Whiteman had always hated losing. His ethnocultural DNA hard-wired him to explore the far shore, the other side of the ocean, and conquer the hell out of what and whom he found was getting in his way. Now Whiteman felt like the little band of British soldiers in the movie “Zulu” (Whiteman’s favorite) surrounded by the impi of the African warriors moving in from all sides. He felt he was no longer the winner in this game and the anger was rising in the back of his throat like fizzy yellow acid.

Illegal immigration. Socialized medicine. Homo-sexual marriages. Gun control. Claims of global warming. Terrorism. Muslims at Ground Zero. Obama. Government taking a fascist-communist tilt, although that implied the ship of state was leaning left and right simultaneously.

Adding to these macro-fears shot into his mental landscape like so many skyrockets by a 24-7 chorus of Angry White Men on talk shows and cable TV were the everyday micro-fears that turned his fear into outright anger. It was the anger of people who were losing a secure place in the world. It was potent, and if one knows some history, carried with it a deadly cause and effect.  Whiteman’s job had vanished or demanded more work for less pay. Benefits? What’s that? Whiteman was told layoffs were coming if sales didn’t pick up before Christmas. An abyss was opening before him. For the first time in living memory, the future for the rising generation (his kids) would not be as potential-laden as was his. Mexicans couldn’t be blamed for all this.

The oldest child, just out of college, was saddled with a huge tuition debt but nobody was hiring. The youngest was in a middle school where instruction was boiled down to passing the district test and her rebellious boredom resulted in an uber-dramatic household dynamic. He remembered the 3-D storyboard his 8th grade class did of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. It helped him appreciate the Bard for the rest of his life. Don’t schools do Shakespeare any more?

How would Whiteman express his sullen, growing anger about a civilization collapsing before his very eyes? He didn’t feel comfortable around the Yellow Snake Flag People. Their anger seemed as manufactured as their signs and their sloganeering sounded all alike.  He knew that Angry White Men ran each and every faction of the tea party movement, whose membership was mostly white men, angry, and racially transfixed by the presence of a Not-White demon in the White House. Billionaire Angry White Men paid for the movement: its signs, offices, organizers, and buses at their beck and call. Rebellion of the Masses goes better with Koch. At Yellow Snake Flag gatherings, white men seemed to be packing guns and burning with the desire to use them. Now Whiteman liked his guns. He had two long guns, a double barreled derringer and a replica of a Walther P-38.  But oft-repeated firepower displays at the yellow flag of Don’t Tread on Me didn’t impress Whiteman. Besides, Whiteman remembered his Revolutionary history and the flag in his history books showed a different snake. It was cut into bits representing the colonies and the message was very different: “Unite or Die.” Snake flag people weren’t into unity.

And then there was war. He wasn’t afraid to fight to protect and defend the nation, his community and his family. But lately, Whiteman was seeing blood and treasure pouring into the blood-soaked holes of wars that didn’t seem to make any sense. Like the Yellow Snake Flag people, he didn’t want anybody to tread on him or his kin. Yet this brace of wars over the past five decades all seemed to be orchestrated by hidden conductors, unvoiced agendas. Protection of the nation was no longer the purpose of the nation’s wars. Trillions of dollars were being sucked out of the nation and the nation suffered. These recent wars were about protecting loosely-defined national interests, like other people’s oil and showing “lesser breeds without the Law” the power of white men with guns, Predator drones, and B-2 Stealth bombers flying halfway round the world from Nebraska.

Whiteman ended the summer as angry as he had begun it. Even the “staycation” was sucky. He was painting a bookshelf, mentally replaying the speeches he had heard on the tube at the recent Glenn Beck Restore Honor rally, wondering if anything in that godawful mishmash of religiosity and bellicosity could lower his diastolic pressure a bit.

