Life's early journey...

It seems as I have gotten a bit on the downward side of life’s hill, I find myself thinking about things, events, people, etc. that were a part of my life as a kid, adolescent, young adult, middle-aged adult and a mature adult.  Guess some would question the loose use of the “adult” reference given some of my childish behavior even as I was legally being defined as an adult, but nevertheless, let’s move on.

 Being born at a time when the country was moving out of the deep depression of the 1930’s and before the bombing at Pearl Harbor that threw us into World War II, I can recall the rationing that was mandated by the government.  I remember, as a little kid, my father saving coupons and bargaining for more so we would have the requisite amount to buy gas for our annual trip to Kentucky to visit his mother and sister.  It was about the only “vacation” we ever took, no doubt influenced by the financial plight of the country.  My mother did take my brother and me to Washington, DC because we could travel on the train with a free pass.  As a family, we were lucky that my father was employed throughout the depression.  He was the Station Master for the railroad that ran through the area where we lived outside the Chicago city limits.  During the height of the depression one out of every four people were unemployed, thus we were, indeed, fortunate.  I do remember that once we got into the war, there would be “black-out” drills where all the lights had to be turned off at night for designated periods of time.  The purpose of the exercise was to preclude enemy bombers from bombing our neighborhoods.  In school, I also recall having drills where we would go into the hallway, get down on our knees, place our hands over our heads, bend down and stay in this position until the teachers sent us back to the classroom.  The purpose of the drill was to protect ourselves in the event we were bombed.

 The first six years of school I attended Walsh School and I had two first-grade teachers, Miss Hay and Miss Wright.  Miss Hay taught us in the morning and Miss Wright in the afternoon.  Miss Hay was a pioneer in the development of reading phonically.  I was one of the “chosen few” who she would take around to other schools and PTA meetings for us to demonstrate how we could read and spell using the phonic technique.  I felt special when assigned to go with Miss Hay and five or six other students.  Miss Hay along with the school superintendent, Charles E. Wingo, wrote a book, Reading with Phonics, that described this new technique.  Reading and spelling phonically was a new approach and has been a helpful tool for me ever since the first grade.  Going into the second grade, I had Miss Foran as my teacher, and she did not like me.  The reason for this was that my father and her brother, Frank M. Foran, were bitter opponents for a seat on the local Board of Education.  An event that is indelibly etched in my memory was being one of two second graders who Miss Foran did not choose to participate in the musical program put on by the high school each year.  The other boy was a poor kid who lived on the canal bank in our town—an extremely poor, rundown area.    Obviously, I have never forgotten this petty slight by an adult toward a child.

Miss Piancimeno was my third-grade teacher and Miss Petropoulos taught the fourth grade.  In the fifth grade I had Miss Callahan.  She often asked me to go down the block to the store to buy items that were needed for the teachers’ daily lunch.  Being selected was viewed as an honor and I recall relishing the attention, even though I had to put up with some of the other kids calling me the “teacher’s pet”.   In the sixth grade, Miss Spellman was my teacher, and she was also the school principal.  It was during the Christmas break of the sixth grade that my father died.   As an eleven-year-old kid, being told that you no longer had a father was hard to understand and hard to deal with.  I remember more than once during the night hearing my mother sobbing behind the closed door in her bedroom after my dad died.  I also remember that we had a little dog, that was really my dad’s dog.  When my dad did not come back home, that little dog left, and we never saw him again. Guess he knew his buddy was not coming back. 

When I was ten, I was hit by a car on Archer Avenue, the busiest street in our neighborhood.  I remember waking up in my bed with a sore wrist and a headache.  I had been unconscious for eight hours, but never was taken to the hospital.  I was taken to the family doctor, Dr. Rush, and he told my mother I had a concussion and sprained wrist.   She took me home and put me to bed.  Indeed, some of this I was told about because I do not remember seeing Dr. Rush.  The man that hit me was a devout catholic and said prayers and lit a candle for me every day for several days.  He did come by to see me and said that I just rode my bike right out in front of him and he could not stop.  He told me that I flew up into the air and landed back down in front of his car.  We found a triangular piece of his headlight in my shirt pocket.  I crossed Archer Avenue many, many times—had to cross it to go to school and why I rode out in front of him, I do not know.  I was hit right in front of the Foran Funeral Home, the business of my dad’s archrival.  Not sure what the message is, but it is sort of interesting.  A couple of weeks before my accident, I was playing with the Vugrin twins in their garage.  A large garage door was learning up against the wall and for some reason, it fell on me and hit me in the head.  I ended up with a heck of a “goose egg” on my forehead and maybe that influenced my behavior on the day I got hit.

