Bigly debating the debate [Politics/1st Debate]

If all it took to do it is say it we could all be heroes.

Donald Trump said this about debating Hillary Rodham Clinton, "I think beating her in a debate would be one of the easy challenges of my life.” He made this comment to Greta Van Susteren back in 2015. What a difference an actual debate makes.

Is who won or lost is really in the eye of the beholder? People will see and/or believe what they want to believe, but there really is an objective answer to the question.

The real problem for Donald Trump is that he needed for there not to be any question as to who won. He needed to knock it out of the park! His personal narrative is that he doesn’t lose. He needed to be able to rub her nose in it after the dust settled since it was such an easy challenge for him. He is in adulation of himself and is the best at what he does so why prepare? It was obvious that she baited and rattled him. The only time I saw a break in her composure was when she had to tamp herself down when she realized how bigly badly he was doing. The problem for Donald Trump wasn’t just that he shot himself in the foot. The problem was he just kept doing it again and again.

I think it’s hard for some people to accept that a man who easily, and I do mean easily, waded through so many skilled adversaries in the Republican primaries, including a woman, came up so short against Hillary Clinton. It’s just salt in the wound that he was humiliated by a woman. He obviously wasn’t prepared. But to repeat a line used previously, “Well, that's Donald Trump." He should sue her for beating him. That would show her.

If he really believes that he won the debate why all the excuses afterwards? Immediately after the debate he claimed that he had a bad mic. What? I’ve watched the debate twice now and if he had a bad mic I couldn’t tell. But if he thinks he won does bad equipment really matter? At first he said that the moderator “…did a great job. Honestly, I thought he did a great job. I thought they [the questions] were very fair.” Then he had time to think about it. And suddenly Lester Holt “was fine. Nothing outstanding. I thought he gave me very unfair questions at the end - the last three, four questions." By the third day after the debate he came to the conclusion that it was rigged. "I had to put up with the anchor and fight the anchor all the time on everything I said. What a rigged deal." He may deny that he was even at the debate by the time I get this posted.

Nixon had his flop sweat and Donald Trump had his runny nose. What was with that anyway? Perhaps he was really sick and managed through sheer grit, courage and determination to make it through. Give the draft avoider a purple heart. He was wounded in debate. He would want a Medal of Honor.

Did he get asked the right questions? Did he get his message out? The country’s a mess. We need law and order. Everybody is beating us. Black people are living in hell. Jobs shouldn’t be sent away. HRC has done nothing for 30 years (or conversely, she has been fighting ISIS and losing for all of her adult life). People lie about him. His ten year old is good with computers. Stop and frisk minorities. HRC has been mean to him. The Latina was fat. Rosie had it coming to her. He solved the birther issue and people should thank him for it. I’m sure I’ve left out some of his deeper and more meaningful comments, like his thoughts on “cyber” and I would really like for someone to delve into that 400 pound hacker in bed answer. Where did that come from?  

The whole point about debate preparation is to prepare for whatever comes your way and have a way to work in the salient points that you want to make. I was asked a question once in a candidate forum and used the time to address a different issue. Another candidate asked the moderator if I was allowed to do that. (I had already done it.) The moderator said, “Yes. It’s his time. He can do whatever he wants with it.” I made the decision to get my position out on something that wasn’t being covered that I felt was important. It was a risk. It worked out. Since Trump didn’t bother answering some questions anyway, he passed up opportunities to talk about a number of his favorite things like building the big wall that Mexico is going to pay to for.  His supporters love that! Instead he wandered off mentally to talk about fat people. He really doesn’t like fat people. I don’t know if anyone has noticed but the man is a tad overweight himself. Just a tad. Just a little obese. Being a man of a certain age myself I know how that can happen.

He had the same time and opportunity to get his message out that Hillary Rodham Clinton did. Instead he gave rambling non-answers. It’s like when an attorney asks a question that gets overruled by the judge. They may get overruled but their question or statement is out there. Same thing applies here. Hillary consulted her internal memory, exercised her amazing powers of recall and answered the questions intelligently, getting her talking points across time and time again.

It seems that the intention of those managing Trump’s campaign is for him not to act like himself. They want him to act like someone that he isn’t in order to get those that are undecided to vote for him; to accept and vote for a false Donald Trump. So, I’m glad that he was unable to sustain acting reasonable. He more accurately portrayed his true persona and temperament for most of the debate. It’s being honest. He is unapologetic about who and what he is. He is the best Donald Trump in the world and she was laughing at his ineptness.

I may go ahead and watch the next debate because I don’t think that Hillary Rodham Clinton even got into her “A” material. The “who-won-the-debate-polls” are starting to come in now and it looks like Trump’s best chance of winning the next one is to have HRC thrown out. That could get ugly with a battle of the assigned Secret Service agents. One thing for sure. She will come prepared.

The two Great Commandments [Religion/Homosexuality]

          I don't want to start a war of scriptures here. I'm just sharing my guiding life verse, Matthew 22:34-40. "But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." For the quoted text I used the King James Version bible that my grandma gave to me so many decades ago.

