Obama '08

Ron,

I guess we must have some telepathy. After reading the NYT columns today by Gary Wills, Frank Rich, Bob Herbert, and Caroline Kennedy (q.v.), I contacted the official Obama website and made a token contribution (all my contributions are token at this stage), and I am throwing my wholehearted support behind Barack. I will work for him in the campaign. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose," as Janis sang, and we have no way to go but up from this quagmire. I am fed up with the Clintons, agreeing with Wills that too many cooks spoil the broth, and there's just nobody else. And I have always liked Barack. (His nickname, by the way, is Barry.) I think he is as qualified as any candidate. Unless some others enter the field he's it for me. I'm thinking of people of the stature of George McGovern, and there aren't many of those left. I will of course vote for Barack in the primary and hope and pray for the chance to vote for him in November. Considering that I joined the Peace Corps mainly because I was inspired by the idealism and hope that Jack Kennedy, the upstart young president of that day, provided, I don't think I could consider anyone else at this latter day of my life.

So, Ron, Senator Obama is my political fave too! Here's hoping and praying!

Peace, JT

My Family = Fun

Really enjoying the family blogging, what with the interior monologue on the debate, bitch slapping (!), exotic cuisine, and whatnot. Lying in bed with the "splint" (a sort of boot -- no, Donna, it doesn't have a high heel) on my foot to help the heel spur (doing so, so). And Celine Dion is indeed "fucking amazing," AK!

Saw my cousin Charles Evans again tonight and plan to pick him up for lunch at Our Best in Smithfield, Kentucky. He doesn't have a phone -- he says it is an "unnecessary inconvenience" -- so I'll take my chances on finding him at home one day next week. He lives somewhere between Sligo and the Ohio River, I think. (You laugh at the name Sligo? It's named after County Sligo, Ireland, the home of the poet W.B. Yeats, the originator of "slouching toward" that became a catchy allusion for TV talking heads and book titles by nobodies for a while.) As old-fashioned as "Sug" is, I think it'd be proper to get to his place by buckboard and a team of mules, but he actually drove off from the meeting tonight in a late-model pickup truck. I'll bet at home he even has electric lights!

9 Days In: Happy 2008!

Glad Dave had his beard shaved off ... Inadvertently I'm now at 93 for 93 ... Jon certainly hasn't lost it: the only way to look at these jokers is through the lens of his satire ... I lean to Barack (pleased with Iowa) but will take Hillary (not disappointed with NH): anything but GOP: the two of them would make a great ticket ... Don't have the post-holiday blahs: am over the holiday blahs and feel great ... Glad for my musical family, guitar, drums, whatever; I've learned the first verse of "Love Changes Everything" and sing it while I'm driving ... Have had a yearning to ski Snow Basin again: still recall the last day I skied in Utah (with Niece Jeanie) and didn't fall down once! ... Vet says Rudy is in great shape for a senior canine citizen ... My sponsor Leo gave me a 3-month token tonight: it's green: it goes well in my pocket with the 25-year coin, which is lacquered navy blue and gold: I'm proud of both ... Saw the podiatrist today about my heel spur and he gave me a "splint" to wear at night and an exercise plan and I think I'm going to be walking again by spring ...

Love Changes Everything

Our friend Tracy gave me a really nice Xmas gift: a boxed set of 3 CDs of music by Andrew Lloyd Weber. It contains the song "Love Changes Everything" from the show Aspects of Love (1989). The lyrics are by Don Black and Charles Hart and can be found at this link. I listened to the song yesterday while I was reading Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, a biography of one of the two co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. This wonderful man, Dr. Bob Smith, after his salvation from alcoholism, lived what he said AA was about: "love and service." I thought that the song, just as it is, would make an excellent one for any Christian (or other religious) worship service: "Nothing in the world can ever be the same." Once again, too, I've been captured by the eloquence and charm of the writing of Frederick Buechner in his book of daily meditations, Listening to Your Life. I recall a story by Mary Flannery O'Connor titled "Everything That Rises Must Converge," and things lately have been rising and converging and it's been a good day, a good autumn and beginning of winter. Happy Holidays and God bless.