Other things that I remember happening during the first eleven years of my life, included having my mouth washed out with soap by my mother because my brother tattled on me.  He told her I was cussing while playing ball with some other kids.  When my dad was still alive, our discipline involved a razor strap on a bare buttock.  I will not forget the day he found out that I had gone to the city dump, something we were forbidden to do.  When he got home from work and was told what I had done, he marched me into the bathroom, had me take off all my clothes, stood me up in the sink, and “applied” the razor strap to my butt.  I did not go back to the city dump. During a visit with my parents to a farm somewhere south of Chicago, my brother and I were playing with a corn elevator.  It is used to carry corn from the ground on a conveyer belt up to a silo.  The height of the elevator can be altered by turning a crank.  I turned the crank but did not know that you had to back the crank up so it would lock.  I let go and the handle with all the weight of the elevator behind it came flying back, hitting me in the head.  Every time I took a breath, blood squirted out of the top of my head.  Had a scar there for the rest of my days.  It is all but faded due to the other wrinkles around that area of my head.  During the winter we skated on the frozen Illinois-Michigan Canal and played our made-up brand of hockey.  Flipping cars when the roads were covered with snow by holding on to the bumper of the car was another winter activity.  It was a game to us to see if we could flip the car without being caught by the driver.

At the end of our street there was a family that had a truck farm, and they grew a variety of vegetables.  After my brother got too old, I inherited the job of selling vegetables door-to-door throughout the neighborhood, thus was the beginning of my entrepreneurial inclination.  In our neighborhood there was very little in the way of organized activities, so we made up our own games.  Often, we played after supper and stayed out until my mother whistled us home.  That’s how she called us.  She could whistle and we could hear her for a couple of blocks.  There was also another accident where I went flying over the handlebars of my bike, landed on my head, and ended up with my second concussion.  As I reflect on these first eleven years, it is apparent that most of my “accidents” involved injuries to my head.  Perhaps, this realization renders some understanding why I behave as I do.  Do you think?

Oh well, this begins my journey.  As with all of us, there is the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Many twists, turns, curves, hills and valleys.  Some we have a measure of control over, others we do not.  Regardless, all that happens does have some type of ramification.  As Popeye would say, “I yam what I yam, and that’s what I yam”.

The bed

While lying in the hospital bed, day and night for over week during my recent sojourn at the local Regional Medical Center, I remember concluding that I was ensnared by the bed, especially during the long nighttime hours. Trying to locate the damn buttons to lower-raise-move the position of the bed bread nothing but frustration and resignation.  As you lie there, you are aware that the staff will be back to check vital signs, take blood, give you meds or just check on you so the hours of loneliness and entrapment are broken up from time-to-time.  I recall one night.  I was all scrunched up in the bed and was flaying about from side-to-side, trying to position myself so I could reach at least one side of the bed that contained the control panels.  Being short of stature—just being a “little fella” - my arms are limited in how far they will extend from my body and this proved to be just one more containment component of the nightly experience.  The remote that included the call button for the nurse had fallen and I had no idea were the hell it was, nor was I able to position myself to find where it was located.  Throughout, you feel so freaking helpless.  An additional challenge was that I had a catheter inserted in the area between my neck and upper chest and when I moved the wrong way a sharp pain followed, so I was just a tad bit apprehensive about moving about too much.  The catheter was inserted so that I could be put on dialysis when it was needed.

 The beds that are used to ensnare our bodies are engineering masterpieces that are not made for the human body to lie in with any degree of comfort.  As I have mentioned, I am not a large person, yet I was continuing to slide down in the bed and if I pulled my self back up to the top of the bed once, I am sure I did so 100 times during the days I was confined.  Guess one could argue that the ongoing attempts to locate some degree of comfort provided a diversion from watching the second had slowly move around the clock that is position on the wall directly in front of the bed. During one of my experiences with the bed, the nurse informed us that the beds had only been in use for a couple of weeks—whew, weren’t we lucky.   A feature of these modern-day wonders is that they have a switch that can be set and if you leave the prone position it sets off a piercing alarm.  One night I decided to sit on the side of the bed and the alarm goes off and now I’m wondering what the hell did I do.  Oh well, the night worn on!

 Reflecting on the “bed” and its many “attributes”, I think of trying to eat while lying in bed.  If you push one button it raises you head, but also raises your feet so you can never get into an upright position.  I dropped jello down my fashionable gown, a piece of ham somewhere in the bed and took a shower when I tried to drink water from a large plastic cup that should not have been tipped.  Much easier to just ask for some crackers.