There was one thing Beck said that resonated with Whiteman: how honor could be defined as telling the truth. That was it. The magic of the Internet was the ability to cross reference practically anything and discover, if not the truth, at least the sign saying Truth This Way. Fifteen minutes on the computer was enough time to suss out practically any lie. When Whiteman heard people say Obama was raising taxes on working people, he would look it up. When he heard health care reform was socialism, he would look it up. One voice would not suffice.When he is told the next war was in the national interest, he will look it up. He would check this stuff out. Perhaps he wouldn’t be as vein-popping angry all the time.

Anger wasn’t all bad, thought Whiteman. Anger wins the “good wars.” Anger rights injustice. Anger at “what is” can usher in a new age of “what should be.” There’s much merit in saying that your’re mad as hell and won’t take it any more, he thought.

Whiteman didn’t confuse this righteous anger with spiteful, ignorant rage of the sort stoked by those bloodthirsty guttersnipes in the media and politics. A lot of what was going on was stimulated by Angry Overprivileged White Men for ratings or to make the obscenely rich even more wealthy by his impoverishment. His first research project was set.

“I want my country back,” the Angry White Men screamed over the course of the long hot summer. If this were a movie, I’d now cut to a closeup of Redman. He stands quietly. Redman clenches his fists and a storm of emotions bring the beginning of a tear. Camera pulls back. “Yeah,” says Redman. “Me too.” He walks away.

Sadly, except for Nawlins– us coastal Southerners live secure in the knowledge that a hurricane is never going to hit us, except when it does. And if it does? Woooo! Party! Pull in that kegger for the big blow, bro.

It’s pretty much the same year to year, because unless you’ve watched your roof achieve liftoff or helped pull ex people out of tree branches, you really don’t take it seriously. And nobody wants to see you burst into tears over the blessing at Thanksgiving. If you’re anywhere where there is a Thanksgiving after the storm, that is.

That’s why the folks who’ve been there, done that and live in harm’s way are down at the Home Depot and the Farm Fresh getting ready: “stock up, tape up, board up and bail out” was the mantra my Father taught. Better to wonder what fool neighbor or tourist you might have to rake out of your hedgerow next week than to be there next to them.

In my mind, a few things keep us from taking the Blowhard season seriously. One is overexposure in what used to be a public service called the media but is now just a sensationalizing engine for pretty much any crap anyone comes up with; and if there’s the threat of death and destruction involved?–hey it’s a jackpot payday.

They’re all over even potential disaster like, well, –white on rice. I can count up to nine the number of horrible storms I was going to die in that sort of fizzled. And while sitting on the Interstate for 16 hours trying to get as far inland as Valdosta is no damn fun at all, as an air breather it was a good alternative.

Blowhard season usually gets started sometime around May, when some anointee in Colorado pops up on Faux (that’s Southron for Fox) or CNN and tells us we’re all going to die in the worst storms we’ve seen except for on the SyFy Network. And by the time they’ve finished banging that drum –before the Blowhard season really cranks– we’ve all moved on. Because the other Blowhard season starts right after that. The real Blowhard season.

Yeah, there’s a lot of wind and noise and meaningless activity associated with both. But the parallel is the damage they can do if we, the people, get our forecast wrong.

Because this is truly the Blowhard season. Where mawkishly sincere folks on happy family movie sets tell us how much they have in common with us and they’re real people and not “insiders” and why don’t we just vote for them ’cause the lighting and the music and the creepy insincerity is making our thighs all warm and runny? And, oh look, they have a dog and that makes them trustworthy.

But in the background and on the tube other disingenuously named groups are telling us what evil bastards (ERA note: or bitches) they really are and they haven’t poured their own coffee in years and we should cut off their feet and drown them before they turn our city/state/country into a cesspit we wouldn’t like. Even worse than now.

The horror of this perfect storm is that we call it down upon ourselves. We reward the Blow and the immense disregard for the dignity, life and property of others. We take no time or trouble to know the facts. And in doing so over and over, we have created a privileged class that lives in a different country than the rest of us, though it thrives on our sweat and blood and tears.

