Category Archives: Night Writer

At the turn

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by the Night Writer

As you read this I will have completed my 50th year on this planet. Yes, I know, hard to believe – at least it is for me. Somehow in my mind’s eye I still kind of picture myself as I was in the 1980s, though that is a man my children never knew and my wife may even have a hard time remembering, which, truth be told, is probably a good thing for all concerned.

As friends and family members, especially the golfers, have reached this milestone in the past I have commonly bestowed upon them a cheerful, “Good luck on the back nine!” Now it is I turning toward the clubhouse. Though I have my share of fairways and bunkers ahead of me I realize that this isn’t necessarily the half-way point. Fifty doesn’t mean there’s a real-life 50-50 balance between the time I’ve lived and the time I have left. Believe me, I’ve worked with enough actuaries over the years to know about that.

Sixteen, eighteen, twenty-one — they couldn’t come fast enough.

Thirty — “what the…?”

Forty — “now wait just a minute…”

Fifty. Fifty? Fifty.

Nevertheless I feel good, I feel strong. My blood pressure and cholesterol are low and everything else seems manageable. If I no longer swing a 20-pound post maul all day in the sun, or polish off 27 spare ribs at a sitting, I can still remember what each felt like and believe that I don’t do those things now simply because I’m old enough to know better.

Yet there it is – old enough. To know better. From this vantage point I can look back and see all the faces that helped me get here who are here no longer. And thanks to them, I see the young faces around me now and I can turn and look into the distance and imagine the even younger faces to come.

There’s still time for some practice swings, though, and to work on my game. Yeah, the ol’ backswing can’t help but get longer, though the important thing now is the follow-through. I’m not familiar with all the holes I have left, but I know I’ve got a wise coach and caddy who has said he’ll never leave or forsake me, so I’ll take my time and enjoy the round for there’s no sense in hurrying.

I do hear the Clubhouse is spectacular, though.

One reason why I blog

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by the Night Writer

Back in January Mitch Berg had a post likening the abortion issue to a ribbon in the middle of a tug-of-war rope, with each side trying to move the ribbon (i.e. public opinion) closer to it’s position. Mitch thought he was seeing signs that public opinion has pulled more to the right of late. That naturally triggered a comment string that centered around the role of faith in one’s view and of legislating belief. Surprisingly, it actually turned out to be one of the most civil debates I’ve seen on his site, and one I was proud to have participated in.

I’ve thought about that discussion several times since then, and while the topic at that time was abortion, I’ve realized that my comments then pretty well encapsulated my thinking on many issues and, unintentionally, provided an explanation for one of the reasons for why I blog, limited as my contribution may be.

I’ve extracted the main portion of my comment from that day (addressing another commenter, not Mitch) and posted it here to help me remember, on nights like these when I’m really tired, why I keep doing this.

… I merely want to address your view that the abortion issue is an issue of faith. It is a matter of faith, but not necessarily “faith” as in being Catholic, Evangelical or Humanist, but in terms of “belief.” The underlying point I took from Mitch’s post is that what people “believe” about human life appears to be changing, and ultimately what a society believes is reflected in its laws (for good or ill). Inevitably some beliefs are going to be in the minority. Thank goodness the vast majority today believes it’s wrong to hang people from trees, though a few still say it’s okay to threaten to do so, while even fewer would be willing to do it. (At what point prosecution should enter into that example is a topic for another day).

It’s not a process of legislating faith (or belief), but of faith/belief affecting legislation. The fact that some will disagree or be offended by the result is not reason in and of itself to not act on the greater will. Thus the ribbon, as Mitch says, is moved. That does not mean, however, that the minority doesn’t have the right to protest, or to work continually to change the beliefs of the majority, even to the point of risk and sacrifice (since risk and sacrifice are what differentiates belief from emotion). Though I may be in a minority on a number of issues (or because I’m in the minority on a number of issues), I thank God (not goodness) that we live in a society where these beliefs can still be contested.

Must be all the asteroids I took in the 80s

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What Pre-1985 Video Game Character Are You?

Thrust me on this…


What Video Game Character Are You? I am a Thrust-ship.I am a Thrust-ship.