 Oh, while in this confined state, the ability to find some position that might be conducive to sleep does not exist.  Over the time that I was an occupant of room 427, I tallied nary but a few minutes of sleep on any given night or day.  Constantly changing positions did not offer any respite to the sleeplessness and you become resigned to watching the ever so slowly moving minute and hour hands of the clock on the wall.

 Indeed, it can always be worse, but thankfully I am back home in a normal bed and I do not have to try to eat while lying down.  While having the time to myself in the hospital, I was able to think of the many family and friends who expressed their concern and support, and I will always be grateful and thankful for each and everyone of these amazing caring people. 

The function of lines...

As I travel the highways and streets throughout the country, I have been struck by the impact that lines have on each of us as we drive.  This might seem like a rather inconsequential direction to go at this time, given all that is going on in the country and the world, but I do believe that lines also impact how we live.  We are often confronted with lines that we must join in order to gain admission, be given a test, purchase some commodity, wait your turn to be called, lines are a part of everyday living.  As an example, let us say we are in line to get into the stadium to watch a football game (pre Covid-19).  As you wait, some individuals break into the line ahead of you and this pisses you off.  Similarly, driving on a two-lane highway you come upon a solid yellow line—no passing is what we are supposed to do, but some fool comes roaring past you and darts in front of you and this pisses you off.  There are rules of the road that we had to learn to pass the driver’s test and the solid yellow line is explained therein.  There are also rules of conduct about waiting your turn as you wait in a line.  These rules are handed down by parents, schoolteachers, clergy, and others.  They are the mores that have come to balance the interaction between and amongst humans.

Lines also control our behavior, whether driving or interacting with others.  On the road people, typically, stay in their line and vehicles proceed in some semblance of an orderly fashion.  In our daily interactions with one another there are also lines that we are not to cross, just like the solid yellow line.  We are not to cheat or defraud others in some type of transaction.  To do so is to cross the line.  We are not to malign or slander another without a factual basis to support such.  To do so is to cross the line.  We are not to physically or emotionally abuse another person, be that person a spouse or child.  To do so is to cross the line.  There are various behaviors that we are not to pursue in public and to do so crosses the line.  To engage in sexual activity in public would, generally, be crossing the line and should be done in private.   Handling bodily function should also be done in private and not in public.  To do so crosses the line. 

Having lines maintains a measure of decorum and acceptance in human interactions.  Often there is an historical and/or legal basis for the line.  It is my judgment that what we are experiencing in the days since the election on November 3rd, is a continuing disregard for the historical and/or legal lines that have been passed on from generation to generation.  Prior to the election we also witnessed the accepted lines of appropriate and legally sanction behavior being broken over and over.  Administrative officials continually breaking the directives of the Hatch Act which precludes engaging in political activity while engaged in governmental business.  The Secretary of State endorsing Trump while in Israel on government business is, but one, example.  Using the White House and surrounding grounds to hold the Republican National Convention is another example of crossing the line.  In the absence of accepted lines, we would have chaos and anarchy. Gun-toting vigilantes surrounding and intimidating duly elected state officials at their homes, certainly crosses the line.  Members of white supremacists’ groups plotting to kidnap and execute duly elected governors is really, really crossing the line.

Indeed, there are multiple examples of the impact that lines have on human interaction.  In a moment of heated passion between a man and a woman, and the man continues to have his way even though he has been told to stop, he has crossed the line.  A young girl becomes pregnant and the known father refuses to accept responsibility and pay child support, he has crossed the line.  A teacher telling an elementary school child that he/she is not capable of learning and becoming a doctor has crossed the line.   At a drive-in fast-food establishment, there are alternating lines to go from placing the order to paying and picking it up.  It is expected that each driver will respect the alternation and if they do not, they have crossed the line of fairness and respect.  As we watch a football game there is a line of scrimmage and it is clearly understood that you remain on your side of the line until the ball is snapped.  There are also lines drawn as to what is acceptable physical contact in a sporting event and what contact crosses the line. 

In an orderly society there are laws, rules, ordinances, and regulations that govern behavior.  Lines are created from these actions and decisions.  A legal decision sets a precedent which is to be adhered to and to ignore a precedent is to cross that line.  An ordinance may require a restaurant to reduce its capacity by 50 percent occupancy during a public health crisis.  Failure to adhere to the ordinance crosses the line.  A high school may have a rule about what is acceptable attire to wear to school and to flaunt the rule crosses the line.  There are emission regulations which spell out the amount of carbon dioxide can be emitted from a factory smokestack.  Not to follow the regulation, crosses the line.   