Honestly, it has all the dark beauty of a Category 5. We’re in the eye right now, but soon the rest of it will hit and pray to God we have something left when it passes. Because a lot of those people trying to get elected think, but don’t say, that Katrina was urban renewal.

If we can just make it through November, the season will be over. Until next time.

A case in point: The True Freedom Learning Center in St. Marys, Ga You may take this as an advertisement if you wish but it is intended as a tale of seemingly small but profound and hard-won triumphs in the face of almost insurmountable odds.

I’d not known of this place until happenstance found me on a board with one Loretta Hutchinson. We sat around that table together for months and I only knew that she was a woman of uncommon compassion and grace. One day she asked me if I’d like to visit “the Center” that she owned and operated with her husband, Kevin. I was surprised to learn that this place was less than a ten-minute drive from my door and readily agreed (not knowing what lay ahead and the changes that it would make in my own life).

I followed her directions and arrived at a very large, pale yellow, two-story building. As Loretta walked me through the rooms she explained their work. The Learning Center is a “gap-filler.” They labor around the clock: striving, with single-minded determination, to close the many holes in our social and educational fabric.

As schools systematically remove art and music from student’s lives, the Center expands those vital elements of any child’s development. As parents struggle to make ends meet and care for their children, the Center increases daycare services that rival even the most exclusive and expensive facilities. When the lost or disenfranchised among us teeter at the brink of the chasm, the Center is there to catch them before they fall. Literacy programs, advocacy for those who must navigate the maze of DFACs and other frightening acronyms, support and encouragement – this is the crucial work of The True Freedom Learning Center.

At one time Loretta and Kevin Hutchinson pulled in professional incomes that ensured all the comforts, kudos and complacency that come with financial ease and social position. But they chose to leave the certainty behind and “do God’s work.” (Given their 18-hour days now, I wouldn’t blame them at all if they, occasionally, looked skyward and said “Oh, please…give us a break!”).

The Center itself is impressive: a well-equipped media room, chapel, kitchens, boardrooms and offices. But it is the daycare that acts as the living heart of this organization.

First I saw the infant’s room. Here children as young as six weeks old recline in bright and lovely surroundings, carefully tended by a loving staff member. Then it was on to the toddler’s area – a gorgeous space of color and energy, filled with some of the happiest children I’ve ever encountered. Then to the three-to-four year old’s realm where children gleefully regaled me with their “letters and colors and songs.”

Then I was introduced to my own assumptions for I’d simply leapt to the conclusion that these were all the children of stable, affluent homes for they seemed imbued with self-confidence. I was to learn that the kids who benefit from the services here are representative of many diverse walks of life, races, religious affiliations, economic brackets and households.

Perhaps that diversity is just part of the magic of this place.

Loretta and I stood in the corner, watching, and she told me the background of some of these children. “That one’s mom is just a kid herself but we’re helping her get her GED.” “Oh, that sweetie is having a hard time as his parents fight though a divorce.” “Her parents are so involved.” and “That little one is so close to being able to read.”

Some children arrive at 6 a.m. without having had breakfast; some come full of energetic laughter, eager to begin the day; some come silent and withdrawn from whatever drama they’d witnessed the night before; some hug their mom or dad goodbye and run to the door – but no matter what their home-situation may be, all are fed the same nutritious meals, taught and loved. And all flourish in this environment of tender care. The children don’t see the difference in their circumstances (they won’t learn that until they’re older) and the staff knows well that all children are created equal.

I was hooked then and there and have since done (and will continue to do) all within my power to help out in any way I can. People are beginning to rally to the call by offering to volunteer, donate clothing and books and more. Kindness can be like dominoes falling.

Two nights ago I took a notion to enter the unknown waters of website building so that I could “get the word out” about this invaluable community resource. Here is the result. http://www.truefreedomlearningcenter.com/?alt_id=NL99C-9A626-3W5&ts=1283178881281

There may be a place around the corner from you – a place that changes lives and exists to serve your community. Walk away from the din of “bad news” occasionally… and look around at the “good news.” It will do your heart a world of good.

