A Father's Day Anecdote About Generosity

Dad in rocker, with my son Micah, 1987

My father was born in a temporary coal mining town in West Virginia the day after Christmas in 1929, two months after the stock market crash that preceded the Great Depression. Four months later the family moved to Cincinnati and eventually to Hamilton 20 minutes north, where many of my kin live to this day. 

Dad grew up skinny, poor, smart. Grandma, who had been a teacher in a one room schoolhouse before she married my grandfather, was religious and grandpa was anti-religious. Grandma attended the legalistic Nazarene church a few blocks up the hill. Because their home was across the street from a Pentecostal church, Grandpa would call the police on the church when it got loud, which was regularly. 

The neighborhood was dirt poor. My grandfather was harsh with his daughters and my dad’s older sister Fonda ran off to marry Oscar, who would become the town drunk. My dad’s sister Carol ran off to marry at 15 because of grandpa. (She hopped the fence when Grandpa said, “If I catch you talking to that boy again you won’t be able to sit down for a week.) 

EdNote: When Grandpa died, my father gave me the leather razor strop that grandpa used to whoop the kids to keep them in line. 

His brother Cecil was mentally ill, brain damage from high fever at age six during a measles epidemic. Cecil would sometimes take his clothes off and run off down the street. Dad would have to catch him and bring him home (if dad was around). One time they couldn’t find him for hours. Then they found him stuck up to his neck in the outhouse sludge.  (They had no running water so they could not hose him down. They had a pump house 20 feet from the back door. You can imagine that this must have been awful for everyone.)

Dad as a high school grad.

Despite all these hardships my father was valedictorian when he graduated high school. The next day he joined the army. After basic training he was sent to the Philippines and Korea. The war had officially ended but there was an 18-month post-war buffer in which you received the benefits of service even if you did not see combat. Upon his return from Korea he went to Hiram College on the G.I. bill. 

Dad got a degree in chemistry. His first job out of college was at Sherwin-Williams in Cleveland. He became involved in the development of latex paints, which he continued to be involved with throughout his career. (Trivia: Arnold Palmer worked as a salesman for Sherwin-Williams out of that Cleveland plant, till he became a full-time golf pro and PGA champion. My dad was also a lifelong golfer and became part of Arnie’s Army throughout his career.)

Before my father passed away in March 2006 he requested that there be no flowers at his funeral. Instead he asked that friends an family give to the Heifer Foundation, the funding arm of Heifer International, an organization now in 21 countries dedicated to ending poverty by empowering, providing training and assistance to individuals and communities. No offense to florists, but in my father's estimation some things are more important things than flowers.

All of this is a lead in to an anecdote I'd like to share, which says something about my father. Through growing up poor he learned frugality. One of his hobbies, if you can call it that, was going to house auctions and looking for bargains. I was aware of this, but never fully aware of the extent to which he took this.

There's a Proverb that says, "If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry and not be answered." (Prov. 21:13) It ties directly to this story, which I only learned about after he passed.

Dad would go to these house auctions to buy up blankets and clothing items which he brought to an Allentown center that distributed such items to those in need, something like our Damiano Center here in Duluth. He had been doing this for quite some time till one day he showed up and was told to stop bringing them stuff. He was bringing it in faster than they could give away. 

Nevertheless, he continued to be generous, and never made a big deal about it. On this Father's Day I have much to be grateful for as a father, but also for having a father who served as a role model in so many ways. Sadly, I took some of this for granted when I was young.

If your dad is still alive, let him know you appreciate him today.  

* * *

Do you have an anecdote you'd like to share about your dad? Feel free to leave it in the comments.

Related Links

Heifer International

Sharing Comfort (Personalized muscial memorial pages for loved ones.)

With the Oxford Incident Behind Us, Juneteenth Moves Us Forward

"How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?"

James Meredith, 1962. Library of Congress

Today, Juneteenth has officially become a National Holiday. What follows are some thoughts I shared in 2013 regarding Bob Dylan's "Oxford Town." 

We often hear people talk about the 50's as the "good old days." In reality, the very things that were wrong in the 50's are what led to the upheavals of the 60's, no issue moreso than racism.