Snow, Sort Of

Was going to the jail in New Albany this morning to visit a guy who got himself on the TV news for trying to snatch a purse. Won't go into that, but headed out on the road this morning, being assured by the weathercasters that the snow would change to rain and roads wouldn't be slick. The roads were slick. There was ice on 62. I didn't feel safe doing more than 35, and of course the TFMs were fishtailing and sliding around to my front, rear, and side, so I said hell with it and came back home. The roads did clear later in the day. We're supposed to have more snow/sleet/rain/whatever I think they call it a "wintry mix" tonight. Was able to get out tonight for a while. That lovely effect of ice on tree branches pervaded and I hope there'll be maybe a little sun tomorrow or Monday to give us some winter wonderland. (Nostalgia for the music of Leroy Anderson led me recently to purchase an album with "Sleighride," "Blue Tango," "Buglers' Holiday," and all those wonderful, lighthearted instrumental works that prefigured my love of classical music in its present form.)

Nick Robinson, one of those kids I played baseball under the bridge with over half a century ago, died. He was 67. He was a nice kid and grew up to be a good man who spent all his life in this town. A lot of my childhood pals have passed: Hambone Handlon, Butch Stoner, Hubie (Chuck) Linville ... I hope it's OK to mention their names here. I honor their memory.

And Rosie just informed me that her cousin Orville died this afternoon. And just as she said it, Rudy jumped up on the footrest beside me and snuggled against me, as he did with Orville the day he was last here. In memoriam.

Muddling Through

Late to bed tonight because of two naps today: feeling punk from the third week of a cold. One of those that's mild enough not to be laid up but strong enough to make you drag around more than usual. Have a shoulder muscle that's tensed up, so going to physical therapy in the morning to get it unknotted. We've had two weather reports of late: (1) cloudy and (2) rain. It's raining tonight. Winter solstice is on Saturday December 22 at 1:38 a.m. Short days. I've been too busy to give in to my SAD. Way it ought to be every winter! Busy helping friends Sam and Mike and David and they're helping me. Leo and Bernie and Tom and Howard and Dennis and Irene -- yes, a woman! -- are helping me with my lifelong malady -- and I think I'm helping them. Irene is a dear, dear girl who doesn't know how helpful she has been because she thinks she's a beginner but her humility is that of a saint. Afraid we lost Earl. He was going to his hometown and I hope he got there. He didn't answer or return my call. I took him to task for always taking and never giving. I should have said that doing just that has been my failing too. I made it sound too much like preaching. My pal Van De Graaf is on in the next room and I can't hear what he's saying but I can barely hear the music, which is good. This evening, went to the little town of New Marion and after the meeting drove to Versailles because I was afraid I'd run out of gas before I got back home; filled up the tank and paid for it with a credit card. Buying things on credit is entirely too easy. Have the fan on in the bedroom. Rudy is in his bed and shifts from time to time and the wicker squeaks. That and the susurrus of the fan and the music in the next room. And the sash of the window has started to bump in the wind that has come up. Now there's Pete's baritone voice again. It's a nice time of darkness and calm. Goodnight.

Writer's Block?

My passion when I started this blog was the interface between religion and politics. I am still passionate about the subject but I don't feel that I have much to offer readers. The likelihood of influencing anybody one way or the other is minuscule. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. A clause about courage follows and then another about wisdom in that petition. Don't feel all that courageous or wise these days but I'll settle for serene.

Because of activities every night which I refer to with the shorthand "90/90," I haven't watched Countdown with Keith Olbermann for many nights. I taped one recently showing the mendacity and hypocrisy of a certain official and watched it later but my heart wasn't much in it. Pointing out the mendacity and hypocrisy of said official doesn't change anything. We're enmired in the dung until -- when? I don't want to think about it. And nobody else does either.

We've had a plethora of fatuous Christmas movies on the Hallmark Channel. Here's one called Meet the Santas, starring, among others, Armin Shimerman, not in his "Quark the Ferengi" getup but with his semi-baldness reminding me of someone I used to go to lunch with at my last job.