I am small and tricky – where you think I am, I probably am not. I can work very fast, but I tend to go about things in a round about way, which often leaves me effectively standing still. I hate rocks. Bloody rocks. What Video Game Character Are You?

HT: Leo at Psycmeist’s Ice Palace

You did see this coming, right?

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This was one of the surest bets you could have made a year ago:

Smoking ban has apparently cut into revenue from charitable gambling
The statewide ban, which began late last year, is tied to a significant decline in bar pulltab and bingo receipts, according to a study by the State Gambling Control Board.

By MARK BRUNSWICK, Star Tribune

Affirming what American Legion hall operators and mom-and-pop bar owners had warned, a new report shows that the statewide ban on smoking enacted last year appears to have cut into charitable gambling revenues from bar game pulltabs and bingo.

Gross receipts from charitable gambling were down 12.8 percent in the last three months of 2007, which correlates with when the statewide smoking ban took effect. Even taking into account a weakening economy, the ban is likely to be responsible for a decline in gross receipts of 7.5 percent to 8 percent, or a loss equal to $95 million to $105 million a year, according to the report.

The overall 12.8 percent drop represents the largest decline in receipts since lawful gambling was first regulated in the state in 1985, according to the report released Monday by the State Gambling Control Board, which regulates the industry.

…

The new report shows that towns close to states that have not enacted a smoking ban appear to have been more affected. Sites near tribal casinos, where smoking can be permitted, have seen receipts decline more than the state average for several years, an apparent trend that began before the ban.

…

Charitable gambling officials predict revenue declines of 16 percent to 18 percent through this year. Anticipating the effect, the industry has been pushing for several pieces of legislation that would give them more flexibility in their operations.

So now, what do you want to bet that we’ll have legislation liberalizing (good word, that) or expanding gambling to more venues to make up for the shortfall? After all, it’s for the children! And the vets! Or are you some unpatriotic child-hater? Come on, everybody pull(tab) together!

The lobbyists and our legislature have focused on getting everyone to kick their Camels … while letting another camel get it’s head further into the tent. (But hey, it’s a big tent!)

Picture this: getting out of the way

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Great testimony from King David over at The Far Wright today. It reminded me of a song we sang in church yesterday that goes, in part, “God will make a way, where there seems to be no way.”

What I saw in that song is that when there seems to be no way it really means that there seems to be no way to me. God always knows and sees the way — and usually I’m bogged down right smack in the middle of it (the way, that is).

We all have had the experience of trying to do things “our way” (thanks, Frank), the “worldly” way. If we’re blessed, or not too stubborn, we get hooked up with a good church and start to see God move and do things in our lives (He was doing them all along but we usually didn’t recognize them for what they were). We get a new idea of God’s power and mercy and we believe it and experience … yet we get comfortable or when a new challenge comes we still put ourselves in the position of saying or deciding what God can, or cannot, do. Even though we’ve seen that there were things we didn’t know before that have since changed our lives, we may yet assume that now we know it all …

“Oh yeah, God will do that, but He wouldn’t do this” or …

“If I do this, then God will do that, …

or the reverse, “God can’t do this because I didn’t do that…”

“God no longer speaks to us…or heals…or delivers…or opens doors that no man can close…”

Maybe it’s because our fear trumps our faith; we fear our faith is not even as big as a mustard seed, or we’re afraid that God won’t come through, or we’re afraid we somehow haven’t “earned” His grace — even if we’ve had hours, years, even decades of sound teaching that tells us His grace is a gift that no one can earn…

We cling to our doctrines and our own understanding, lovingly polished over the years, and fail to see or remember the underlying Word that they were based on. We’re afraid to just let go and put it in His hands, as if His plan isn’t sufficient for our needs, as if our senses are the sole arbiter of what makes sense.

God still speaks. He still heals. He still provides. If you don’t believe me, go talk to King David.