The conflicts over race long preceded the Freedom Riders who put their lives on the line to draw awareness to this special problem of the Deep South. Poet/journalist Carl Sandburg shone a light on this issue when he wrote about the Chicago race riots of 1919 in which 38 people were tragically killed as a result of an incident that occurred on the segregated beachfront of Lake Michigan.

In a preface to the 1969 re-release of this volume Ralph McGill identifies WWI as one of the events that increased awareness of the racial divide. Black soldiers who put their lives on the line for America and freedom returned to the States as second class citizens.

World War II revived this same set of feelings for American blacks who served overseas only to return home to maltreatment and blatant injustice. The difference this second time around was the advent of television, by which means the rest of the country was made aware of the consequences of Jim Crow laws being enforced in the former Confederacy. Television not only made people aware of these problems, it also became a means for showing determined blacks the methodology of non-violent resistance.

Dylan's song "Oxford Town" was written in October 1962 in response to a call for songs by Broadside magazine seeking songs about James Meredith and his attempt to attend Ole Miss, which was his constitutional right. The governor exerted intense pressure to prevent Meredith from entering the school as a student. Meredith refused to back down and put his life on the line in an effort to get the Kennedys to respond to what was happening in the South.

Simultaneously the Kennedys were dealing with the Cuban missile crisis. Racial tensions and global tensions put tremendous pressure on JFK and Bobby who did everything in their power to keep the conflicts from escalating. The calls for action in Oxford were coming hard from Mississippi on the one hand and the calls for action from the Pentagon were being pressed from the other.

Oxford was a problem both Kennedys wanted to go away, but when riots broke out they ultimately took action and (according to Wikipedia, citing Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.) called in 500 U.S. Marshals to take control, who were supported by the 70th Army Engineer Combat Battalion from Ft Campbell, Kentucky. They created a tent camp and kitchen for the US Marshals. To bolster law enforcement, President John F. Kennedy sent in U.S. Army troops from the 2nd Infantry Division from Ft. Benning, GA under the command of Maj. Gen Charles Billingslea and military police from the 503rd Military Police Battalion, and called in troops from the Mississippi Army National Guard.

It was during this time that Bobby Kennedy, while looking at a map of Cuba asked his brother how far those Russian missiles could go. Then, tongue in cheek, he followed up with, "Do you think one of those missiles could hit Oxford?"

* * * 

It was against this backdrop that the young Dylan penned "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall," which appeared in 1963 on The Freelwheelin' Bob Dylan, his second album, his first to be all original material. Freewheeling is comprised of many songs that are now considered classics, opening with "Blowin' in the Wind," followed by "Girl from the North Country" and "Masters of War." "Hard Rain" is so dense that he purportedly stated that every line could be a song of its own. It's impossible for me not to hear the line "I saw a white man walking a black dog" as his indictment of America's unique form of racism.

It seems strange to many of us who lived up North to think blacks had been playing professional baseball for more than a decade, and my football hero Jimmy Brown had been playing for the Browns more than five years at this point. Growing up in white suburbia, most of us in the North were oblivious to the realities of segregation. In this, and many other songs of that period, Dylan drew attention to that which we were failing to see.

Oxford Town

Oxford Town, Oxford Town
Ev’rybody’s got their heads bowed down
The sun don’t shine above the ground
Ain’t a-goin’ down to Oxford Town

He went down to Oxford Town
Guns and clubs followed him down
All because his face was brown
Better get away from Oxford Town

Oxford Town around the bend
He come in to the door, he couldn’t get in
All because of the color of his skin
What do you think about that, my frien’?

Me and my gal, my gal’s son
We got met with a tear gas bomb
I don’t even know why we come
Goin’ back where we come from

Oxford Town in the afternoon
Ev’rybody singin’ a sorrowful tune
Two men died ’neath the Mississippi moon
Somebody better investigate soon

Oxford Town, Oxford Town
Ev’rybody’s got their heads bowed down
The sun don’t shine above the ground
Ain’t a-goin’ down to Oxford Town

Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1992 by Special Rider Music

Hard Choices. India's Bustard Has a Handicap and the Green Movement a Dilemma

The Bustard: a big bird with poor eyesight

This past week I came across an interesting story about a dilemma involving two competing agendas. According the story, the Bustard is an endangered species of bird. It is protected because it is purportedly in danger of becoming extinct. But there's a problem. 

