Happy Tax Freedom Day April 9, 2010

Whooohoooo! Happy Tax Freedom Day to you and yours. If you live and work in the US, prior to today, the money you made this year went to the federal government. After today, you get to keep what you earn! What a concept. Keeping what you earn.

Jonah Goldberg has a great op ed piece in USA Today on April 6, 2010. In the article, Goldberg asks us to "(i)magine for a moment that Tax Freedom Day was Dec. 31. In other words, picture working 365 days a year for the government. Now, the government would 'give' you a place to sleep, food to eat and clothes to wear, but all your income would really be Washington's income to allocate as it saw fit. Some romantics might call this sort of arrangement 'socialism' or 'communism.' But another perfectly good word for it is 'slavery' or, if you prefer, involuntary servitude."


We could do worse than remember the wisdom of Aesop. "Better to starve free than be a fat slave."

"Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious." George Orwell

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse."

James Madison, speech in the Virginia constitutional convention, Dec 2, 1829

spring break 2010 wrap up

 

spring break was awesome. we covered about 1,000 miles from the ‘burg, MS to sewanee, Tn; over to chattanooga, TN; and then down to fairhope, AL. in the car; with a four-year-old; without a DVD player; without a cell phone; without incident.

i won’t get on a soap box here, but folks often think we’re crazy for the way we raise special K. however, after seeing her on her first real hikes of any elevation at oak mountain’s peavine falls and sewanee’s morgan’s steep to cross trail, i'm pretty sure we're on the right track with her.

with the determination and agility of a regular billy goat, special K moved her low center of gravity up and down the trails with grit, identifying flora and fauna on the fly, undauntedly facing challenging climbs, and quickly overcoming bumps and scrapes that come with hiking. in short – she was a champ. she left me filled with joy (and not just a little bit of pride) at what a courageous and tough girl we’ve got on our hands! i could go on and on.

from the mountains to the aquarium to the gulf mexico, special K reflected the psalmist’s wonder and excitement of god’s creation.

"Praise the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty. He wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind. He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants. He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. But at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight; they flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them. You set a boundary they cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth. He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. The birds of the air nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the earth is satisfied by the fruit of his work. He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate-- bringing forth food from the earth: wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread that sustains his heart. The trees of the Lord are well watered, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. There the birds make their nests; the stork has its home in the pine trees. The high mountains belong to the wild goats; the crags are a refuge for the coneys. The moon marks off the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down. You bring darkness, it becomes night, and all the beasts of the forest prowl. The lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God. The sun rises, and they steal away; they return and lie down in their dens. Then man goes out to his work, to his labor until evening. How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number-- living things both large and small. There the ships go to and fro, and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there. These all look to you to give them their food at the proper time. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth. May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works--he who looks at the earth, and it trembles, who touches the mountains, and they smoke. I will sing to the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the Lord. But may sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Praise the Lord." psalm 104

 

(if you want to read some excellent literature on kids and the woods, check out Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods; he is right on the money.

make my day . . .

so - remember the lines from the 1971 classic, Dirty Harry?

“I know what you’re thinkin. ‘Did he fire six shots or only five?’ Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve go to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?”

well, this past week i felt kinda lucky myself. maybe it was st. patrick’s day in the air; maybe it was the fact that i ran into my cousin who has been away in wyoming and who i have not seen in over ten years; maybe it was the fact that we rode a kawasaki mule from my uncle’s upscale hoover, alabama home down to the muddy banks of the cahaba river to have some cigars, adult liquid refreshment, and visit between shooting off live rounds within the city limits; maybe it was knowing that no one in their right minds would be able to find us.

weapons of choice: dominican, cold, 12 gauge stoeger coachman and (drumroll please) ruger super redhawk 454 casull.















wow. you know the one dirty harry used - the one that WAS the most powerful handgun in the world? my cousin says the 454 is eleven times more powerful than that. i don’t know if this is the case, but this is what i do know: it was a rush to shoot the double action ruger; the first shot literally caused me to take a step backwards; and after six shots, i had a blister between my thumb and index finger of my shooting hand from the recoil. and the sound . . . what’s that? come again? i can’t quite make out what you’re saying. oh, yeah. it was freakin’ LOUD!

word on the street was that the local pd was looking for us, but no one really wanted to get stuck in the mud.

my three favorite clean jokes of all time . . .