If I hold to the above scripture it keeps life and what I'm supposed to do much simpler. Otherwise we quickly descend into interpretation, definitions, context and then what did the original Greek word mean. It just never ends. Scripture is hurled back and forth like word grenades. No quarter is given.

As an example, would it be neighborly or loving of me to call a gay neighbor an abomination? If that neighbor is a "None" (No religious affiliation) that I would like to talk with about Jesus, being saved and Christianity? That really wouldn't be a good way to start a conversation let alone build a neighborly relationship. The problem we have in building the faith is that MILLIONS of Christians are SHOUTING from the rooftops and the World Wide Web that gays are an abomination before God as well as citing any number of other hateful, non-loving scriptures to anyone that will listen.  

Churches are being busted up and/or closing over the issue of homosexuality. People are leaving the faith. Families are being torn up. In the United States, the Christian faith, based on the bible, declines in numbers with each passing year. People have made an idol of words. They worship the words.

There are some hard words in the bible. Real. Hard. That’s the truth of the matter. We have to live with that. But we do have the example of Jesus before us as well and those two great commandments. So would gay people be an abomination before Jesus? No. No, they would not.

Do we as Christians fulfill the second great commandment if we deny our neighbor a service like baking a cake for their wedding? Jesus would have baked them 2 cakes.  People will argue with that. People will argue with any number of simple acts of kindness and love. In the final analysis Jesus had a servant’s heart and encouraged the same in us.

We reduce arguments to niches, clichés and often make it personal. I read a comment that said if we want our nation to be Christian (I'm paraphrasing) then we need to stop voting for Liberals. Then we place people in niches as being conservative, right wing, left wing, liberal or some mix thereof.

If we’re going to use clichés and niches then Jesus would qualify as a bleeding heart liberal with the things that he says. At least that is what the Pharisees would say.  He put the poor waaaay before the rich. It seems I remember him telling some rich young guy to sell all his stuff and give it away. He didn’t. He liked his stuff. What would Jesus tell the “one percenters” of today to do with their incredible wealth?

I'm old enough to remember the time when people who were divorced were looked down upon by the church. (Some still do.) If Christianity hadn't loosened up as to the treatment of divorced couples the numbers of church members would have been decimated even further.

People can't talk me out of my faith. Even for the four decades that I didn’t go to church I never lost my faith. It’s like that for some of us.

The Nones may not even want me trying to talk them into the faith. That’s their call. That’s the way it works. But if I do try, I don’t plan to insult or vilify them first.

 So as believers we're stuck in a Catch 22 because we're supposed to talk about our faith; bring people to the faith. We certainly aren't supposed to deny it. That's why our actions, how we behave and what we say are so important. We have to look like we have something that people want, something that they can apply to their daily lives that will have relevancy; that will make them want to talk to us. Whether they talk with us or not we have done what we are supposed to do. We have served humanity and a higher purpose by looking past ourselves in the service to others. 

Shoot ‘em up [Politics/Guns]

First of all I want to say that I think it is fantastic that the NRA supports the rights of millions of Muslim American citizens to purchase and “Constitutional-carry” weapons.

Republican “leaders” like Senator Blunt and others are portraying a dire picture of the state of our government. Our Senate and House of Representatives both have Republican majorities and Republican leaders are telling us how bad things are and how screwed up government is. If they believe what they’re saying and I believe that they do then after decades in office they have proved that they are incapable of doing anything to fix the problems they perceive. They have nearly paralyzed government for the last eight years.

There’s a political ad on TV here in Missouri from Jason Kander showing him assembling a weapon blindfolded. He’s running for the U. S. Senate against Senator Roy Blunt. Blunt has held his seat in the Senate for 20 years. At the end of the ad Kander says that he would like to see Blunt do that. Senator Blunt avoided serving during the Viet Nam war with student deferments until he received a high lottery number. Kander is an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan. It’s a great ad.

It seems to be popular to campaign against people for trying to eliminate our right to bear arms if they supported any gun legislation short of making it mandatory to own one. I’m okay with limiting the rights of some people to bear arms, like some convicted felons, terrorists or those advocating the violent overthrow of our government. There are people that would take issue with any exclusion or proposed change to gun laws due to there being some Citizens Against Virtually Everything.

Years ago when I served as a councilman for a small city in Kansas we would on occasion have to pass an ordinance raising or lowering a speed limit. In either case our goal wasn’t to eliminate speed limits or reduce the speed limit to zero. The council had the desire and intent to make streets safer.

We’re a nation awash in weapons. Those who own guns tend to own several. We aren’t even close to losing our 2^nd Amendment rights unless you’re a subscriber to extremist propaganda that we need weapons to fight against our own military and government. We enjoy more rights now in regards to guns that we have ever had in the past.

When I served as a Drill Instructor we had trainees who really didn’t seem to know for sure which end of the weapon the bullets came out, judging by the way they waved them around. They pointed loaded weapon indiscriminately.  I had a guy who was so dangerous with a weapon even after training that I took his remaining ammunition away from him halfway through a live fire combat training course.