It is one of the largest flying birds and doesn't maneuver very well. In addition, it has poor eyesight, therefore it doesn't fly up high where eagles soar. As a result, it has a lower flight path and tends to not look where it's going. Instead it flies forward while gazing downward as it crosses India's flatlands. These characteristics lead to Bustards having so many collisions with power lines that the Supreme Court has said the power lines in this region must go underground. The cost: four billion dollars.

Those costs would no doubt be passed along and are a pain, but the story gets worse. because India wants to use these empty wastelands for wind farms and solar panels. It appears that the forces for a Green future for India are running afoul of the animal rights faction.

“The whole renewable industry, especially solar, could come to a standstill,” said Parag Sharma, chief executive officer at O2 Power Pvt., a Temasek Holdings-backed developer that’s building a 780-megawatt solar project in the western Indian town of Jaisalmer. “You won’t find land that easily anywhere else in the country.”
--EnergyWorld.com

* * * 

The story caught my eye not because I've been losing sleep over the fate of the Bustard. Rather, because it was representative of the kinds of issues leaders face involving conflicting agendas. 

These kinds of dilemmas exist in countless variations. Here are a few examples.

1. Lithium is a lightweight metal that is needed for batteries in our EV future. One of the largest lithium deposits is located in Utah. Unfortunately, there is a rare flower that is growing only there. Do we proceed with our EV future or protect the flowers?

2. There are purportedly copper deposits here in Northern Minnesota. Copper is an essential metal for recharging stations for EVs. Mining would also provide jobs to a region that has suffered decades of setbacks. At odds with this are the fears that mining will destroy the freshwater in our region, that drainage could also pollute the largest freshwater lake in the world, Lake Superior.

3. Job creation and development is needed in many communities. After Duluth's manufacturing jobs disappeared several decades ago, the tourism industry was nurtured to become a major employer. Service jobs, however, pay significantly less than manufacturing. Efforts to grow our job base run against the desire to restrict growth, to not build new homes or businesses.

4. No one wants the power grid to go down, yet the means for delivering power currently requires oil or coal. Wind and solar can only deliver 10% of what we need, yet every effort to make sure we have energy until that future day when it can be fully renewable is fraught with conflict. The current infrastructure is aging. Railroad trains occasionally jump the track. New high tech pipelines are the safest way to deliver the fuel we depend on. The opposition is fierce, however, and this is another area with contradictions.

* * * 

These are just a few of a multitude of problematic issues that communities, states and nations are wrestling with. Too often things get so political that it becomes near impossible to be objective. Is it possible to please everybody? Not really. 

I am still a believer in dialogue. I am opposed to bullying. Finding wise solutions isn't something just for the birds. What's needed, I believe, is courageous, transparent leadership. 

What do you think?

* * * 

Read India's Bustard dilemma here. 

In a Crisis, It's All About Spin Control

After cutting his teeth as a journalist in Chicago, Seymour Hersh moved to Washington to cover the big game. To his surprise, the hard-working Hersh was shocked at the somewhat lazy journalism taking place in D.C. The Pentagon would have press briefings about what was going on in Viet Nam, and the journalists seemed to swallow it all without any serious questioning, turning it into tomorrow's news. 

Now throughout this time, the Pentagon was spinning. And the press went along with it. Hersh didn't, but even when he uncovered explosive stories, the editors at the Associated Press would water them down. 

Frustrated, he broke free and wrote independently, focused primarily on the war. When he learned of a story about an incident in My Lai that the Pentagon was burying, he used his bloodhound instincts to track down Lt. Calley, who was hidden away at the time. When the news broke, it not only shocked Americans but it also  alerted other journalists to stop sleeping. There were stories to be told that the American people needed to hear. The My Lai Massacre story earned Hersh a Pulitzer Prize in 1970.

* * * 

While going through some old files this week I came across a lengthy 1993 article from CFO magazine titled Spin Control. The article is primarily written for C-suite executives to improve the way they work with the media during a crisis. 

The author, Anne Monroe, interviewed three industry veterans with regard to the "fine art of communicating bad news." Although CEOs are certainly on the firing line in a crisis, it's CFOs who interface with the financial community who must sell the spin on Wall Street. 