1) a duck walked into a pharmacy and asked the pharmacist for some chapstick. the pharmacist asked, “how are you going to pay for it?”
the duck said, "just put it on my bill."

2) what did the green grape say to the purple grape?
“breathe.”

3) what did the snail say when he rode on the back of the turtle? “WHEEEEEEEEE!!!!!”


thank you, thank you very much. . . i'll be here all week . . .

with friends like these . . .

"What are conscience? I'll tell ya! A conscience is that still small voice that people won't listen to. That's just the trouble with the world today."
Jiminy Cricket

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."
Carl Sagan

smile, don't you know god loves you?

i relish the occasions when god peeks out from the abstract and his nature is revealed in the everyday. i’m convinced that he does this often; i am just not attuned to him enough to pick up on it most of the time. but when i do see it, i’m always amazed. in the following clip, i felt like god sorta winked at me while nudging me in the ribs as if to say, “if you want to have a bit of fun, watch this.” and there he was, revealing himself to me through three things i love the most – music, humor, and the shear creativity of the average human being. and why should this be a surprise? we are, after all, made in his image.

let it snow

as a humanities instructor who has been fighting the good fight for about 18 years, sounding the alarm that man-made global warming (MMGW) is a myth designed to infuse socialism into our midst, it’s been a lonely road at times. some colleagues in the science department have laughed and pitied me; sincere students have looked down their collective noses at the moron who should stick to talking about his own field of study; others have sworn that i hate the earth, the environment, al gore, life itself.

so, i must admit that when snow appeared in 49 states this week and one of the main voices in the MMGW movement made the concession “that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon,” the cockles of my heart were quite warm, errr, i mean, ahem - cozy.

i do love the earth, the environment, life, clean water and air. maybe not al gore - though i don’t wish him ill, just that he be exposed for a greedy fraud. the acknowledgement that there have “been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998” and that these periods of warming “could be explained by natural phenomena” should put a dent in the marketing of those environmental indulgences better known as carbon off-sets. as i have discussed elsewhere on this blog, if you follow the money trail, it is easy to see that the MMGW Hoax is a way to redistribute wealth.

luckily, the hucksters are being revealed for what they are.

watch out for those who say the cold is made by MMGW and for those chicken littles who will, inevitably, claim that we’re about to face a new Man Made Ice Age.

but, in the mean time – bundle up, hunker down, stoke the fire. enjoy the next decade. make some snowmen, a snow angel or two, maybe make some snow-icecream. stick out your tongue – the snow tastes fine – even in february in the deep south.

music just doesn’t get any sweeter

savana lee and anthony crawford in foreground, Sugarcane Jane
craig riches and david trice on drums and bass, Leavin' Brothers Band


if you ever happen to find yourself on Fish River in Daphne, Alabama on a sleepy weekend afternoon, try to find your way to the picnic tables at Big Daddy’s. you’ll always find great food and a good time, but – if you’re lucky, you might just get to listen to one of the south’s best kept musical secrets–
Sugarcane Jane .

whether singing their original works (like Louisiana, Butterfly, and Sugar) or putting their down home sound on familiar classics (ranging from an incredibly playful and fun Hot Rod Lincoln to a spontaneous rendition of Roger Miller’s Dang Me or a dreamily mellow and psychedelic Midnight Rider), Sugarcane Jane’s appeal cuts across generations and appeals to a wide audience.

Alabama’s own Anthony Crawford and Savana Lee continue to work their musical alchemy creating sweet sounds that are assessable and easy, while at the same time intuitive and distinctly their own. if it’s your first time to hear Sugarcane Jane, you’ll find yourself saying, “wow. now, who are these guys? they’re good.” if your familiar with their work, you’ll overhear such comments and smile knowingly as you remember the exact time and place you first stumbled onto the band.

either way – when Sugarcane Jane plays, heads bob, feet tap, smiles spread, and hearts beat just a little faster. you’ll either fall in love with the band, or fall in love with the band again. it just can’t be helped.

so - if you’ve got a sweet tooth for great music and are ever in South Alabama around Fairhope, Daphne, or Gulf Shores, don’t hesitate to give Sugarcane Jane a listen. if you wait too long, the secret will have passed you by.