Of isms, schisms, colloquialisms

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by the Night Writer

There was a classic Saturday Night Live sketch where Chevy Chase was interviewing Richard Pryor for a job (transcript here, blurry video here). The last step was for Pryor to take a word association test where he’d say the first word that came to his mind after Chase read a word from a list. The test is innocent enough at first, but soon the words — initially ambiguous — start to take on racial overtones: “black” = “white”, “tar baby” = “ofay”, “jungle bunny” = “cracker” as each man gets a little angrier and more confrontational. Ultimately Chase drops the “n” word, not even looking at his list, and Pryor responds menacingly with “Dead Honky.” This was way back in the 70s when SNL was a startling new phenomenon, pushing the edge of satire and taste. To dare to use the “n” word in a humorous context to satirize the volatility of the race issue and the absurdity of the language was to also push the nuance envelope. The skit confronted the words rather than running from them and drew them out into the light so their bulbous ugliness could be punctured and deflated by the sharp needle. It was ground-breaking, it was liberating, it was as if it were prophesying a new day where we could at last talk.

That glimmer of hope appears long gone. I doubt that skit could run today. In fact, many of the links I originally found to the video now have messages about “video removed for content violation.” Whether it was for language or copyright violations I don’t know, but it makes me wonder. Yesterday’s satire is now reality, as any racially-tinged language provokes instant word association-type reflex responses of reaction unfettered by reason. “Racism” has become such a loaded word that no one can pick it up without getting a hernia. It even occurred to me after I posted the Tom Lehrer video earlier that some might watch that and fail to see the irony and would instead react with, “That’s mean” or something worse, missing the satire completely. No emails like that yet, fortunately.

Ultimately, racism can’t be changed by talking about it, but by living without it. I know, that sounds impossible, especially since I concur with what Mitch Berg had to say earlier his week:

I’m going to start out with a very broad statement: “Isms” are part of the human condition. All people are conditioned to favor people who are like them, and to suspect people who are different from them, whether tangibly (skin color, language, accent, smell, dress) or subtly (class, education, geography). Many white people get uneasy around many black people, sure, but that’s an easy one. Middle-class white people get uneasy around mullet-headed bikers; New Yorkers sneer down their noses at Arklahoma accents; light-skinned blacks disdain darker blacks (or so said Spike Lee); farmers roll their eyes at people in suits and ties and clipped city accents and manners.

This is true across every culture on this planet.

In many of those cultures, that suspicion is codified in the language. In many languages, the word for “Human” varies, depending on how closely-related or situated the subject is to the speaker; for “humans” whose tribe is closer to that of the speaker, it’s a fairly benign or amiable term; the farther afield the subject, the less-benign and more derogatory the term will get.

To say “everyone’s a racist” is itself simplistic; it would be fairer and more accurate to say “we are all we-ists”; all of us, black or female or suburban or mentally ill or urban or atheist, are more comfortable around people who are like us. And every single one of us practices “profiling”, whether you’re a black couple “profiling” some agressive drunk rednecks, or a Xhosa turning on a Bantu in anger, or Molly Priesmeyer “profiling” white males, or even the stereotypical white middle-class guy sizing up…anyone else.

We separate ourselves in countless ways, not just by skin color. I was just back in my rural hometown the other day, a small community of about 3,000 people, almost all caucasian. I saw a list of the churches serving this small community. There were 13. Among that 13, there were seven varieties of Baptists. We all pretty much use the same Bible, know that we’re called to join and knit in the Body of Christ, and yet even in a small community that would appear to have so much in common, we can’t help but separate ourselves.

We are all “We-ists” by nature. As a Christian, however, I know that that our basic nature is essentially base and sinful. It is natural to identify with “our” group, to get beyond that we need to begin seeing ourselves as a member of wider and wider groups.

I fellowship regularly with, and minister occasionally to, a group of men overcoming addictions in their lives. The group is roughly 50/50 blacks and whites, and range in age from their 20s to their 60s. Some are from the south, some from the north, some are from the country and some have lived in the city all their lives. There are any number of reasons for individuals in this group to stand apart from other members and perhaps some do. Greater, however, is the overall sense of what we have in common, including our purpose. One of our preachers is a fiery black man who knows first hand what it means to beat up on someone, and to be beat down. If anyone could righteously spout the things that Rev. Jeremiah Wright says, it would be this man, yet he preaches that our enemy isn’t some person or some group – our enemy is ourselves.

About 10 years ago part of this group went on a weekend fishing trip. One of the young black men who came along was just out of prison, and he didn’t have a very favorable opinion of white folks. Early Saturday morning I went down to help out in the kitchen and found this man working by himself on the bacon and eggs. He was large and imposing, the size of an NFL linebacker. I asked him I could help him by turning the bacon.