Jason Kander’s history is not a problem for me and I do not put any political party before my country when I vote. I am interested in seeing some checks and balances and one way to bring about a better government is to vote out those who haven’t been up to the task. For these and other reasons I am voting for Jason Kander.

Saddle up! [Immigration]

Grab your guns and saddle up! Circle the wagons! The immigrants are coming! Raise the drawbridge! Man the barricades! Close the gates! Build a wall! The shields are down! The immigrant hordes are at the door! They’re pouring through! Build a wall between us and Mexico! (1,989 miles) OMG! They’re digging tunnels! Deploy the anti-tunnel counter measures! Send out the armada, they’re coming up the coastline! (95,000 miles) Wait they’re coming through the Canadian border! Build another wall! (5,525 miles)

Sweet Jesus! There are 330 million legal crossings yearly between the United States and Mexico! Frisk them all! Stop legal crossings! We can’t trust the Mexicans! 300,000 people cross the Canadian border each day! Do we really trust the Canadians to do their job? A lot of them speak French! There are over 65 million tourists a year coming to America! We don’t know these people! They’re foreigners!

They aren’t our kind. Vet ‘em all!

I don’t believe that I have ever used this many exclamation points in a writing and I haven’t even talked about the number of refugees that want to come here! You know, people fleeing for their lives from various countries and all the continents. Well, except for Antarctica unless we count some penguins. I like penguins. They’re cute little buggers and walk funny. They walk like they’ve got all the time in the world unlike the starving refugees. People in a hurry can be so rude…but I digress.

 Lumping all people into categories like “immigrants” or “refugees” makes things easier than having to list them (or think of them) by color, age, gender, religious affiliation and geographical origins. It dehumanizes the huddled desperate masses to terms that we can deal with dispassionately. It gets too personal if we have to start thinking of them as people, families, individuals, teenagers, children, adults, seniors.

It’s easier for us if we just call them terrorists, criminals, rapists (They’re coming to defile our women!), ignorant, uneducated, disease-ridden, “not us”, dangerous people. That they’re the smallest of percentage of any group of people is immaterial. Stop them all. Put them in camps.

I have an idea that might help. How about we just let in the gardeners, restaurant workers, hotel workers, janitors and domestics? Oh wait! They’re already hear. Millions upon millions of them in all across the nation. Some of them are even watching our children. Some of them are doctors. Some are college educated. Good lord they’re in every walk of life. Some of them even go to churches here. They almost sound like a category of regular people.

There was an opportunity before WWII to make a difference and the free world took a pass like it’s doing now until it was almost too late. Eleven million Jews, Roma Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled, Poles (Hitler really had it in for the Poles), mentally infirm, the racially “inferior”, degenerates, Jehovah Witnesses, Catholic Priests, Christian Pastors and other innocents were killed.  

We have an opportunity to save refugees that are being slaughtered in the Middle East. There’s a new list. They’re the wrong kind of Muslim, Yazidi, Christian, Baha’i, homosexual - or just pick one - and are being killed for it. Think of it. A Christian nation that won’t even take in Christians. A Christian nation that turns away children. A Christian nation that breaks up families. This election should prove beyond a shadow of doubt that we are NOT a Christian nation. BTW We already have the camps – and they aren’t full of white people.

A would-be tyrant is waiting in the wings ready to take the stage. He’s already told us his plans. And millions of people love him for it. He’s going to make America great. It’s going to be a different kind of great. Like Fascist “great”.

Or, we could renew the vow of the lady in the harbor.

The new McCarthyism [Immigration]

There is just so much sadness combined with hate and evil actions.

One horrific attack after another. From single to multiple fatalities. How important are the numbers and classifications to the dead as the event is defined by the living?

One of the questions of late to be asked is, “Did an immigrant do it?” Why? Would it somehow be better if a Christian or atheist had done the slaughtering instead? Would that somehow make it easier to live with, tolerate or understand? Are the dead from the Planned Parenthood killings in Colorado Springs somehow easier to tolerate because the numbers are smaller and a Muslim wasn’t involved? They’re just as dead and it’s just as sad for those who mourn them.

Is there a need to have one group or another deemed guilty in order to validate already held beliefs? Do the same rules apply to all unique groups? Is it an indictment of all white people when one commits a crime or a terrorist act?

Will an immigrant or immigrants commit terrorist acts in this country or be guilty of committing crimes? Yes, of course. Unfortunately, that’s humanity. We can accept that just as we can accept that a Christian or Christians along with any other group that you can think of will also commit crimes as well heinous acts of slaughter and barbarism. Everybody falls into some category or classification.

Evil is where you find it. Evil is amongst us. Evil doesn’t discriminate.

Want to find evil people in your neighborhood? Go to local government web sites and do a search for sex offenders and you will find thousands upon thousands of them scattered throughout the land. Is the first question to ask, “How many of them are immigrants”? Sadly, it would be for some people these days. (Incidentally, the vast majority won’t be.)

I lived in a small town where a serial killer lived. He was a white church-goer. I had visited with him on numerous occasions. There was no clue as to how depraved he was. He had been in our home. Evil can be like that. Cold. Ruthless. Calculating. Casual. Undetectable. Sometimes evil is casual or accidental as in “friendly fire”. Being such doesn’t make it good or all right.