The article proceeds to tell a tale of three companies that faced different issues and how they handled them. Tim Metz, who had experience on both sides of the desk, stated that "you have only two things to sell: your competence in framing an effective message and your integrity. In all, you must make sure you remain firmly rooted in the facts."

* * * 

What happens when there are no facts, only perceptions? This seems to be the current status of life within the Beltway. You can hardly turn around without running into another crisis. 

The article closes with a series of statements regarding how crises are mismanaged. 

HOW TO MISMANAGE A CRISIS

1. Ignore or deny the problem.
(Isn't this what's happening at the border right now?)

2. Compartmentalize
(Another form of denial in which the blame is laid elsewhere. "Not my fault.")

3. Lie, or Tell Misleading Half-Truths
(Lying is unacceptable, but maybe we can downplay the problem by revealing only part of what's really happening or its consequences.)

4. Dribble Out Bad News
(One way to ensure that the story continues instead of making a clean breast of things so you can move on.)

5. Assign Blame
(That's the name of the game in D.C., isn't it?) 

6. Panic and Paralysis
("Looks like we'll have to order a few more pizzas. It's gonna be a late one.")

7. Overreact
(It happens. "We have to take action!" 
"Yes, sir, but we don't have the facts."
"Who cares about facts? It's time for action. I have to look like I've got things under control."

* * * 

This week was President Biden's first summit with international leaders. The spin doctors were busy scripting long before the events of this week began. What really happened is hard to say. If you read a cross-section of media outlets you'll find find every shade of spin. Perceptions are quite malleable. Here's some commentary extracted from the Twitterverse.

Biden comes out stronger from this summit. Look how much smaller Putin seems today than in Helsinki in 2018.

The big summit. Biden shows up with cue cards. Putin shows up with brains.

Did Biden make us proud or what! So much stronger & smarter than the last guy!

Biden is dominating Putin in this summit, and both men know it.

Pres. Biden declared the summit a success at his solo press conference, saying "I did what I came to do."

Biden blew the summit as soon as he sat down

Schiff: The Biden-Putin summit "marked a new turn in America’s relationship with Russia – one defined by a strong and forceful rejection of Putin's authoritarianism, adherence to our values, support for human rights around the world, and the advancement of American interests."

NY Post: Biden bumbles and Putin preens at summit.

Who knows? It was an event, and the really important things that came out of this may not be known for 20 years. 

Meantime, life goes on....

Related Link
He Who Controls the Narrative Controls the People

Ishiguro's Klara Is Apparently No Fiction

I have a habit of acquiring, through purchase or library borrowing, more books than I will read. My curious approach to reading is to try to read a little of each one. Afterwards, I have three stacks: must read, hope to read, most likely not finish. Books in the latter stack that are library books will be returned. If they are books in my possession, they will be shelved. 

Which brings us to Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun. Kazuo Ishiguro is unquestionably one of the great novelists of our time. At this moment Klara and the Sun is in my Must Read stack. Having a book like Klara in that stack is forcing me to finish two other books there so I can dig into it. 

In the Ken Burns documentary on Ernest Hemingway this past year, Hemingway is quoted as saying that writers who win a Nobel Prize never produce anything great again. Ishiguro is proving Hemingway wrong. 

Ishiguro's stories are beautifully crafted and each an original. He paints such vivid characters and scenes and always leaves you feeling something and engaged in reflection. For example, in Never Let Me Go the story is told by a character who is nearing her life's end and discovering how many different ways she misunderstood what she experienced while living it earlier. This led me to reconsider many events in my own life and the ways I failed to see what was really happening.

WHAT PROMPTED this excursion into Ishiguro's writings was an article I came across this week about robots being created to serve as assistants for health care providers. Their mission, among other things, is to brighten people's lives. They can also do "talk therapy."

For the past 30 years I've held the opinion that by the time Baby Boomers are in nursing homes, there would be renewed opening of our borders to immigration in order to have more workers available to attend to our needs. (i.e. empty bedpans, keep us company, etc.) It never entered my mind that robots might be created for this purpose one day. 