fruit of the (parcells) vine . . .

wow. what a football year. i must say, that as a dallas cowboy fan, i was disappointed they were not in the super bowl. but, as an nfc fan and a transplant to south mississippi, i could not have been more excited for the saints and the city of new orleans.

however, my greatest delight of the evening stemmed from the fact that i am a monster fan of bill parcells. as a teacher and motivator, parcells, in my book, is about as good as it gets. i was elated when dallas hired him and sad when he left.

just imagining the big tuna watching the game, masterfully coached by his protégé, sean payton. i can just almost see parcells' smile spreading across his face as the second half progressed. peyton did his mentor proud. i bet parcells was thinking to himself something along the lines of, “that’s my boy.”

as i thought about peyton and parcells and the link between the two, i kept hearing the words of Christ rattle around my brain. in john 5 he says, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. 8This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

would that i might do The Mentor proud.

remnants

“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”
Thomas Jefferson

friends in low places

one of my heroes is a high school buddy of mine, will white. he was a year ahead of me, but took me under his wing as a freshman. we both played trumpet in the band; he took me on trips with his church youth group where i was introduced to rappelling, horse back riding, and camping out under the milky way in capitan gap, new mexico; we played pranks on folks and each other all the time. will was always one of the good guys.

one thing i always admired about will was his singular focus to become a pilot and fly planes for a mission organization. and that’s exactly what will did when he grew up. will and his family have been working in haiti for years, flying for mission aviation fellowship.


will’s duties include, providing transportation, supplies, housing, encouragement, and support for missionaries and national church workers in haiti. will is also the haiti program flight scheduler; in this role he takes requests by email and phone from local missionaries, teams coming from the US, and haitian pastors and christian worker, and coordinates them with the 3 aircraft and 7 pilots, as well as managing the ongoing maintenance schedule of the airplanes.

i was relieved last night when an email from will appeared in my inbox. he and his family are safe. his wife and kids are already back in the states, while will stayed behind, already involved in helping supplies get to the front lines.

if you get a second, while you’re praying for Haiti, include will and his family. they’re good folks doing good work.

Do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Howard Dean, current leader of the Democrat Party


All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. GALILEO GALILEI

veterans’ day, 2009

my grandfather, johnny thomas poole, was an accountant; he was married to my grandmother for over fifty years; he had three daughters; and he was a veteran. he served in the united states army during world war ii. he was stationed france. until his death in 2004, this was about all we knew of his service.

he was the kind of guy who did not really talk much about it. he had a couple of stock stories that he would tell when pressed, but even these were not elaborate or detailed. they were sorta little vignettes really.

one was about staying in a private house where the women who cooked for them did not speak english. apparently when the soldiers requested pancakes and sausage for breakfast, they ended up with what sounds like some version of pigs-in-a-blanket (for a man who would not eat lasagna – “cain’t stand that EYE- talian food”, but would scarf it down if it were served as “hamburger pie,” this is no small detail).

another story johnny would refer to took place around the railroad yard where he was in charge of the organization of military equipment as it came off the boats and was being loaded on railroad cars to be dispersed to units around europe. one day the yard was being bombed, and johnny dove under a railroad car for cover and dislocated his shoulder of his tennis arm. until the end of his tennis playing years (which was in his seventies), whenever he would lose a tennis game (which was not often), he would blame it on his bum shoulder. the part of the story he always highlighted was the fact that he did not realize until the bombing was over that the car he dove under was an oil tanker that would have exploded and killed him had it been hit.

that was pretty much it as far as johnny’s firsthand narrative of his time in the service. occasionally, a new time life type book on wwii would appear on the book shelf. and occasionally, i’d find a picture in said book with a building circled and some marginalia scrawled in granddad’s hand – typically a date and a brief note like: “we stayed in this building for a week” or “this hotel had clean sheets.” stuff like that.

imagine the family’s surprise upon his death in 2004 when we were going through his paperwork and found his discharge papers. my granddad - the mild mannered accountant, father or three, grandfather of seven, sunday school teacher - the one who never talked about the war, was the recipient of not one, but two bronze stars. no one in the family had ever even heard about the medals let alone ever seen them. despite a little bit of digging, we have not been able to find out much about why johnny was twice awarded the bronze star. we have been able to find out that johnny was involved in the battle of the bulge, the single largest and bloodiest battle american troops experienced in this war .