When a wedding party, hospital or some group of innocents is wiped out by a Hell Fire missile fired from a drone, is the first question asked, “Did a Muslim do it?” In the Mideast the question more likely to be asked is, “Did the Americans do it?” If it’s an accident does that make it somehow better because there’s an explanation? “Oops, our bad!”

Evil acts happen. I think a better question to ask is, “Did a human do it?” That’s our basic shared profile.

I couldn’t help but notice that some of those murdered in San Bernardino were immigrants. So are those opposed to immigrants sad that immigrants died? Is it okay to be sad yet still want to condemn immigrants of any nationality to places where such acts are a daily occurrence?

Now I’m hearing people say that it isn’t enough to just wipe out the terrorists. Their families have to be wiped out as well. Somehow we always end up with those willing to kill children and babies because after all they grow up. How about you? Are you personally willing to kill a child? Or is it only okay if someone else does the dirty work so that you have plausible deniability, don’t have to see it or think about it? Or do we only have to kill children of a certain age? Should we just send babies and young children under some arbitrary cutoff date to a potential terrorist holding center then kill them on their birthday when they reach the acceptable age to be terminated?

McCarthyism saw the threat of communism everywhere. So many lives were destroyed over absolutely nothing. It would have been nice this time around if we had done what the lady in the harbor says instead of talking about building walls and rounding people up. It’s just sad that so many people are willing to be the very things that we aren’t supposed to stand for as a nation, as believers, as non-believers and as decent moral human beings.

How about we accept what is inevitable; evil acts will take place. We are at war and have been for quite some time.  How about instead we attempt to hang onto our humanity and do what’s decent rather than try and determine what level of torture is acceptable.

There are always “Citizens Against Virtually Everything” (CAVE). Just pick anything and there’s a guarantee that there are probably a substantial number of people against it. It’s human nature.

In World War II there were those who opposed accepting Jewish immigrants. There were those who opposed the United States getting involved in the war in Europe. There was support for incarcerating citizens of Japanese descent. An entire classification of citizens was thrown in camps because of fear. The fear was justifiable. The action was not. It was against our constitution.

In the United States we have a history of committing horrible acts against humanity and feeling sorry about it years later. From slaughtering the indigenous population, to slavery, to the Japanese concentration camps. People will say, “Not my fault!” and that is true.  But the history remains.

The CAVE people will always be with us. They are not going to change their minds. I’m not interested in even trying to change the hard liners at either end of the spectrum. Their lines in the sand are drawn. No surrender. No compromise. However there are those whose humanity is still open to question and change. We also have a history of doing the right thing at times.

Since biblical times walls have been proven not to work. Not physical walls or walls that we put around our hearts. Ignorance is a wall. Hate is a wall. Fear is a wall. Walls won’t stop the ocean or tides of humanity. Determined intruders will still make it inside.

Walls are barriers to resolutions.

Good is where you find it. Good is amongst us. Good doesn’t discriminate. Then just take out one “o” if you’re of the faith. God is where you find it. God is amongst us. God doesn’t discriminate.  It’s a choice. The world is full of decent human beings. They are in the majority.

It seems to me that quite often the question to ask of any given act, decision or policy is, “Is this moral?” As for Christians, shouldn’t we be asking, “What would Jesus do?”

Being Presidential, [Politics]

Staying true to his nature, Donald Trump recently made the comment that Hillary Rodham Clinton didn’t look Presidential. It may have been intended as an insult but I think that he also has acknowledged with his comment that being Presidential is important. Being Presidential involves something much deeper than appearance. Being the role model and representative for our nation requires substance, strength of character, intellect and the ability to make decisions that will benefit not just citizens but all humanity, as well as the core values of our nation.

In some ways this election makes me think of the movie “Being There” Peter Sellers played the character of Chauncey “Chance” Gardner. It is another of my favorite movies. Chance ends up on the streets and through chance ends up in a powerful position. There’s no delicate way to say this; Chance was a simple man. His intellect was not deep. He was illiterate. He was exactly what he presented to the world. It was the desire of others that made him so much more in their eyes. They reinterpreted and redefined what he was. Ultimately though he was what he was. Chance the gardener. At the end of the movie there was talk about running him for President. If you haven’t seen the movie give it a try. It’s a great movie.

When Donald Trump claimed that he would end up with 95% of the black vote Mike Pence, his running mate, said while laughing, “Well, that's Donald Trump." when told of the comment.  And yet he’s polling in the single digits with black voters. I believe that sums up the character of the man quite succinctly. Life imitating art.

I want to give just a couple of quick examples to illustrate the point that I’m getting at.

He’s a draft avoider yet he denigrated POWs and belittled Gold Star parents. “Well, that's Donald Trump."

He’s insulting and abusive to _____________ (Fill in the blank). “Well, that's Donald Trump."

He brags that he’s a multi-billionaire that says he gives millions to charity but won’t release his tax returns. “Well, that's Donald Trump."

In the primary campaign he claimed he had a large penis because he had large hands. “Well, that's Donald Trump."