52% of conservative Americans believe Barack Obama wants to institute Sharia Law.  I’m sure if you also asked those polled what Sharia law is, they couldn’t tell you.  Since it’s associated with Islam and Muslims, it must be terrible– and this president must be in support of it.  Everyday more of his American identity evaporates in the eyes of these people–if it were even there at all.  Why?  Even in the face of substantial proof–evidence that is insurmountable–these people insist on painting the president as some foreign enemy of the state.

Where is the media culpability in this? Fox News pushes a bitter narrative, asking questions about Obama’s American legitimacy and his faith.  They allow this meme to be explored on a routine basis.  They harbor vicious anti-Muslim views, and foster an unseemly climate of Islamophobia.   Yet one of their major shareholders is a Saudi Prince named Al-Waleed bin Talal– a man who owns a 7 percent share of NewsCorp, parent company of Fox News.  A man who contributes heavily to Islamic groups Fox conservatives believe are terrorist organizations.  A man who in his homeland of Saudi Arabia, rules UNDER Sharia Law. Where is their outrage?

Shouldn’t Sean Hannity be condemning this bold expansion of the Sharia law in American media?  If right-wingers fear Sharia tentacles tethering themselves to American institutions, why not start with rebelling against the power structure at Fox News?

These people are not defenders of American justice.  They hide behind euphemistic attacks–which are not only cowardly– they’re craven and treasonous.  They are dishonoring their patriotism, perverting it in order to gain political advantage.

When Byron York, staunch blue-blood right-wing pundit, indulges in fantastically simplistic reporting, by placing blame directly on the president–he noted that Obama has brought much of this on himself by choosing to play golf or basketball Sunday mornings, rather than attend church–you realize just how cynical and foolish the tone of this debate is.   I did not realize that is what made one a Christian. You must attend church on Sundays. If Americans need this type of affirmation– seeing video clips of the president attending church to answer questions– perhaps they have the wrong questions.    Amazing.  Some of us are choosing to embrace religious radicalism to support our notions of nationalism.  That’s not the America I know.

These people are cowering in fear.  They are racing to a corner of self-doubt and pity, trying to resist change.  There they are, waving flags of self- pity and anger because of their reticence to accept the wave of change on the precipice.

This isn’t what this country is about.  It’s not how we were founded.  If Islamist fundamentalists choose to burn bibles and American flags, should we meet their wretchedness and hatred with our own?  No, and that is what makes us better than the enemy.

This is where we find ourselves.  Struggling to discern who we are as a people and a nation.  We used to have an identity.  We used to stand for something righteous, mighty, and right.  We used to stand proudly for tolerance–at least most forward thinking Americans did.  We used to debate fairly, cogently, and intelligently.  Now we’ve become an empty husk, filling with anger, mistrust, hatred and fear.  Now we disavow our own laws callously in order to marginalize some of our citizens.  We should be better than this.

America stands for something more because we don’t devalue our idealistic principles, and we don’t deviate from our values.  We set the pace for virtuous action, and let others follow our example.  Our discourse has been hijacked by pretend patriots, who’ve warped constitutional moralities into fluid, politically expedient landmines.  America is better than this.

It’s peculiar and unnerving in a way to see so many young people walking around with mobile phones and iPods in their ears and so wrapped up in media and video games. It robs them of their self-identity. It’s a shame to see them so tuned out to real life. Of course they are free to do that, as if that’s got anything to do with freedom. The cost of liberty is high, and young people should understand before they start spending their life with all those gadgets.

Brinkley reported on these comments after Dylan’s 2009 album, “Together Through Life” was released. Many, especially those who read Dylan’s memoir, Chronicles Volume One, knew of the high regard he has for history and the people of generations before him, but it may surprise others that the proponent of “that thin wild mercury sound” appears a traditionalist. He especially seems so, compared to the babbling, twittering people about us now.

Douglas Brinkley was the ideal choice to pose questions to Dylan and then just let him talk. Having edited the letters of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and the diaries of President Ronald Reagan, Brinkley is the consummate historian for boomers. He knows his Rock and Roll and he knows his Rum, Romanism and Rebellion too.