Goodnight.

Paul K., 1942-2007

Lost a good and dear friend this past Saturday. We had a memorial service for him tonight. He might have said, "It's not about Paul," because he was one to always place himself in the background. It's strikingly apropos that our devotional for this very day was about not placing ourselves in the "limelight" as we try to serve others. But it was truly about Paul tonight: I hope it was all right with him just this once, if he were -- or in fact was -- observing us from the other side. He helped me more than I or perhaps he could have imagined with his simple words, "I don't have any answers" combined with "I'm here."

I miss him. I'm going to try to carry on the way he has carried on ever since I've known him. He was a mensch.

Ad Hoc Genealogy

Visiting casually with a man this morning who belongs to my club. He's from Kentucky, is almost 78, is a retired farmer and works with, of all things, mules, for amusement. Belongs to some kind of association that raises them, trains them to work, for show, etc.

"What is your last name?" I asked.

"Evans," he said.

"Well, what was your father's name?"

"Perry," he said.

"Was your mother's name Gladys?"

"Yep."

"Well, I'll be danged! We're cousins, then."

I told him Perry came to my dad's funeral in 1968. Perry died at age 92, Charles (that's his proper name, although he has the nickname "Sug" as in sugar) told me. Charles -- "Sug" -- has a brother we called "Pee Wee." I'd incorrectly recalled that Perry and Gladys (and Sug and Pee Wee and Toad -- love those nicknames -- Toad was merely a play on Theodore -- and a sister whose name I've forgotten) lived near Crestwood, Kentucky, but the nearest town was actually Smithfield, where there is a wonderful restaurant called "Our Best." Sug told me that Pee Wee lives close to the original family farm, which was sold when Perry and Gladys died.

I also told him that in the early 1970s, my son John, his MaMa, and I visited Perry and Gladys at their farm, c. 200 acres. Perry took John and me for a tractor ride across his land and we visited the cattle herd. I saw that one of the Charolais cows was a bull, and I said, "Do you think it's safe to get off the tractor?"

Perry laughed and said that he'd never had a mean bull and this one was no exception. Indeed, the big fellow looked up at us for a moment and continued grazing, obviously wishing us no harm. We did keep our distance. Sug laughed and said they'd had no troubles with bulls but there was one mean cow they'd had and she had charged Sug when he was dealing with her calf. They sold her.

Sug invited me to come visit Pee Wee with him and I think I will do just that. We will have fun.

Sug also told me that he had a female relative who married a man named Bowyer, and that is another lost name of interest in my genealogical quest, so I may be able to get some more information about my roots.

I told Sug that our common (?) great-great grandfather was also named Charles and that he'd been born in 1791, had married Lena Palmer (b. 1791) in Cynthiana, Kentucky, and had then moved to the Providence District of Trimble County, Kentucky. Charles ended his days, apparently, living with his son and my great-grandfather James T. Evans (the CSA Orphan Brigade corporal) there, and that was where my grandfather, Tom (John Thomas) Evans, grew up.

It's kind of like detective work and it's pretty exciting.

More Potpourri...

"Cats are natural enemies of reptiles" (overheard on boob tube)...Reminds me of autumn last year when Miss Graypussy was boxing (with her declawed paws) at a blacksnake in the neighbor's yard and the blacksnake was taking it personally, coiled and striking back (not defanged, I surmise)...Ally Sheedy looks a little ate-up -- but she's not wearing makeup (courageous) and it's been a while since The Breakfast Club, when she was 23 (she's 45 now)...On Thanksgiving Day when I was about 15 I hunted birds one cold, clear morning with cousin/friend Johnny Henry on his grandfather's farm, i.e. I went with him, not shooting a gun as he did...A few years later at Fort Leonard Wood he won a sharpshooter medal in basic training, I "boloed" (didn't qualify) because I fired too many "Maggie's drawers" (missed the target altogether)...But I hit a water-snake in the head twice with BBs from Greg Peddie's gun from his dad's boat as we trolled up the Flat Rock River...Damn thing just flinched and kept on swimming parallel to us, like a little dragon...I heard the BB hit Snakey's leathery head both times...Got some holiday home-made pimiento cheese spread and we ate some of it tonight -- yummy! now that's "rushing the season" I don't mind...saw a house and grounds with glaring, garish Xmas lights on US 31 Thursday...not ready for it yet...breakfast meeting tomorrow -- will take some doughnuts...after a hiatus from Netflix we resumed with a revisit to Hill Street Blues...had forgotten how chaotic and over-the-top and absurd it was! loved it!...NYPD Blue was much slicker...A Vevay man, an Army sergeant, was killed this week in Iraq...oh yeah, between the no-draft and the mercenaries, we forgot about that atrocity for a little while, didn't we?...just add another yellow magnet to your car...

