She pretty much nails it…
A Good Time at Uncle Mike’s House
Robin and I have a very fond memory of a night and a morning that we spent at Joe Mike’s House. It was after Sue had passed away and he was staying in the house while her kids figured out what to do with it. Robin and had taken our first extended trip together. We had been down to Mississippi and across to Florida during the week of 4th of July. As they say, we had and were having an excellent time.
We wanted to stop and visit in Owensboro. We arrived there late, never thinking about it being hard to find a motel room. What we did not know was that the large hotel on the river had closed down, and all the other 
motels were full.
We decided to venture over to Uncle Mike’s even though it was close to one in the morning. Before I went and knocked on the door I got a bottle of rum out of trunk (remember we were on vacation) as a peace offering. I knocked on the door several times, each time progressively louder. I could not rouse anyone in the house. Remembering that the bedroom was at the side of the house I went to that window. I called Mike’s name a few times and finally heard a commotion in the bedroom. I went back onto the porch expecting a friendly greeting by my Uncle. Instead there was a wild man at the door with a baseball bat.
After our initial shocks, we greeted. We then sat on that sweet porch drinking rum and cokes until 2 or 3 in the morning. I am not sure what we talked about, probably our travels.
What makes this story special for us, besides the good time on the porch is what happened the next morning. Not having any other bed, Robin and I slept on a twin bed in the back bedroom. Even though we had been dating a few months I had never told her that I loved her. In telling someone that, it is a huge commitment and carries with it a tremendous responsibility. At least it should. I hugged her that next morning and said, “I’ve loved you for a while now, but I was afraid of the responsibility of that.” Or something to that effect.
I’ve been loving her quite a while now.
US Constitution – Links to document and audio book – Less than one hour of your time
There a couple foundational documents that many Americans cite as absolute truisms. One is the Bible, Old and New Testament. The other is the Constitution of the United States. Yet when you get to quizzing folks, the actual count of who has read either one of these documents in totality is not staggeringly impressive.
According to one survey, Americans Love the Bible but Don’t Read It Much , showed only 20 percent read the Bible regularly.
“Results of a nationwide survey released Thursday by the Center for the Constitution at James Madison’s Montpelier show 86 percent of respondents recognize the importance of the document, the 223-year-old framework for American government. Thirty-one percent say they think they understand the Constitution “a lot” and 48 percent say they understand “some” of it. But only 28 percent say they’ve read all of the document, and 14 percent say they’ve read most of it, according to a report by Sean O’Brien, executive director at the Orange, Va., center.”
I can understand the Bible to some extent. It is long, dense and arcane. I once had very “religious” person tell me that he did not need to read the Bible. If there was something in there he needed to know his preacher would tell him. Okay.
The United States Constitution is not long, dense or arcane. It is not any more a perfect document than is the Bible. If nothing else counting people of color as three fifths of a person for the purpose of congressional representation would toss the Constitution from that category. Continue reading “US Constitution – Links to document and audio book – Less than one hour of your time”
Matt Damon reading Howard Zinn speech
If I think too much about how the world really is, I crawl into bed and cannot get out.
A Southern, Jewish Tradition
My Yankee wife has cooked me another traditional Southern meal to bring in the New Year. We had black-eye peas, turnip greens, rice and corn bread. It took a while to get her to cook cornbread the “right” way. First time she served me cornbread I thought it was cake. Now she makes it in a cast iron skillet with yellow cornmeal, and it is not sugary sweet.
Traditionally, black-eye peas are for good luck and greens are to bring wealth. There are more than a few theories about why this combination. The one I like best is “Eat poor on New Year’s, and eat fat the rest of the year.”
One I did not know about is the tradition of black-eye peas dates back 500 years to the Talmud:
“According to a portion of the Talmud written around 500 A.D., it was Jewish custom at the time to eat black-eyed peas in celebration of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It’s possible that the tradition arrived in America with Sephardic Jews, who first arrived in Georgia in the 1730s.”
And as Tevye would say, “Tradition.” Southern, Jewish or otherwise, tradition makes the world go round and helps to keep us grounded.
So It Goes
Robin sings in the choir at The Center for Spiritual Living here in St. Louis. They tend to end meditative/pray moments with the saying, “And so it is.” This sounded familiar to me and then I realized it is very, very close to Kurt Vonnegut’s famous saying, “So it goes.”
“Unlike many of these quotes, the repeated refrain from Vonnegut’s classic Slaughterhouse-Five isn’t notable for its unique wording so much as for how much emotion—and dismissal of emotion—it packs into three simple, world-weary words that simultaneously accept and dismiss everything. There’s a reason this quote graced practically every elegy written for Vonnegut over the past two weeks (yes, including ours): It neatly encompasses a whole way of life. More crudely put: “Shit happens, and it’s awful, but it’s also okay. We deal with it because we have to.”
~~ from an article by By Tasha Robinson, Kyle Ryan, Josh Modell, Noel Murray & Scott Gordon 15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will
Rev. Joe Loses His Tonsils
I’ve been telling this story off and on for years. I told it again today then I started thinking about a deeper meaning to the story. I decided it was really a story about trust.
At whatever time you are learning your multiplication table, I needed to get my tonsils taken out. This was the T&A operation, tonsils and adenoids, which used to be so common to us children of the 50s. I do not remember a whole lot of explanation as why I was going to the hospital except it was to make me better. I was checked in, and placed in a room with 4 other boys. The young man across from me had some sort of condition that made him spasm frequently. I did not know this, but what I did know was that he had just had his tonsils out. In my child’s mind I made the intuitive leap that after my tonsil operation I would be like that spastic, little boy.
I have always told the story in regards to the silliness of kids and irrational fears. Reflecting on it today I decided it was really a story about trust. I trusted my mother, and I suppose I trusted the doctor to some extent that if I needed to be like the spastic young man to be better, so be it. Of course, children have extraordinary trust in people in positions of authority. They have even more trust in those that love them. Without it the human child would have a hard time getting to adulthood. But still…
I do not remember when I told my mother of the fear that I had, a few days or few weeks afterwards. Best I remember, she said something along the lines of, “I’m sorry you were scared.” She then went on to pooh-pooh my fears.
So it goes.
An End-of-the-year Message from Robert Reich
Just in case you do not know Robert Reich is a former Secretary of the Treasury.
Minimum Wage Over Time
Comparing the value of labor over time is apparently not that straight forward. I was wondering about minimum wage. When I graduated high school in 1970 
(gasp… yes) the minimum wage was $1.60. I dropped out of college after a year, and I went to work in a factory for somewhat more than the minimum wage. After a few months I had raises that put me up to $2.60 an hour which was nearly 60% higher than minimum wage. Even at that astronomical wage, even without a car to support, even with living in basically a slum apartment, I was having a hard time making ends meet. I had to be careful with every penny. I had a crisis back then that wiped out very quickly what little savings I had. I had absolutely no benefits. A medical emergency would have been a financial disaster.
Using data as calculated on the website, Measuring Worth , I came up with the following data:
Current data is only available till 2012. In 2012, the relative worth of $1.60 from 1970 is: Continue reading “Minimum Wage Over Time”