Rum, Romanism and Rebellion? It sounds like the theme for a toga party.  But, no, the words were used to startle voters and influence an election. We’re talking politics, after all.

The U.S. presidential campaign of 1884 was the first since 1856 that the Democratic Party, with Grover Cleveland as its nominee, regained the White House. Of course, in the great American tradition, an appeal to certain prejudices of many voters was made; but, amazingly, it backfired. In that era, Irish Catholics, particularly those living in the ghettos of such urban centers as New York City, were  unfairly castigated. Voicing the antipathy he and other New York Protestants felt toward Catholics  and the Irish in general, Reverend S.D. Burchard of the Murray Hill Presbyterian Church gave a speech declaring  he and his fellow pastors couldn’t support the Democratic Party, accusing it of favoring ”Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.” Reverend Burchard’s speech angered the Catholic priests of New York. On the Sunday before the election the priests urged church members to vote against the Republicans. The priests’ efforts were successful, with Cleveland winning the state of New York by 1,149 votes out of 1,125,159 cast, putting him and the Democratic Party back in the White House.

The Republican nominee, James Blaine, lamented the outcome, saying he would have carried New York by 10,000 votes had the weather been clear and if the Reverend Burchart “been doing missionary work in Asia Minor or China.”

More than 125 years later, Americans view such alarm over Catholics as silly. Slowly but surely, the people of the United States found worthiness in minorities who have been largely discriminated against. In 1960 the nation elected John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, to the Presidency. There were typical reactionary outbursts over a Catholic in the White House, but that aspect of JFK’s political ascendancy is largely set aside as those interested in history focus on his record as President. Women were not constitutionally allowed the vote when Cleveland and Blaine faced off, but since 1984, there have been two women, one a Democrat, and one a Republican, nominated to be Vice President. A Jew was chosen by the Democrats as Vice President in 2000, and most notably, Barack Obama, a black American, was elected President in 2008.

So you’d like to think America’s problems with bigotry have been solved. It’s a great thought, but far from a truthful one.

Barack Obama’s presidency has triggered much of the ugliness Americans had a right to believe would reside in the nation’s past. The loathing of Obama goes beyond disagreement with his policies and the change he represents. Fervid resentment over those policies compel his political adversaries and their followers to hurl invectives and rely on fabrications. In The New York Times on August 28, Bob Herbert writes of uber-conservative Glenn Beck’s railing that Obama is a racist, with “a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.” Herbert goes on to quote from a Beck diatribe that makes no point; it just underscores the malice he and his followers have toward a black man who actually followed the rules and made it to the top in America.

“He chose to use his name, Barack, for a reason, to identify not with America — you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify, with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe of your father in Kenya, who is a radical?”

Say what?

Glenn Beck staged a rally at the Lincoln Memorial last Saturday, the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington in which Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of his dream for America. Hundreds of thousands attended the Beck rally, where the featured speaker was that tweetering sensation, Sarah Palin.

Ms. Palin encouraged the muddled masses as she spoke of the “steel spine and moral courage of Washington and Lincoln and Martin Luther King.” This brought to mind something Bob Dylan said many years back in an interview, “There’s an old saying, ‘If you want to defeat your enemy, sing his song,’ and that’s pretty much still true.” No kidding. This is the same Sarah Palin who just recently came to the defense of talk-radio shrew Dr. Laura Schlessinger after she used the N-word 11 times over the air to a caller seeking her advice. To publicly confirm her feelings, the Queen of Twits tweeted.

Dr. Laura, don’t retreat-reload!

Dr. Laura=even more powerful & effective without the shackles, so watch out Constitutional obstructionists. And b thankful 4 her voice, America.