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “No.”

I tried again. “How about I stir up the eggs then?”

“Nope. I got it.” We could have been ice-fishing for the chill in that cabin.

“Oooh-kaay,” I said, looking around and spying about a dozen loaves of bread on the counter, waiting to be toasted. “I think I’ll just hang out over here with all this white bread.”

It was very quiet, except for the sound of the bacon sizzling. “I am about to die,” I thought to myself.

“HAWW!”

Ever since then we’ve been buds. My friend still comes often to the Saturday meetings, and I ran into him last week as the meeting was ending. The message had been about discipleship, and about whether you are a follower or an imitator of someone else (imitator is better). I hadn’t seen him come in earlier so I gave him a big hug, which he returned. He then turned to introduce me to the man he had brought with him, who turned out to be his brother.

“This is John,” he said as I shook the other man’s hand. “He’s somebody I’ve been trying to imitate.”

I couldn’t make out the look in his brother’s eyes, because my own eyes suddenly got kind of misty.

Getting along, if only in song

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Ben’s post, Perpetuating Racism By Talking About It reminded me of a Tom Lehrer classic, of how much I love Lehrer’s music — and how great it is that we have YouTube.

Lehrer, the predecessor to Mark Russell (though much funnier and not as smarmy as Russell), used to appear on national television in the 60s in a show called “That Was the Week That Was” (scroll down for details about the American version) where he would do a satirical song about something in the news that week. I had an album of his best from TW3 when I was in college that I soon had memorized, but I’d never seen a photo of the reclusive Mr. Lehrer until I saw this YouTube video. As funny as Lehrer was as a songwriter and vocalist, he is incomparable when you can actually see his facial expressions.

Now, ripped once again from the headlines, Tom Lehrer and “National Brotherhood Week” (the screen is black for several seconds at the beginning of the video):

In my father’s truck

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One of the reasons I went down to Missouri last week was to pick up my father’s pick-up truck, which is now my pick-up truck. It’s a 1998 Dodge Dakota extended cab (V6, 2WD), and the odometer didn’t turn 51,000 miles until I was somewhere in Iowa on the drive home. It’s in great shape, and my mom had had it detailed before I came for it so the interior was in like-new condition. In fact, the steering wheel was kind of slippery.

I had sat in the truck last November when I was home for Thanksgiving, only a few weeks after my father died. I rifled the glove box and center console, finding miscellaneous to-do lists and receipts, half-a-roll of Life Savers, and a few pipe filters in the ashtray; I could smell the old tobacco. Pictures of his grandchildren were clipped behind a visor, and the dashboard was coated with dust. When I climbed in the other day everything was wiped down, polished and antiseptically clean without a trace of him, except for a Shriner’s medallion on the back window. I’m not a Shriner, so I’ll have to find a way to remove that and mail it to my brother.

The truck had been parked on the carport, behind the section of garage that had been turned into his re-upholstery workshop. I climbed down from the truck and then down into the shop, looking around for a screw-driver. The shop has barely been touched in the last few months, other than to remove the unfinished projects that had been waiting for him to feel better. Scraps of fabric, several extension cords hanging from straps, a workbench, some stools, the heater I had bought him for Christmas several years ago, some photos of he and some friends taken at the golf course and tacked to the wall. There were two calendars, one featuring a picture of Ronald Reagan. Both were turned to May, 2007; he had been diagnosed in June. My mother came in and joined me. “I’m not changing a thing,” she said.

As I drove back to Minnesota I took stock of my new ride. I liked the above-the-traffic driver’s position. The truck drove true, without shimmy and the only strange noise was a brief turbine-sounding whine when the speedometer moved between 45 and 50 mph. Hmmm. How does it ride? *BUMP* Like an empty truck. I started a mental to-do list of tasks and upgrades: a little wobble in the brakes when coming down from highway speed, perhaps I should get the rotors turned; new wiper blades; add a tonneau cover; replace the AM/FM/Cassette with a new stereo with CD-player and iPod port; perhaps new speakers since these seemed to buzz with any significant bass tones. I’d only driven about 180 miles since I filled the tank; I looked at the gas guage; 1/4 tank left. YIKES! I added “tune-up” to my mental list, but I soon realized that the engine was turning at 2100 rpm at 70 mph in overdrive without a hitch or falter, and the old man had been pretty methodical about his maintenance. It could well be that 17 mpg was all I was going to coax out of the truck on the highway.