The article is a photo gallery with a bit of description as regards what you are seeing. It's titled, Meet Grace, the healthcare robot COVID-19 created.

Having been introduced to Klara, the AI narrator of Ishiguro's novel, I can hardly wait to hear the rest of her story. 

* * * 

Related Links

See my reviews of two other Ishiguro novels I've read in the past couple years.
The Buried Giant
The Unconsoled

Nashville Skyline and a Selection of Images from the Country Music Hall of Fame

Nevada Bob Gordon was in Nashville this week recording his second album. A lot of history here. Charlie McCoy, one of the session musicians on Bob's first album recorded here, also contributed to this second set of songs. Next thing ya know, Nevada Bob will be singing "Act Naturally" as he steps onto the silver screen in Hollywood. He'll have to complete his book deal first.

I enjoyed Nashville the three times I went there on business. As John Sebastian sang in Nashville Cats that there were thirteen hundred and fifty two guitar pickers in Nashville back in 1966 when Bob Dylan recorded Blonde On Blonde. (Charlie McCoy was a session musician for that Bob, too.) I'm certain there are way more than 1,352 guitar pickers there today.

Nashville has been the heart of country music for ages. Photographer Gary Firstenberg, who has been in accompanying Nevada Bob this week, sent these photos from Nashville and the Country Music Hall of Fame. 

The gator guitar of Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dun.

The Queen of Rockabilly

21 #1 hits on the Billboard country music charts.

Kentucky-born songrwriter whose memorable songs included
"Dark as a Dungeon" "I am a Pilgrim" & "Sixteen Tons"

They were all there, as were many others.

He knew what he wanted, and found itin Nashville.

A life too short, whose music lives on.

A man of distinction.

It's the real deal.

A little piece of the Nashville Skyline

Be sure to visit Gary Firstenberg's photography site: 

Turning Negatives Into Positives

My Unkind Letter to Mother Maybelle Carter

Grave of Mother Maybelle Carter. 
Photo courtesy Gary Firstenberg.

To my shame I once wrote an unkind letter to the much respected and now legendary Mother Maybelle Carter. I was young, a hippie artist and idealist at the time. I had just purchased her newly released double album of 1973 and was more than a little disappointed. I'll explain why in a minute.

I was attending Ohio University in Athens, Ohio at the time. My eclectic mix of musical interests ran the gamut from Bowie to Velvet Underground to Jefferson Airplane, Beatles, Stones and all the various forms of rock and roll, to jazz, classical, folk and bluegrass. 

My own family roots were Kentucky and West Virginia so that my "native tongue" could be considered to be bluegrass. The college hosted a long weekend Folk Festival in 1971 in which many familiar names were present. Mary Travers, The Youngbloods, Doc Watson and many others were there. There were three days of workshops during the day, with a lot of spontaneous bluegrass immersion.

The following year the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's major hit triple album was released, Will the Circle Be Unbroken Mother Maybelle was featured on this album but I also listened some older records with A.P Carter. Maybe the soundtrack for Deliverance popularized the genre and made it mainstream. Whatever reason I was drawn to it, just as I had been to earlier folk music. 

Mother Maybelle's 1973 double album

So when Mother Maybelle's Mother Maybelle Carter album was released, I purchased it as soon as I saw it. I really don't know what I expected but my first and immediate reaction was something akin to Greil Marcus's response to Bob Dylan's Self Portrait. 

Why? Three reasons. First: It was all instrumental. What happened to the songs? I was a lyrics guy. I liked Nine Pound Hammer and Tennessee Stud for the stories. Second: the album included a bunch of studio chatter that was fun and seemingly original on Will the Circle Be Unbroken and now came across as cliche. Third: It seemed to me something that was assembled to capitalize on her name. Record companies like Columbia are in it for the money but I held it against her personally. 

Oh well. It wasn't the first time I said something unkind that I'd later regret. It may have been the first time I wrote something unkind to someone of stature, and thankfully the last (if my memory serves me well.)

I just finished listening to it again on YouTube, the first time in near 50 years. (You can listen to it here. It's friendly and warm, and it's unpretentious.) I'm hoping that whoever opened that letter discarded it before she ever laid eyes on it. And when I meet her on the other side, I'll ask her forgiveness just in case she opened it herself.