In a Daily Beast story, CNN contributor John Avlon quoted from a column by conservative Dewey Murdock. Apparently frustration with Palin isn’t limited to those left-of-center. Murdock wrote, ”Sarah Palin’s tweets resemble something scribbled by a ninth-grade cheerleader. Is it asking too much for a reputed American political leader to communicate in complete sentences?” He went on to lament that “Palin deploys her vacuity to defend an acerbic talk-show who just detonated herself by tossing around (the n-word) 11 times, as if it were a volleyball. The American right can do better than this. And it must.”

Murdock is right when he says the American right can do better, but it’s not likely. Many of the American right’s newly engaged are like the people Barack Obama accurately described in 2008 as clinging to their religion and their guns. They believe the world is caving in on them and that tweetering Sarah is working to preserve their way of life.

Working on their behalf means stoking fear over supposedly endangered constitutional rights, immigrants, legal and otherwise, particularly those immigrants of the Islamic faith. It was less than a couple of months ago that Palin spoke out against the Islamic center in New York City. She came through for her good Americans once again, seeking to deprive other Americans of their constitutional rights. Palin knows just enough American history to realize that bullying and disparaging minority groups can be good politics when the nation struggles economically. Perhaps one day in between tweets she downloaded a story from our nation’s history, maybe something on the election of 1884. Why, she’d be far more clever than the Republicans of that day were: she would exploit the twenty-first century version of the fears that inspired Rum, Romanism and Rebellion, then defend a public figure who repeatedly used the n-word over the airwaves, and follow up by praising Martin Luther King. This would’ve confounded Grover Cleveland as well.

As Dylan said, the cost of liberty is high, especially with the likes of Beck and Palin among us.

If you are a young enlisted man charged with the security of getting a general, and everything that goes with him, safely out of Afghanistan the last thing you need to be in charge of is a box of dirt.  Also, if you are an enlisted man and a colonel tells you to safely escort a box of sand, you may be thinking, “Say wha?!” but you respond with a crisp, “Yes sir.”

In my work as a volunteer at the National Infantry Museum at Ft. Benning Georgia, I hear a lot of good stories. This young man’s story was spreading through the museum that day like kudzu on the nearby trees. You see… he was here to see the sand.

He told me lugging a box of dirt out of Afghanistan along with everything and everyone else seemed crazy. He and his buddies questioned each other wondering, “Why on earth are we doing this?” I suspect– and am willing to bet– this question was a lot more colorful originally and was cleaned up for present company. They even wondered if it were possible to somehow “dump the dirt.” Of course, being the responsible young military men they were, they never carried out that plan but soldiered on with the added weight and responsibility of a box of sand. When he arrived in Germany, he was surprised to find someone looking for him… and the box of sand. When he asked why it was important to take a box of sand to Washington DC he was answered with a shrug and the statement, “I don’t know; it’s going to some museum.”

Now, of course, anyone working at the museum knows why this box of sand is significant. We know we are hearing a special story and meeting a special young man.  You see, we tell the story of “dirt” to visitors every day. And when we tell visitors about our special dirt and where it can be found, I have seen tears in the eyes of grown men. But, back to our story of this young man…

After his tour in Afghanistan, our solider decides he wants to become an officer. He attends OCS (Officer Candidate School) at Ft. Benning. When he graduates and is ready to head to his next assignment, he calls the colonel who gave him the task of escorting the box of sand out of Afghanistan more than a year earlier. He knew the colonel would be proud of him and wanted to share his accomplishment. It was then the colonel explained the true significance of the box of Afghanistan sand.

The National Infantry Museum has a signature exhibit called The Last Hundred Yards. It is there to honor the American infantryman who takes the last hundred yards of battle on foot, up close, face to face with the enemy, and has done so since the Revolutionary War.  Battles from Yorktown to Omaha Beach to Iraq are depicted in this centerpiece of the museum. The exhibit is a moving experience for those who have served, are serving, and teaches all of us about the uncommon valor of the American infantryman and his willingness to fight and die for our freedom.