He has a perfect memory except when he’s giving a deposition for court and can’t remember yet he made fun of a disabled reporter for not remembering. “Well, that's Donald Trump."

He has ownership of his history. He is what he is and is any of that Presidential? Think of him as a role model and leader of the free world continuing to do the same things as President. Remember, he has said that he isn’t going to change. To change would mean that he wouldn’t be Donald Trump and he loves Donald Trump.

Our nation can’t afford several bankruptcies. We had a hard time surviving the economic collapse that we just went through.

We’d have a President who likes other men seeing his wife Melania naked. (I don’t want to give the impression that I think there’s anything wrong with Melania having posed for nude photos. The human form is beautiful in all its manifestations. What I object to is Trump’s lasciviousness and the gratification he apparently gets from having other men envy him and covet his wife. I also believe he and his followers would be as outraged by nude photos of First Lady Michelle Obama showing up as they are proud of Melania’s.) That’s where we are and “Well, that's Donald Trump.".

I think that Donald Trump believes the things that he says even when there isn’t the remotest chance that they are true and no matter how outlandish. Even if he later contradicts himself, or if what he says now contradicts something he said earlier. If he said it then it is true and there’s no backing down. He lives in the moment.

Trump’s history, actions and utter lack of qualifications are not what those that vote for him care to see. I don’t believe that it’s because he’s anti-establishment either. That’s what people used to say about hippies but they didn’t support one for President. Trump hob-knobbed with the Washington elite and brags about buying politicians. He is tied in with the bankers that crashed the country. That doesn’t make a person an outsider. That makes a person one of the ultimate insiders, buying favors. Electing him President would put the fox firmly in the hen house.

Whether anyone likes it or not Donald Trump has become the “Great White Hope” of the political world. His followers are predominantly white. His national following among minorities is miniscule. Those are his demographics. How many of his followers are white supremacists? How many are homophobic? How many are misogynists? How many are immigrants? How many are Christian or any other religion?  Again, I don’t know. Half? 35%? We do know that he has their support.

They, his supporters, either identify with his vulgarity or simply pass it off as him being Donald Trump. They view him through rose-colored glasses and see him as a man that speaks to their fears. He can part the ocean, turn the tide. They seem to believe that he has to have depth but we just can’t see it. He might be a bully but he seems to be willing to bully the ones that they fear.

Trump said “I would bomb the shit out of ‘em (ISIS) and his followers cheered.  The fact that our nation and others are already bombing “the shit out of ‘em” and have reduced entire cities to rubble is immaterial. He said it and, “Well, that's Donald Trump." Their guy said it. Trump was born to privilege and luxury the average white person can’t identify with but nevertheless would find desirable.  What he says is what they identify with. The fact that his wife has some nude woman on woman pictures in her past is really just icing on the cake for some of the guys.

So here in the real world we have a for real live Chauncey Gardner only he happens to be a billionaire, he has millions of followers and is positioned to be the next President of the United States. It isn’t a laughing matter. 

Taking Dad Home [Life Story]

My Dad was always a home town boy and all his life went back to the little town of Liberal, Missouri on a regular basis. He seemed to know everyone in town. He left from there to serve his country during WWII. He started his married life from there. Most of his family was still in the area. I had grown up used to making weekend trips to see both sets of grandparents, thinking even then how lucky I was to have all of them in the same home town along with a few aunts, uncles and cousins as well. 

I carry a lot of memories about Liberal.

When I was a young boy Dad and Granddad would take me for a walk. Granddad on one side smoking his pipe, Dad on the other with me a tow-headed boy in between holding their callused hands. All I needed was a slingshot stuck in my pocket and we would have made a Norman Rockwell painting.

In reality I was just cover, an excuse to leave the house so that they could go to the pool hall over on Main Street. For me it was a wonderland. I would stand by the pool table staring up at those big schooners of golden liquid. Sometimes I would even be given a sip! At times I would go and watch Granddad and the other older men play dominoes or checkers. These were serious games and played fast from years of experience and perfection.

Now, what kind of dad takes a boy that young to a pool hall? What kind of business lets a youngster of tender age come inside? Well, I was Homer’s boy and it was a different place and time. He was also the kind of dad and man that would find Jesus in later years and give his son the opportunity to find him as well. (But that’s another story.) He taught respect and life’s lessons by example and showed that life is what you make of it.

One of our trips in our adult years was to attend the funeral of Mom’s mother. After the funeral Dad rode back home with me. I have forgotten the reason there were just the two of us. He started telling me a story about Liberal.

He told me that the last few times that he went to Liberal there was a young boy in white overalls following him around.  He saw the boy at all his old favorite places to play.  He said that the boy would hide behind trees, jump fences, etc.

I noticed that he seemed to be deep in thought while he was telling me about the boy.  I told him that it wasn’t too surprising for him to be seeing a boy doing the same kinds of things that he did because Liberal is a pretty small town and that he shouldn’t worry about the boy following him around.

Dad was quiet for a long time before he said, “You don’t understand, Son.  That boy I’m seeing is me.”

I didn’t think yet that he was being literal but just to make sure I queried, “You mean he looks like you?”

