which ended in the Eighties and why we have a challenging time finding qualified technicians and engineers to fill our needs. We must recruit from other states and countries to maintain our 24th-place ranking in economic outlook.

Teachers tend to be looked down upon because of the “Those who can do, those who can’t teach” mentality which has been around much longer than the past decade. A family member once asked me in all seriousness when I was going to get a real job. Another asked me when I would graduate from teaching at a junior high school.

Public Education is in decline and parents, politicians and those who believe education should be used to fatten certain people’s billfolds (private schools) are throwing the dirt in its grave. With three hundred thousand teaching vacancies, many states are lowering their teaching standards to allow anyone who can breathe the opportunity to teach. Many parents believe this is fine as long as their schools provide free childcare and a couple of free meals during the day. One more slap in the face of dedicated teachers.

Public education hasn’t helped itself. Bloated administration costs, emphasis on testing instead of problem solving, passing everyone to elevate graduation rates, and a decrease in reading and math skills upon graduation have not endeared public education to certain groups, including me. We continue to lag in math and reading. There are more Facebook PhDs on the horizon, but these won’t be able to add and subtract either.

Add to this toxic brew, the politically motivated accusations of indoctrination, grooming, teaching CTR, teaching Marxism, etcetera, ad nauseum, I understand why good teachers are getting out and teacher education programs are sucking air. I had two choices of callings when I graduated from college. In this environment I would pick the other one.

I would like to emphasize three points that exemplify the problems found in South Carolina. This is an incomplete list.

We have formed a task force in South Carolina at Governor Foghorn Leghorn’s insistence to study teacher recruitment and retainment. There are no presently teaching teachers on the task force. These members are political appointees and the two who have taught haven’t in several decades.

A new state superintendent will be elected this November and one candidate running does not yet have the qualifications to run and no teaching experience. She has never stood in front of a classroom. I pray she will not meet the qualifications in November because in our state, she will be elected because so many people vote straight party ballots.

If education is fully funded in South Carolina this year, it will be the first time in over a decade.

If you want to know what is wrong with education try something different and it is not a task force. Ask a teacher and involve frontline teachers in problem solving…something we’ve really never done and probably won’t. Until then we will exclaim with pride, “Thank goodness for Mississippi.”

To sum up, a quote from former teaching peer, Brent Boiling, “Teachers at *** used to be like gourmet chefs…. creative and free to do their jobs as professionals. Now they’re McTeachers.”

Don Miller’s author’s page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR1pVsy-a3ZtRJ98EGHW-xrQS0R-IUosd_iDVGMICpugfL0tbofyolue8Yw

A Decadently Sweet, Exquisite Pleasure

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“To eat figs off the tree in the very early morning, when they have been barely touched by the sun, is one of the exquisite pleasures of the Mediterranean.” ― Elizabeth David, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine

I must add, “and one of the exquisite pleasures of the Southern summer.”

Last week I picked my first home grown tomato. I dined on the first tomato sandwich of the season. Both sweet and tart…in the past week I have dined on at least one tomato sandwich daily and have included them in other dishes. One can never get enough of a good thing.

This week I picked my first fig and ate it in the early morning as suggested by Elizabeth David. The fruit was untouched by the morning sun. Covered in dew it was still cool from the nighttime temperatures. It WAS a decadently exquisite pleasure. I picked more than I could eat at one time but for some reason the picked figs I eat later don’t seem to be as decadent as the ones I eat fresh from the tree.

The Brown Turkey Fig I intend to enjoy…now.

My trees, I have two, came from cuttings my grandmother started for me over thirty years ago. She laid a small limb down on the ground and put a rock on it. When roots formed, she snipped it loose from the tree and I brought it home to transplant. Her tree came from a cutting her mother gave her and I am still trying to get a cutting to give my daughter.

I’ve described the fig as decadent, an odd word to describe the fig considering its religious overtones. Adam and Eve covered their nudity with fig leaves after sampling the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In western culture the forbidden fruit has been portrayed as the apple.

Considering that the fig was cultivated well before the apple, it is quite possible the apple has received a bad rap. The fig might have been the forbidden fruit Lucifer No Shoulders successfully tempted Eve with…if so, decadent might be a perfect word. The fig or the fig tree is mentioned some two hundred times in the Bible, the apple less than ten.