I had an older model Dakota several years ago when the responsibilities of home ownership had shown us the value of having a pick-up truck. Granted, there may be only a few times a year when you need one, but when you need one you really need one. Nevertheless, I’d foolishly let that earlier truck go, and it created a gap that has taken me this long to fill. Given the circumstances, I could have waited a bit longer.

Related posts:
In My Father’s House, Part 1
In My Father’s House, Part 2
In My Father’s House, Part 3
In My Father’s House, conclusion
Turning Toward the Mourning
Shifting the Sun

Rivers run through it

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Missouri, the birthplace of Mark Twain, is a river state. Or, more accurately, a “rivers” state. Some 120 rivers — each with its share of streams and creeks that feed it — flow, course or meander across the state. And sometimes, they rise up.

Missouri absorbed at least 10 inches of rain between Monday and Tuesday this week, especially south of St. Louis which also happens to be the area we (myself, the Mall Diva, Tiger Lilly and Ben) are visiting. When we first drove through here Wednesday, however, the skies had cleared and everything looked normal. Until, that is, we got to the place on Highway 63 between Vichy and Vienna where the road passes over the Gasconade River. At this point the road and the river were vying to see just who would pass over whom. The roadbed was still high and dry, but the fields on either side were flooded nearly to the shoulders for about half a mile. People were stopping, gawking and taking photos.

We made it the rest of the way in to my mom’s house without incident or seeing serious water, but in a county that features the Meramec, Huzzah, Courtois (coat-a-way), Bourbeuse and Gasconade rivers and their tributaries such as Turkey Creek, Mill Creek and Bonne Femme (Ben liked that one) Creek, we were in the process of being surrounded. Nearer to St. Louis the rising Meramec closed Hwys. 40 and 149 and threatened Interstate 44, where sandbagging crews were busy lining the highway with sandbags in hopes of keeping this major artery open heading into the holiday weekend.

Closer to us, my brother spent the day on his cellphone, coordinating with the drivers of his four FedEx trucks, trying to keep them on the right side of the rising rivers so the trucks and drivers could sleep at home last night, even if the deliveries had to wait since most of these absolutely, positively wouldn’t float. We drove down to Steelville to visit my grandmother once we heard that MODOT, which had been watching the Hwy. 19 bridge over the Meramec, was going to leave it open for the time being. Crossing the bridge over what is normally a ravine we could see the water nearly up to the deck. One one side of the road there’s a local float-trip operation, and its campground and recreation area had water up to the basketball hoops and only the peaks of the green roofs over the picnic pavilions were showing.

It was kind of a strange experience. The day was beautiful, warm and sunny yet all around southern Missouri bridges and roads were closing as the waters kept rising slowly but inexorably, with the rivers yet to crest in several areas. Our own route into the area finally went under yesterday as well, leading me to map out an alternate way home for Ben and the girls, who had to head back this morning. As a bonus, this way takes them through one of their favorite little towns, Hermann, which also happens to rest beside the Missouri River. It’s a very high bridge, however. I told the girls that if the bridge is closed at Hermann they should just turn-around and come back because I’ll need Ben’s help to build an ark.

Looking for Ben?

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If you’re looking for posts by Ben over at Hammerswing the next couple of days you might be disappointed. I’ve dragged him off to Missouri to meet the family and whatever misadventures that might entail.

Even though Ben and the Diva are a ways from getting married, there might be some back here in the hills that might want to do a trial-run on the custom of the “shivaree” while he’s in range. In some places, the shivaree consists merely of shooting off guns and fireworks near the couple on the wedding night. Perhaps another form could be the ritual of “decorating” the groom’s car. Around these parts the fellas have been known to be more creative. Like the time 25 years ago when a young groom was kidnapped from his bachelor party the night before the wedding and taken to the nearby town of Steelville, stripped to his jockeys and left to make his way home.

That was 25 years ago, though, and in that time certainly even our little town has come into modern, more enlightened times. Or, maybe they’ve just had more time to think of things to do. I don’t know because I don’t live around here anymore. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.