“No, son. I mean the boy is me.”

We just kind of let that hang there.  Dad was absolutely not given to say things like that.

The next thing he said to me I will always remember.  He said, “Son, if something happens to me I want to be buried in Liberal.  I don’t care what you have to do to get me there.  Drive me down sitting in the seat beside you if you have to but get me to Liberal.”

I told him I would.  The call to return home can be powerful.

Two weeks after getting back home I received one of those calls in the morning at work that you never want to get. The foreman came out on the shop floor to the machine that I was working on and told me that my dad had been taken to the hospital. He had had another heart attack. That was all the information that he had.

Afterwards I learned that his attack occurred at the little self-service laundry that he and Mom owned.  He had been working on one of the washing machines, stopped, took a nitro pill and hopped up on one of the folding tables and sat there swinging his legs.  I had seen him do that a hundred times when his heart would bother him. Only this time he just laid over.

He had had a couple of heart attacks and finally couldn’t go back to work.  My folks bought the laundry to keep him from driving the rest of us crazy.  He had worked hard all of his life and just sitting around was just not in his game plan.

I don’t even remember running to the parking lot, jumping into the car and taking off. The first thing I remember is that I was heading for the hospital as fast as the car would go. The road into town had a section where it abruptly dropped to a lower level. When I hit that section I went airborne. All wheels off the ground.

Time seemed to stand still and to this days words are inadequate to explain what took place. It was like a wind blew through every fiber of my being. It was like I was seeing a star-filled night sky and being pulled into it but not. It was a powerful communication. It’s hard to describe. There were no words spoken but rather they were understood. I was told that Dad was gone and to slow down. There was a glimpse of vastness and a kind of light beyond my comprehension around that voice. It was a calm presence.

Then the wheels touched down and I was back to a very fast reality. The rest of my trip to the hospital was at a more sedate speed. I arrived at the hospital and was taken right to a small waiting room. Most of my family was already there.

Mom looked at me and said, “Your Dad is gone.”  I replied, “I know, Mom.”  The chaplain said, “Now we don’t know that yet; they’re still working on him.”  The chaplain left and came back after a while with the official news that Dad didn’t make it. They gave us some time with him before we left.

We were home that afternoon and Mom was trying to figure out what to do.  I discovered that even with Dad having serious heart problems for such a long time they had never talked about final arrangements.  I said, “We’ll bury him in Liberal,” and told her of my conversation with Dad a couple of weeks prior.

So, just as he wanted, we took Dad home to his beloved town and laid him to rest surrounded by his history, secure in the faith of a life well lived. 

My Tipi Sabbatical [Life story]

Back during the summer of 2012 I had been caring full-time for my father-in-law, Paul, for almost 10 years. I finally reached a point where I had come up against a wall and desperately needed a respite. Paul came to live with us in 2003. He had Parkinson’s disease and it was no longer safe for him to live on his own. The level of care he needed was continually escalating. Shelley, my wife, agreed with me that I needed a break and my brother Kim would help her care for him while I took off for a few days. My plan was to pray and meditate at my cousin’s place at Table Rock Lake, not far from Shell Knob, Missouri.

Ready to leave, I had my suitcase completely packed. When I went back to get it to load it into the car I forgot that I hadn’t zipped it up yet. I picked it up and dumped everything on the floor. Not an auspicious start. Then on my way out of town I decided to gas up. Try as hard as I could the access door to the gas cap wouldn’t open, no matter how many times I pushed the release button on the dash. Just as I was thinking that I was going to have to take a chance on breaking the switch or physically pry open the door to the gas cap I realized that the trunk was wide open! The switch to open the trunk was right next to the switch that opened the door to the gas cap.

My cousins have a place right at the edge of the lake. On their property they have a for real full-scale, traditional tipi. This is where I planned to sweat, meditate and pray. There was a drought that summer so in addition to taking care of some prayer requests I also intended to pray for rain. My main prayer, though, was to have the strength, patience and ability to continue taking care of Paul. We all knew what his prognosis was too well. He was going to get worse. A lot worse.

The first time I went to the tipi my cousin LeAnn had some trepidation. Mainly she didn’t want to send me home…you know…dead from heat stroke. I could see the front porch of their house through the open flap of the tipi. Periodically before I settled into a nice meditative state I would see her coming out to check on me. For some reason when Shelley’s not around people seem to think that I need extra watching.

I finally did hit a transcendent state. That doesn’t happen for me very often. While I was praying for rain I felt drops falling on my face. It took a bit for it to sink in that it was raining on my face. You might remember that I said I was inside the tipi. I opened my eyes and looked up. Though I wasn’t sitting underneath the vent opening, the rain was swirling down in such a fashion that it came down on my face. I looked outside through the opening and could see rain hitting the ground. It was so dry that the raindrops made little puff clouds of dust as they hit the ground. It only rained for about 30 seconds. I kind of wished that I had prayed for a specific amount of rain.