it’s been five veterans’ days since i’ve been able to call johnny up and thank him for his service.

so – to all the johnnies out there – those who came before my grandfather and those who served after – thank you for what you do for us. and thank you for how you do it.

we sleep safe in our own beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.
george orwell

apple bobbin’ 09

fall is a great time of year. i love the change in weather, the passion of the football season, and the onset of the holiday season. one of my favorite holidays is halloween. it might be the nostalgia of the 1970’s when kids in my dallas suburb roamed the streets trick-or-treating without fear of the literal signs of the boogie men (bright orange jack-o-lantern graphic with the “no candy at this residence” notice ); maybe it was the strange way that my grandmother used to recite a cryptic poem about when little orphan annie came to her house to play around this time of year; it could be the fun of embracing an alter ego via costume if only for an evening; the cooler, crisper, chillier air; the traditions; the mystery; the surprise. it’s almost too much to try and bottle up.

so – let me just say that this year, my joy for halloween revolved around the big fun special k had at our annual halloween party. her wish for the party was that we have bobbing for apples. we had the dry version last year, but she insisted on “havin’ a bucket, with water.” so in the grand tradition of snap apple night (new foundland’s version of halloween) we had opportunities for folks to go “dooking” (scotch for “ducking”) for apples. as she was curious in the ways three year olds are want to be, we did a little research on apple bobbin’ and found out some pretty cool stuff. like - why apples as the fruit of choice? well – for one – they float . two – apples were used in the earliest bobbing games during the celtic harvest festival samhain (summer’s end) and are linked to love and fertility. an interesting aside, apparently, Agatha Christie has a book called, the hallowe’en party which revolves around the murder of a girl drowned in an apple bobbing tub.

special k was beside herself with glee at the chance for everyone to bob for apples. while she was unsuccessful, she was pretty tenacious and did try enough times to become thoroughly soaked.

happy halloween to you and yours. hope you don't get a rock.

an exercise in juxtaposition

"Let us consider the nature of true greatness in men. The people who can catch hold of men’s minds and feelings and inspire them to do things bigger than themselves are the people who are remembered in history. . . . those who stir feelings and imagination and make men struggle toward perfection."
-Henry Eyring






"Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven't planted."
-David Bly

the sugar does indeed taste so fine . . .

last weekend, my father-in-law and i went to the local american legion in search of adult beverages and the possibility of live music. and i must say, we hit the jackpot on both counts.

there just so happened to be a song-writers’ sing around in progress, and on stage we were privileged to hear a regional group called sugarcane jane . in short, they were fantastic.

the group is made up of anthony crawford and savana lee. crawford is one of the best guitarists i have ever witnessed in person. he has toured with neil young, played with roy acuff, and his songs have been sung by kenny rogers, lorrie morgan, and the nitty gritty dirt band. his voice is like the love child resulting from a tender affair between the intonations of neil young and the haunting tenors of del mccoury. savana, a loxley, alabama girl, was great as well. her voice and harmonies ranged from gentle and krauss-like to passionate shades of loretta lynn. the chemistry between lee and crawford was a thing of beauty to witness. after the show, i bought four of the cd’s they had available and immediately went to their web site to find future locations/dates where these two will be playing.

my father-in-law and i have enjoyed lots of local gigs across the southeast over the past ten years. we’ve seen some good acts here and there. enough that we’ve developed a question between ourselves: how good do you have to be? implying that the music business must be tough, because while some of these talented folks aren’t hitting it big, american idol et al is cranking consumption for the masses that just ain’t all that.

something tells me sugarcane jane just might be good enough. if you’re lucky enough to catch them live, you’ll see and hear what i mean.

never forget.

one of the things i miss most about living in texas is the annual state fair. and a big part of what i miss is the food offerings at the fair (did you know that snow cones debuted at the texas state fair?) one of my heros, abel gonzales, jr. (the creator of such delectables as texas fried cookie dough, fried peanut butter, jelly and banana sandwiches, and fried coke) has done it again. this october gonzales is introducing (drum roll please) . . . . . . . . . . . . . fried butter!



can it get any closer to heaven on this side of the grave?

i hope babe’s fried chicken learns how to fix fried butter and serves it as an appetizer.