On Probation as a Daily Columnist?

Seems like the best I've been able to do is about every other day...My favorite character in The Asphalt Jungle is Sam Jaffe as the German mastermind criminal who makes daring robberies but never carries a gun...Had a good day Friday, putting up a Venetian blind and curtain rod, reading further in You Can't Make Me Angry by Dr. Paul O., attending a rehab meeting in which I complimented Irene for her talk and her marvelous turnaround from her sickness as of two years ago, and having a nice phone visit with the Bebe...Joined an online discussion group moderated by a newfound friend who lives in Richmond, Indiana...Also found an old friend who lives in Richmond; met him in California in 1967 and he has now been continuously sober for over 50 years!...Friend Kevin got a promotion and raise at his work...Leaves have mostly fallen and in the morning must begin to mulch them...Recently watched first four episodes of Hill Street Blues on DVD...Got the theme-song from iTunes and we've been listening to it...Still savoring the great brief visit with Ed Begley Jr., who is a Democrat, vegan, and teetotaler, and a mensch...Glad I stayed in town tonight instead of going to Columbus, otherwise wouldn't have heard Irene...Bach harpsichord sonata on Beethoven Satellite Network right now -- Van De Graaff, my friend...Must get to bed goodnight...

Dropping Names

Ed Begley Jr.

He lectured at Hanover College tonight on saving the environment. Asked what he thought about nuclear power he said, "We have the best nuclear reactor in the world. It's 93 million miles away. It's called the sun." (Applause.)

He worked with Arnold Schwarzenegger on an environmental issue and did the best impression of the Govinator I've heard when he re-created a session that Arnold had with Orrin Hatch. (Applause for that too.)

I got to visit with Ed for a couple of minutes afterward. He said he's making a movie about the Florida recount of 2000. I said "Ooh! That'll be great!" Then I whispered, "I'm a Democrat too."

"Good man," he said.

He is too.

"Why Do We Have to Keep Killing One Another?"

Just watched Bill Moyers' Journal, which featured author Thomas Cahill. Bill interviewed him about capital punishment, in particular. Cahill talked about our cruelty to one another over the centuries, citing public executions for sport, among other things. The three biggest offending nations in the world are China, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Think about that.

Once again I was reminded of the gruesome place that is Huntsville, Texas -- the capital punishment capital of the United States. Once again I say that my first and foremost reason for opposing George W. Bush was his cruelty in presiding over that state's practice, never granting clemency to anyone. And I have heard over and over the uttered belief of people that Bush is a good Christian. Some of those people sport bumper stickers with the words, "Christians aren't perfect -- just forgiven." ("Forgive us our debts AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS." -- from The Lord's Prayer)

Once Cahill said, "Why do we have to keep killing one another?" Our differences are so petty. Protestants and Catholics? Shiites and Sunnis? Pakistanis and Indians? Muslims and Jews? Why can't we accept differences, tolerate them, overlook faults, take the log out of our own eye before taking the mote out of another's, help one another to make it through the world without starving and suffering? Why can't we forgive one another?

Comment On -- Well, God. OK?