Okay, for the biologists in the group. A fig is technically not a fruit. It is an inverted flower…whatever that is. If it looks like fruit…tastes like fruit…

In the Quran, the fig is considered THE sacred fruit. Buddha rested under the Bodhi Tree, a fig tree whose DNA still exists after three thousand years. It was under this tree the Buddha gained enlightenment. Both the Hindus and Jains consider the fig a holy fruit. The Greeks so loved the fig they enacted laws forbidding the export of them.

A painting of the Buddha under the Ficus Religiosa. The “tree of awakening”.

As Christianity began to view nudity differently than say…the Greeks, religious paintings and statues featuring nudity were redone, some even destroyed in the attempt. Many fig leaves were added after the fact to cover he and she parts.

I’m not sure David needed a covering for his man part.

My figs are Brown Turkey figs. I don’t know why they are called Turkey figs but guess it might have to do with country of origin. Figs are associated with Greece and Asia Minor was awash with Greeks for a thousand years before the Turks of the Ottoman Empire descended upon them.

I’m sure the Greeks brought their fig tree cuttings with them, fig trees that came from Egypt or North Africa to Crete to Greece and then on to Turkey. These became known as Brown Turkey figs. Turkey is one of the top four fig producers worldwide.

I could be wrong but I’m glad someone brought them to Spain and from Spain to Mexico. From Mexico it was only a turkey’s hop, skip, and jump to California. Spanish Franciscan missionaries brought the fig to southern California in 1520, leading to the variety known as the Mission fig. California produces ninety-seven percent of commercial figs sold in the United States. If you like Fig Newtons, thank the Franciscans.

Ain’t cultural diffusion wonderful!

Brown Turkeys normally have two crops. The first, the crop I’m feasting on now, features large brown/yellow fruit on the outside, light red, almost pink insides. Oh, those insides, sweet and sugary, but not so sweet they set your teeth on edge. One site I was reading described the taste as “decadently sweet, providing flavors of hazelnuts and confectionaries.” I just ate one and didn’t get the taste of hazelnuts. I just describe it as good, especially covered in dew in the pre-dawn light.

The second crop provides more numerous fruits but smaller in size. Fruit that is perfect to wrap in bacon and roast in balsamic vinegar. I mean, figs and bacon are perfect together. I still go out in the pre-dawn and eat a few raw before I harvest.

My figs are a labor of love and of luck. Luck primarily. Our climate is in the foothills of the Blue Ridge and is not conducive for figs. Several times over the past thirty-five years my tree has been killed down to the roots by a late freeze or the first crop decimated by a killing frost.

Despite my worries the tree would not recover, it always has. In some ways it reminds me of my grandmother who somehow recovered for ninety-eight years. I would never describe her as decadently sweet, but she was an exquisite pleasure, and my predawn fig always reminds me of her.

Expulsion of Adam and Eve ~ Aureliano Milani , 1675–1749

For a humorous guide on how not to gather figs, you might like Ha, Ha, Ha! Stupid Man Goes Boom! https://cigarman501.com/2020/08/16/ha-ha-ha-stupid-man-goes-boom/

Don Miller’s Author’s page is found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR3Sku_ycekhc9FkHrr-nv6_eKa65eciZwTRigrKR9zYwwmglFkhWSfcJ0k

I’m Just Not Feeling it

/ cigarman501 / 3 Comments

“It’s not unpatriotic to denounce an injustice committed on our behalf, perhaps it’s the most patriotic thing we can do.”

― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

Happy birthday America! Two hundred forty-six years young. The grand experiment…the shining light on the hill…an example for the free world. I think we need a transfusion or take off our rose-colored glasses.

I’m just not feeling it. Oh, I went to the annual Bennett July Fourth eve cookout and gorged myself on ribs, pulled pork, and Carol Ann’s potato salad. But I’m not feeling the patriotism. Even after talking with a young man (57) who had spent the past eighteen years in China, I couldn’t feel it. It was just a backyard cookout to me, and I didn’t stick around for the fireworks. I’ll probably watch the fireworks on TV but then I will think about the fireworks on January 6, 2021,

I’m not feeling July 4, 2022. I am feeling a bit overstuffed from last night. That’s not a good thing either.