Unsure of what to do next, I decided to pray some more even though I had been sweating in there for over an hour already. So, I closed my eyes again and prayed about what I should do next. A few minutes into prayer I again felt something on my face. I opened my eyes and discovered that I was covered with granddaddy long legs spiders. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor with my back against a seat. The seat was covered as well. Nothing else. Now normally I would have been freaked out by this but as it was I was utterly calm. It was time to leave.

I went into the tipi other times but I never reached that wonderful state of calm and acceptance again, though I did sweat a lot. That isn’t a bad thing if one of your goals is to do that very thing. People pay good money to go places to sweat and I was doing it for free and having a pretty good time to boot on the hot summer day that the Lord provided.

All good things have their time and at last I had to return home after being well cared for by all my cousins. On the way home I was having major trouble staying awake. Probably all the carb loading that I had done during my stay was making me drowsy. When I say drowsy I mean slap yourself in the face to keep from nodding off while you’re driving drowsy. Not good.

I pulled over at a rest stop not far from Parsons, Kansas. I thought that if perhaps I could just get 20 minutes of nap I could make it on home to Park City, just north of Wichita, KS. Unfortunately I was low on gas and couldn’t leave the car running with the a/c on. I tried resting on a bench underneath some shade trees at the rest stop but it was just too hot. My only option was to get on down the road. I figured that I could make it to Fredonia, only another half-hour away and where I planned on gassing up.

I pulled over again to the side of the road as I was leaving the rest stop and prayed, “Lord, I’m in trouble here and I can’t stay awake. I need your help to safely make it home.”

With more face slapping I made it to the gas station outside of Fredonia. While I was gassing up I was absorbed with my thoughts of what do I do next because I really needed to make it back that day. People were counting on my return to take care of Paul. Shelley had to go back to work and Kim was taking care of our mother at the family home as well as helping Shelley, so he was carrying a heavy load.

The next thing I knew someone was tapping me on the shoulder and talking. I turned and there was this face just inches away from mine and he was jabbering. All that I could really make out is that he was calling me “Boss” every few words. He was standing way inside my physical comfort zone. I asked him to step back and let me finish gassing up, then we would talk.

After I finished I sized him up. He was a young, long-haired guy dressed up in something that looked very much like a toga. Back in the day he would have been called a hippie. (I was one for a while.) He was driving an old beat-up van and wanted to know if he could trade some jewelry that his wife had made for some gas. His story was that they were musicians and headed to a church in Wichita where his wife’s dad was a pastor. I told him that while I didn’t need any jewelry, I would give them enough gas to get to Wichita. He thanked me profusely.

After taking care of them at the gas pump I went inside and picked up some munchies for the rest of the trip home. I couldn’t get the whole incident out of my mind. It was just so unusual. I was just outside of Augusta and about half an hour from home, when it dawned on me that I hadn’t been drowsy even once since my stop. One of my many prayers had already been answered, just not in a way that I expected.

I made it back to Shelley and Paul feeling renewed. And we did make it all the way with him on his life’s journey. There were more tough times but we knew that God was with us every step of the way.

Word grenades [Culture]

Grenades are a throw and duck weapon. They are indiscriminant. They can cause injuries from minor to lethal. A person can't throw a grenade far enough to escape the harm-causing zone. That’s why a grenade is thrown from behind cover when possible. 

The definition for word grenades would be much the name. There are major differences of course. The injuries are not physical, though there are those who have been bullied to commit suicide or incited to commit harm.

The internet has provided for an explosion in communication and the distribution of ideas and information. Unfortunately an incredible amount of damage can be done as well. People’s lives are being destroyed by social media on a regular basis. False or misleading information is produced and distributed in prodigious amounts through social media like facebook and web sites. Throw into this mix malicious web sites trying to extract information, damage software or compromise people’s computers for nefarious purposes. And there are also the digital vandals that screw things up just because they can; driven by the same behavior that has some people spray painting on walls.

It would have been nice if social media could have become a place to exchange views freely without all the name calling and vulgarity. With each passing day social media becomes more toxic, polluted and divisive. It’s like people are being driven into digital enclaves where they can freely associate with their own kind simply by unfollowing or unfriending those with differing views. Social media quite often assumes a lynch mob mentality where word grenades are freely tossed.

Facebook may be social but it isn't always a friendly place and it gets less friendly with each passing day. An awful lot of the time it’s just plain hostile. I have noticed that people, including myself, will say things or post hurtful things on fb that they would never dream of saying or doing in most physical world associations. It's like we feel that we're anonymous on fb yet posting as ourselves. Sitting by ourselves in front of our computers or using our various devices to communicate emboldens us. We produce or pass along content and suddenly hundreds, thousands or more see it. Go viral and we’ve hit the Bigs!

There seems to be a lot less inclination to be civil or circumspect with our words. It’s easier to be witty or witless depending upon one’s perspective. I miss open civil discourse where there can be passionate disagreement without the descent into personal pejorative-laden argument where any insights can be quickly lost. We lose the possibility of some new consideration being brought to the table in the kinds of exchanges that pass for communication in the word bite- and meme-driven world of the internet.