There is a parade field at the museum, where at least once a week, our nation’s youth graduate from basic infantry training. They are heading to assignments around the globe, often in harm’s way, to serve our country. MG (Ret) Jerry White (the vision behind the museum) wanted these young graduates to understand the legacy they were becoming part of, so he ordered the parade field spread with “sacred soil”. Soil—or in this case, sand– where American infantrymen fought and died making the ultimate sacrifice — was gathered from all over the world. There is soil on this parade field from Yorktown, Antietam, Soissons, Omaha Beach, L.Z. X-Ray…to name just a few. And so it came to be 2 LT Lane Berg carried the soil out of Afghanistan to join the soils our forefathers fought and died for.  Young soldiers visit the museum and walk slowly through the last hundred yards exhibit and they graduate on the sacred soil from these battles. Infantrymen continue to march on, their duty to preserve our freedom; it is our duty to respect and honor those who willingly choose to serve their country.

Lt. Berg was on his mobile phone calling his buddies from his tour in Afghanistan telling them the story of the sacred soil. He understands the legacy he is part of and the honor being shown to our nation’s soldiers. Plan a visit to the museum, make a small donation if you can, to say thank you in a big way to all of those who know, first hand, freedom is not free.

I’ve been feeling a bit of nostalgia for Australia these past couple of weeks – I think a looming birthday has got a lot to do with it – but it’s the way in which it has manifested itself that has me intrigued.

It has surfaced as a longing for the sort of food that it’s impossible to get here; things like meat pies, fish and chips, sausage rolls, Sao crackers and edible bananas. Never mind the punishing Kentucky humidity, no smell of eucalypts and the lack of parrots in the trees, it’s the taste and texture of a blisteringly hot meat pie that comes flooding back at lunch time. Back home I might’ve rubbished the Peter’s, Four ’n Twenty or Sargent’s versions, but I’d sell my vote for one right now. (Politicians NB: Don’t bother flying a truckload in, until I become a citizen I can’t help you.)

Then this morning Jack deJarnette sent this longing off on a different tack bringing back recollections of foods that have, in Australia at least, largely disappeared from the diet of even the poorest of people but were once staples and standbys for those on low incomes. Some, such as Spanish chops and noisettes, formerly known to us as scrag end and neck chops, have been rebadged and priced accordingly, but most, I suspect, have found their way into pet food – and worse – as the way we eat has changed.

Growing up, if the family was living in the country we killed our own meat – a tradition I kept on in Australia and I wish I could keep here but, well there are domestic considerations – but if we were in town we patronized the butcher’s shops, those wonderful, pre-megamarket sources of meat, banter and gossip where you could tell the butcher how to trim the chops, complain about last week’s roast and find out who was caught in bed with the baker, all in the one visit.

Mutton and lamb shanks, the hock, were once just pennies each. If from a mutton they were added to a stew or boiled with onions and herbs and served with parsley sauce while lamb shanks were roasted with pumpkin, parsnip and potatoes and served with a rich gravy made from the drippings and flour. The bones, gristle and all, were often given to the littlies as a teething aid. I can still see various younger members of my extended family sitting in high-chairs at the dinner table, gnawing on a stripped shank bone. The “knuckles”, cut from the knee joint, were dried and used by the girls to play knucklebones – jacks here I think.

Sheep or bullocks’ hearts stuffed with seasoned breadcrumbs and roasted were another cheap meal. I never liked them much; they tasted okay but I’ve always found the texture offputting. Lamb’s fry – liver – and bacon in it’s own thickened gravy made a great winter meal while crumbed brains fried in butter were mostly reserved for the grownups, as were kidneys.

Mutton flaps – the side meat – could be pickled to preserve it or smothered in onion, bread, salt, pepper and mixed herbs then tightly rolled and tied with string to be roasted and served as Colonial Goose, and no Christmas dinner or family gathering would be complete without pigs’ trotters or, as you know them here, pigs’ feet.