As we reflect on the impact that lines have in our lives, we can measure ourselves against what is right or wrong, true or false, acceptable or unacceptable, appropriate or inappropriate.  Most of the time, an individual is aware when he/she has crossed the line.  When the police officer stops you for speeding. You know you have crossed the line as defined by the speed limit sign.  When the professor writes a note on your research paper which questions whether it was your work, you know that you crossed the line.  The lines are there, we, individually, choose whether to abide by them and/or to, selectively, choose which ones we will abide by.  A person may situationally choose to cross the acceptable line.  Speeding to get someone to the hospital in an emergency is an example.  At times of intoxication a person may jump across several lines, only to regret his/her actions later when sober.  Well, I am getting close to crossing the line of your indulgence of this blog, so let me stop.  In closing, let me extend my best wishes to each of you for a safe holiday season and a very anticipative new year.

The winner is ....

In the recent election over 74,000,000 cast their vote for the eventual and apparent victors, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.  Also, we are aware that in excess of 70,000,000 Americans cast their vote for Donald Trump and Mike Pence.  Even though the Biden/Harris ticket received over 4,000,000 more votes than their opponents, that, alone, did not assure their selection as the winners.  The bigger issue in the presidential election are the number of electoral votes ascribed to each of the states.  It is common knowledge that the magic number to win the election is 270 electoral votes and the Biden/Harris ticket exceeded this number.  As of this writing, the exact number is still uncertain as a few states have not concluded the counting of all ballots cast in their respective state.  With very few exceptions throughout the history of this country, the ticket which receives the most popular votes in a state receives the corresponding electoral votes for that state.  As we are aware, the loosing ticket in this election has been fanning the fires of discontent and expressing dismay in the outcome of the people’s choice.  Fraud by various descriptions has been alleged, but up to this point unfounded.  A myriad of lawsuits have been filed, yet none have been found to be valid.  There has not been any evidence presented to substantiate these claims. The purpose of this brief summary of the current situation is simply to provide a backdrop for further discussion.

 As noted, the electoral votes are determined by the popular vote and the legislature in each state must certify the electors which they send to the Congress.  Through the history of our nation, this has been a procedural exercise with little to no drama or problems.  There is but one exception.  In 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes was the Republican candidate and Samuel Tilden was the Democratic candidate.  In the election Tilden received 4,300,000 votes to Hayes 4,036,000 and it appeared as if Tilden had won, but controversy reared its ugly head.  There were contested electoral votes in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida.  To resolve the dispute, in January of 1877 Congress established an Electoral Commission.  The commission consisted of eight Republicans and seven Democrats.  The vote of the commission members was eight votes for Hayes and seven for Tilden.  The final electoral vote was 185 for Hayes to 184 for Tilden and that is how the nineteenth president of the United States was selected.  In addition to the efforts being taken by the Trump administration and his allies through the courts, there is also an attempt to influence Republican state legislatures in selective states, that Trump lost, to submit two sets of electors.  One set for the winner of the state, Biden, and one for Trump.  Congress would be the final arbitrator as was the case in 1876.  Let us hope beyond all hope that this does not occur.

 There is no acceptable evidence that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did not win the popular vote in states that gave them the requisite electoral votes.  I have maintained for most of my adult life that the Electoral College is a vestige of a bygone era.  It did serve a purpose in the developing years of this country, but, I believe, it has served its usefulness and run its course.  To the best of my knowledge, the United States is the only country that uses this system to elect the president and vice president.  Further, at all other levels of government it is the majority vote that selects the winner.  Indeed, I am aware that small states with less population would be affected but look at the underrepresentation in the senate as an example of the power that small states wield in this legislative body.  Each state has two senators; therefore, the senators from South Dakota have as much legislative influence as the senators from New York.  Numerically, there are more of the lesser populated states than those with larger populations, but the representation in the senate is the same.  Is this equitable?  It is time to step back and, objectively, evaluate the purpose and function of the electoral college system.  To be thrust into a situation like the country went through back in 1877 would be devastating to our constitutional system of government and our representative democracy.

 A final note is the failure of the administrator of the General Services Administration, Emily Murphy, to authorize the transition to take place.  Ms. Murphy was appointed to her position by the president and obviously has some measure of allegiance to him.  A function of her position is that she must ascertain the winner of the election by signing a letter to that effect which allows for the transition between the parties to occur.  The delay in authorizing the transition has serious implications for national security, but also can impact the distribution of vaccines, once they are available, to combat the coronavirus.  In a recent opinion piece by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post, he quoted the director of the center for public policy at the University of Virginia who stated that national security transitions are complicated and dangerous.  The director goes on to state: “It’s no coincidence that the Bay of Pigs in 1961, Black Hawk Down in 1993 and the 9/11 attacks all came during the first year of presidential terms”.  I am hopeful that the president will come to realize the absolute importance and necessity of sanctioning the transition to occur in a timely and orderly fashion

The fullness of life

I started this blog about two weeks ago, then took a bit of a detour to the local medical facility where I remained for a week.  Trying to get my thoughts back so I can complete this contribution to the ongoing annals of Flying with the crow.