There doesn’t appear to be anything too personal and nothing so sacred that it can’t be posted or attacked in hateful terms. From mocking people’s appearance to their beliefs; from the trivial to the sacred is fair game. Family stuff that used to only be shared in private is now aired publically. Facebook is very public regardless of what so-called privacy settings are used. I have under-developed thought filters. I overshare. I think I was born this way. I’m trying to cut back. I’ll fail.

Disagree with someone or a particular post and “you” are not just stupid you’re a special kind of stupid. Meaning that you’re a special kind of stupid in a generic non-threatening kind of non-personal way in a post sent out to all of your “friends”. Except they really do mean you.

We friend people without considering if their social operating system may be vastly different than our own. In the real world we tend to hang with those that we’re compatible with. Social media is a whole different animal yet we post as if we’re sharing with kindred spirits (but not really). We post regardless of hurting feelings or stepping on toes.

We should skip hurling pejoratives at those with opposing views. We have the ability to take our criticisms, conversations, postings, etc. to a higher level. Yes, the shrill from the right and the left have every right to express their views however they see fit. They will continue their spew 24/7. We have the right and obligation as citizens not to pander to the lowest common denominator. We have the right to not be their audience and to deny them a broader audience by not passing along their hate as if it were our own.

It isn't just the parties of the extremes that have been compromised. It is the heart of the United States of America as well. (I used the whole name because of the "United" part.)

Fear should not be our guide to a better future. Fear will not lead us to a better place. We do need to acknowledge it and question if it’s real and then deal with it with all the courage we can muster.

We need to reach a place where we are at least the united United States when it comes to taking care of the best interests of humanity. A nation where people's hands aren't tied behind their backs with paperwork and with political theater preventing them from doing what is right. A nation where love and compassion are shown to those least able to take care of themselves. A nation that ministers to the poor; puts them first at the table. A nation that cares for children today while planning their better future without one excluding the other.

Dad’s right arm [Religious]

Many of us have “touchstone” memories that can take us back to a special place and time in our hearts. Here lately I find that I have these more frequently as I look back on my life.

My dad provided many of those moments. I had a great dad. He was a warrior. He was a guy; a WWII Battle of the Bulge veteran. He was short physically but tall in stature. He worked hard and took care of his family as best he could, even working a second job on weekends driving a milk route. He also made sure that we went to church.

When I was a teenager, I became concerned about salvation and my immortal soul and I had begun bugging my folks and pastor with “age of accountability” questions such as, if a person knew they were going to die was there still time to be saved. I was intrigued with the whole “death bed confession at the last minute possibility” as a fall back insurance policy for getting into heaven.

I pestered them for weeks with my salvation questions. Finally in exasperation our pastor, Reverend Bolton, said, “Look, if you’re asking the question then you’ve already answered it”. This was not the answer that I was looking for. However, I was perfectly willing to let the matter rest for a while.

Then the church we attended happened to have a revival. So my dad took me with him one evening. It was one rip-snorting, serious, fire and brimstone, come-to-Jesus kind of revival, altar calls and all. Still, I have to admit that as a teenager my mind wandered. Then I was hearing the preacher wrapping up by telling everyone to bow their heads and pray. He was saying that it didn’t look like anyone was coming forward that evening and we were going to finish up, unless even one person wanted us to keep going. I was practically home free! He asked that if anyone wanted us to keep going because they felt someone could be saved would they please raise their hand.

The pew Dad and I were sitting in was tightly packed. I was to his left, head bowed along with everyone else. As the preacher asked if we should continue, my shoulders and upper body shifted to the left. The preacher then said to the crowd that we had a winner and would continue. (Those were not his exact words.) He continued preaching and we continued praying. Nothing. He stopped and asked us all to bow our heads again. Same question. Same response. I shifted to the left again.

You have probably guessed what was happening, but it may bear mentioning that there were those in the family that considered me to be a little thick-headed. This same scenario went down a third time before it dawned on me that my dad was the one raising his hand and that action was what was causing me to shift to the left. My exact thought at the time was, “Oh, Jiminy! Dad is going to have these people here all night if I don’t find Jesus.”

To this day, the thought of my dad’s faith makes me teary-eyed. Because I did find Jesus that night. My dad had faith. That whole congregation had faith. They didn’t leave. The preacher didn’t give up and Reverend Bolton ended up baptizing me.

A couple of years later Dad had a heart attack. He fell to the floor in his bedroom. He wasn’t breathing and was turning blue. A couple of weeks earlier I had learned how to provide mouth to mouth resuscitation. I worked on Dad. I didn’t give up, just like he hadn’t given up on my finding salvation. We had him for another wonderful decade before another heart attack took him home. Saving my dad’s life, though, doesn’t compare to what he did for me.

That anchor point of faith got me through a lot of tough times over the years. Though I drifted from the church for 40 years, I never drifted from my faith and belief in God. When I served in Korea it was that faith that led me through the dark. I held onto it through divorce, single parenthood, caregiving, loss and all the other events we go through in a life’s arc.

Faith has been there for the good times as well. It has helped me find the community of church again and the love of a good woman as well as to appreciate my many small blessings. My hope is that if being a Christian becomes a crime there will be enough evidence to convict me.

Thanks, Pop.