Yesterday I requested a book I'd seen discussed in the New York Times blog, Think Again, by Stanley Fish. The post was "Suffering, Evil, and the Existence of God." This morning I withdrew the request of the library to obtain Antony Flew's There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind. I did so because it appears that Flew suffers from senile dementia and was exploited by his co-author, Roy Abraham Varghese, the ghost-writer of much of the text that, when interviewed, Flew was not able to recognize or recall. I didn't want to ask the library to obtain a book that is, as far as I am concerned, a hoax, in the same way that I would have not asked for the book by James Frey about his treatment for drug dependence at Hazelden, which was shown to be a pack of lies and did more harm than good to people who are seeking the truth about escaping the evil of alcoholism.

In the same way, I think tricking an addled old man into signing off on little more than a tendentious rather than a purportedly rational argument for the existence of a First Cause is unscrupulous and, whereas I don't want books burned or otherwise suppressed, I'll leave it up to somebody else to request the book.

This is really hard work, trying to puzzle out what I believe about God, as we call "Him." First, define your terms, JT. What do I mean when I say "God"? I mean the creator of the material universe: the macrocosm and the microcosm that we are aware of, as well as all that we are unaware of: the force or entity that caused the Big Bang or whatever started it all and the one that was there before the Big Bang. "Before" and "after" being constructs of our mortal understanding of "time."

It can be neither disproved nor proved, but I believe -- and this is my article of faith, part of my personal catechism -- that this ineffable vastness and complexity and orderliness did not occur by "accident." I believe in a "first cause." We pipsqueaks don't even have the wherewithal to "prove" that. It's just my notion, my inclination -- my hunch. And I'll never know one way or the other. I guess.

It is all such a mystery.

Cerulean Sky, Luminous Pearly Clouds, Russet Leaves

I love autumn once again. Today was an exemplary day. Sunny, crisp, vigorous. Voted and -- hot diggety damn! -- Tim Armstrong won! Madison has a Democratic mayor for the first time in a long, long while. The guy has absolutely no experience. But it was time for a change. After voting, in the gym of Anderson Elementary School, went to the library and got books and DVDs.

Also requested a book that I learned about on the New York Times blog by Stanley Fish, this post with the title, "Suffering, Evil, and the Existence of God." The book of interest is There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, by Antony Flew.

I also wanted to obtain another book (Bart D. Ehrman, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer) wrestling with the conundrum of God's attributed benevolence and omnipotence in the face of evil. Epicurus wrote: “Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence, then, evil.” I learned a new word: "theodicy," meaning "the defense of God’s omnipotence and goodness in view of the existence of evil." I can see why they call defenders of the faith "apologists." Ehrman's book will be available in February 2008.

Made two CDs from new music I recently imported. I especially love the organ toccatas by Jongen, Widor, and J.S. Bach. (Psst! It's too easy to buy music from iTunes!)

No new comedy shows tonight because of the writers' strike, so will watch some of Countdown, which I taped.

Eight Minutes to Deadline

Beating the clock to get my story in print: I actually did that for newspapers in Franklin, LaPorte, and Madison, Indiana! I kept getting interrupted, but I could have been an honest-to-god reporter for a living. So my blog post will be on time. Piece o' cake.

30 Posts in 30 Days, By Gum

This blogging thing is a piece o' cake! I can write something, some drivel daily, I who wanted to be a newspaper columnist? (Along with all my other pipe dreams?) Does a cat have a meow?

At just after six, EST (we returned to slow time), the sun was down, but amber light at the western horizon graduated into light blue as I raised my eyes toward the zenith, viewing it here from the bay window. Now the mini-blinds are closed, soft lights are on, and we're watching Shark, which doesn't take a lot of effort. I liked the sundown, of course, and I like being on the same time as the adjacent counties in Kentucky, Jeffersonville, Vevay, Louisville, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis. Before DST, the only one of those we were on the same time with was Indianapolis. Which utterly ignores us. Southern Indiana! Onward and upward!

OK, I accept the challenge!

Blog a day for a month, huh? Hmm. Words, that's about all I have to offer. Fair enough. So here goes. It sure is good to see some posts again from the family.