The reality of death is the finality of it. Whether one’s belief structure includes “life in the hereafter” or not, the reality is that the person is gone and not to return.  That is final.  What remains are the memories of a life and an awareness of accomplishments, awakenings, and milestones.  As I reflect on the past few months, there have been the deaths of three individuals that I would like to highlight.  In my judgment, each of them was a giant at a time in the history of the country when there was a critical need for such individuals to come forward.  As I have written in the past, the 1950’s and 1960’s were a time of confrontation, conflict, and tumultuous interactions between individuals supporting different agendas.   Into this morass of dissent came three individuals from the most varied backgrounds, yet with a common theme to their message—doing what needed to be done to promote humanness, dignity and respect for all people.

In July of this year, Congressman John Lewis of Georgia died from the ravages of pancreatic cancer.  Mr. Lewis was born and raised in Troy, Alabama and became involved in the Civil Rights Movement in his early 20’s.  He was a close ally with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  He was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington in 1963 and was a lead organizer and participant in the march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965.  From that experience he was beaten and left with a fractured skull.  This latter event was the catalyst for the Voting Rights Bill passed by Congress and signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965.  Mr. Lewis was arrested on numerous occasions for his peaceful protests to advance the cause of equality for all.  From the time he was a young boy preaching to the chickens in the yard, the “boy from Troy”, was destined to leave his mark , not only in the civil rights movement, but throughout his efforts in Congress.  Characterized as the “Consciousness of the Congress” by politicians from both sides of the political spectrum, he never lost sight of championing the rights of all humankind.  John Lewis will be sorely missed, but there is a legacy that lives forever.

The local paper carried the headline, “Pioneering Justice dies”.  This captures the essence of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s contributions as a member of the Supreme Court of the United States.  Justice Ginsberg was truly a pioneer, especially in advancing the rights of women in this country.  Prior to being named to the court by President Bill Clinton in 1993, she had been recognized as the nation’s preeminent litigator for women’s rights.  Being the second woman named to the high court, she became the leader of the liberal bloc against an increasing conservative majority. One of her celebrated rulings led to women being allowed admission to the Virginia Military Institute—she wrote the majority opinion in the 7-1 decision.  Her interest in gender equality might well have grown out of her own experiences.  She graduated first in her law school class from Columbia, but when she applied for a clerkship with Just ice Fleix Frankfurter, she was denied because she was a woman.  The contributions made by the decisions supported by Justice Ginsberg will remain for generations to come, regardless of what might happen with the court’s composition.  Her legacy will live on.

Over the years, I have been involved with the Alabama Conference of Social Work and as we approached the 100th year of the organization’s existence, I offered to engage in an analysis of those 100 years.  The Conference had it’s beginning in 1916, thus the 100th year was 2016 and those 100 years were filled with an unbelievable amount of history, including world wars,  the great depression, a presidential assassination, a presidential resignation, and multiple movements, including the civil rights movement. In my preparations, a friend introduced me to the Rev. Robert Graetz and his wife Jean.  They came to Montgomery, Alabama in the mid 1950’s and Rev. Graetz was the pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church.  The church ministered to a black congregation and one of its members was Rosa Parks who became quite famous as a result of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  Rev. Graetz was the only white pastor in Montgomery to support the boycott, and spent his days driving people to work, to shop and to keep appointments.  Rev. Graetz was also the only white member of the Montgomery Improvement Association which grew out of the boycott.  The boycott lasted for a year and proved to be quite successful in leading to changes in some of the local ordinances that discriminated against black citizens.  The KKK bombed the Graetz home on two occasions, put sugar in the gas tank of their car and engaged in other acts of intimidation.  Rev. Graetz was described as “a man of peace, a gentle soul, and a fierce proponent of equal justice”.  Rev. Graetz died on September 20th following a long illness.  It was my distinct pleasure to meet him and his wife and, indeed, his legacy will live on.

Often, individuals seem to be larger in death than in life, but in the case of these three individuals I would argue that their lives were quite large and the contributions they made will live on.  Life is but a vapor and each person must decide how that life is to be lived before the vapor subsides.