The Fourth of July is supposed to be a celebrated, a day to commemorate independence, a day of freedom…”let freedom ring.” It took seven years of war to gain that independence and when the gunpowder cleared there were many still not free. Should I dwell on that?

I try to take comfort in the history of our nation. We’ve rarely been totally united as a nation. Our history is rife with examples of discord, and few examples when we all marched together, in step for a cause. Somehow, we’ve muddled along despite the discord. Well, there was that four-year period during our Civil War. The best I can say is we have a voice that is allowed to express our discord.

The thought really is only responsible for a small portion of my malaise and indifference. I’ve been in my malaise since 2016 and it is darkening. It isn’t my malaise; it is my country’s malaise, my country’s failure to come together on anything. Rare is there common ground. It is us versus them and them are the traitors.

Malaise: an indefinite feeling of debility or lack of health often indicative of or accompanying the onset of an illness. A vague sense of mental or moral ill-being. That is according to Merriam-Webster and sums up how I feel about my country. I fear we are on our death bed.

A post came across one of my social media platforms that gave me pause, “I don’t think America deserves a birthday celebration this year.” That’s what I’m feeling. I’m also feeling that there might not be many more birthdays to celebrate…at least in our country’s present form. America the Beautiful may have an incurable illness and facing life support.

I read a quote made by Ralph Waldo Emerson, “When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart.” Fain is a somewhat archaic word that means pleased or willing.

I hear and see posts from people who, by their own voice, call themselves “patriots” and point fingers at people with opposing opinions calling them traitors. This accusation is not even implied, it is boldly printed or yelled. It is on their standards as they march on city streets, wrapping themselves in Old Glory, their faces covered lest someone might see who the “patriots” are. I never thought I would be accused of being a traitor for doing what I thought was right…even if that thought was wrong.

These people are wedges. If you ever spent time splitting wood, you know the function of a wedge…to split. I believe people are being indoctrinated, nay…groomed to be wedges. Whomever is responsible is doing a bang-up job. I’ve never seen us so splintered…not since 1968 and I think 1968 falls short of the mark when compared to present day, July 4, 2022.

On a personal note, I used the words indoctrinated and groomed purposely. I see it all the time when reading about the educational shenanigans in my home state. Mostly they are directed toward my former peers, teachers.

Along with Critical Race Theory and the word “woke,” these are dog whistles or buzz words to further turn people against each other. They are used to wedge apart teachers and parents and liberals and conservatives.

To what end? To destroy public education in favor of for-profit private schools? That is what I think. Just “follow the money.” Propaganda ads reigned supreme as “big money” from out of state fueled one of the sides and our deep red state ate it up. The same is true when the government gets involved. I am so happy I’m a retired teacher. I guess I could retire as an American.

Last quote and I’ll quit beating a dead mule.

“… patriotism lies in supporting the values the country is supposed to cherish: equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. When our government compromises, undermines, or attacks those values, it is being unpatriotic.” Howard Zinn, WW II vet, historian, playwright.

I believe January 6, did just that. January 6th compromised, undermined, and attacked our democracy. As I have watched the congressional committee my depression has grown. I consider myself to be a sane man most of the time. I don’t know how anyone could watch the videos from the January 6 Insurrection and not believe it was exactly that…an attempted insurrection.

It was an attack on our democracy and I believe on some level, planned. I don’t know how you can question what occurred.  I don’t know how you can question what the congressional committee has unearthed.  

Yet people do. They question the election, the motivations, come up with more and more bizarre theories. My malaise grows when I think that many applauded as they watched it unfold on their televisions.

Happy Birthday these dis-United States of America. I’m not sure you were ever as great as I thought you were but I’m damn sure you are not as great as you could be.

Some will say, “If you are so unhappy, maybe you should move to another country.” Well, my retort is unprintable.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that over half our population lost the right to control their own bodies this past week. I fear more losses will occur.

Don Miller’s authors page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR2YOthoDURrlEvGPVx2PXKdydIqxQqHnp9KNhjdK8ez-tm8sQjz8C4gUPo