Just finished rereading Getting Better: Inside Alcoholics Anonymous by Nan Robertson, first published in 1988. I'll let the book speak for itself, should anyone care to read it. I will comment on the edition of the book, namely an Authors Guild backinprint.com edition. It's a paperback, excellently bound and printed. I'm also rereading Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous by Ernest Kurtz, and for the first time, You Can't Make Me Angry, by Dr. Paul O. The latter, although aimed at members of AA and Al-Anon, is of general interest, and enlightening as well as good-humored.

I'm also finishing reading A Woman in Charge, a biography of Hillary Clinton, by Carl Bernstein. I believe she stands a good chance of being the woman in charge starting in 2009, and although I cringe at her continuing to make pacts with the devil in order to tread lightly on that part of the electorate she needs to get to the Oval Office, I have high hopes that she will make a decent president, which, it goes without saying, this country sorely needs.

I'm Just Sayin'

Beautiful morning, which started with frost. Rosie had turned on the ceiling heat and I turned it off and opened the door and turned on the table fan until my face and ears cooled off.

I slept until after nine, having gone to bed soon after twelve last night, and I’m still tired. I think I’m getting caught up on some long needed rest.

Listening to WUOL, Bach piece that is getting a little monotonous. I’m sure if I had brain-one about the composition of music I’d appreciate the variations and crap he went through with this. Actually I do have an intuitive feeling for what he’s doing but I don’t care to be as exhaustive as he is.

Then there’s Carol Larson, a lovely woman who announces, who (or as she would be sure to say, whom) I have met in person to affirm her loveliness, but sometimes she gets to me because she is so smarmy and prissy, prim and proper. She has had piano lessons and knows music inside and out and assumes her listeners have the same level of knowledge as she does and it ain’t so, Carol. And when she announces a work by a French composer and/or performer, she blows you away with her correct, non-native French. Piss off, Carol, you dear, sweet, phony woman. And God bless you.

Thanks be to God, anyway, today, that I am well again and I hope once more on the right road to recovery.

All three devotionals I'm reading right now were good this morning. The Upper Room is about "new life" (eternal life), which I speculate will be something much, much better than any of us expects. From Daily Reflections, wise counsel not to try to change others, only myself: "live and let live." And Buechner the ecclesiastic poet, in Listening to Your Life, describes the shopworn Christian word, "grace," and reminds us that it's a gift. He says its meaning is something like:

"Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you."

I guess those last two sentences are no more fantastic than the glib belief that the Big Bang occurred, something from nothing, without Somebody to light the cosmic fuse.

I'm just sayin'.

That Old Clown Is Back

Sunshine is back today after a protracted absence and it is particularly welcome, even as a good, slow, soaking rain over a number of days was welcome earlier in the week.

The New York Times today contains two stories on the declining influence of the religious right in politics: one is in the column of Frank Rich and the other is in the magazine and is written by David D. Kirkpatrick. I found both to be instructive in what is going on in religion and politics in the United States today.

I am still an advocate of the position of Jim Wallis and the Sojourners, which is that there is more to the teachings of Christ than an opposition to abortion, gay marriage, and evolution. And that there is a conflict in the crusade to preserve life when it applies only to the unborn and not to opposing war, capital punishment, and being indifferent to the health care of children, the struggle of people in this nation and the world to be free from want when there is plenty for all. I could go on about the inconsistencies of the personal-piety wing of Christianity.

In the NYT Magazine's story, "The Evangelical Crackup," these remarks by the Rev. Gene Carlson, a well-credentialed conservative of Wichita, Kansas spoke to me:

“ 'There is this sense that the personal Gospel is what evangelicals believe and the social Gospel is what liberal Christians believe,' Carlson said, 'and, you know, there is only one Gospel that has both social and personal dimensions to it.' He once felt lonely among evangelicals for taking that approach, he told me. 'Now it is a growing phenomenon,' he said."

God, I hope so. How I hope so. The death grip of the neocons and the Roves on the religious "right" has nearly killed us all and may do so yet. I pray not.