Beef shins made stews and soups, as did the oxtails – and yes, yes, I know you can still buy these latter in supermarkets, but they ain’t from no ox. A special delicacy from an ox carcase was the tongue. Pickled in the manner of corned beef it was pressed to be sliced and served cold on sandwiches or with salads as part of a cold collation. We ate brawn made from a pig’s head with a few trimmings from a sheep or beef carcase if one were available and bought frankfurts and saveloys from the butcher. Any butcher worth his salt always gave the kids a sav to munch on the way home.

No doubt this all sounds far-fetched and a bit ghoulish to the baby boomers and city dwellers among us, but it was a fact of life. There wasn’t a lot of money around and you made do with what you could get. I nearly chunder when I see that commercial in which the two smart-arsed kids comment on the meatloaf as the mother throws two-thirds of it in the bin. There was stuff put in front of us that I didn’t like but it was eat it or go hungry – no choice between fish fingers and chicken tenders (and where on a chicken is a “tender”?) – and if you baulked you sat at the table till it was eaten, even if it had gone stone cold.

When we did object we had great-grandmothers – the source of all proverbs – to encourage us: “Heat hit hup love. What don’t fatten’ll fill yer.”

Uncle Conley didn’t own a tractor; he used a mule to pull his plow, drive his cane mill, pull his wagon and doing the myriad other tasks required for operating a farm. I was six. The mule was hitched to the wagon. When all backs were turned, I climbed up on the wagon, sat in the seat and shouted, “Giddy up.” The mule did; not at a slow pace, but hell bent for leather. So here, we went; me in command of the wagon shouting, “Giddy up, giddy up.” Daddy and Uncle Conley running at full tilt behind shouting, “Pull back on the reins, pull back on the reins”. I didn’t have hold of the reins so there was no way I could pull them. I was having too much fun and wouldn’t have pulled them if I could.

That old mule knew exactly what he was doing. He ran straight back to the barn and stopped. We waited until Daddy and Uncle Conley came running up so winded they could not speak for a full five minutes. They were both so glad that I hadn’t been hurt all I got was hugs. The mule just stood there.

There was a windmill on Uncle Conley’s farm and one afternoon I decided to climb it. The handholds were almost too far apart for me to reach, but if I stretched real far I could just barely get my hands around them. So one at a time, I climbed and climbed until I finally reached the top. I was so intent on climbing that I didn’t realize that as the windmill wheel turned the entire structure shook. Suddenly I was terrified and all I could do was hang on for dear life. There was no climbing down for me. I didn’t dare scream since I had been forbidden to climb the windmill and I knew I would be killed or worse when I was found out, so I simply hung on.

Two hours or more passed and I became frozen in place. Finally, I heard Daddy calling me. I couldn’t move or even answer back so I simply hung on. Daddy called; Uncle Conley called, I hung on. They began frantically searching for me; I hung on. When Uncle Conley got to the base of the windmill, I was able to squeak out one word, “Help”. Uncle Conley looked around, not thinking to look up. “Help,” I shouted a bit louder. Still he didn’t look up. Finally, I managed to say, “Up here”. He looked up, saw me, shouted for me not to move, and called Daddy. Daddy came running around the corner; Uncle Conley was pointing to the top of the windmill and laughing. Daddy joined him and I could tell he was furious. I was sure that they would leave me there as a lesson.

Uncle Conley started to climb. When he got to me, he grabbed me, held me under his arm, and slowly climbed down. When we got back on the ground, he gently put me down. Daddy’s face was bright red and he was puffing and snorting like a raging bull. “Go to your room”, he said, as he pointed to the house. I started to protest since we were at Uncle Conley’s and I didn’t have a room, but God intervened and sealed my lips.

I went to the room that I shared with my three cousins; Corkey, Willy J, and Jacob. They knew something was wrong and Corkey asked me what was wrong. With a trembling voice, I said that I had gotten stuck on the top of the windmill. Realizing that Daddy was going to be arriving shortly and probably not in the best of moods they all made themselves scarce.

It wasn’t long until I heard one of the most terrifying sounds that I knew. Daddy was coming and he was whistling random notes. There was no tune, just random notes. I knew what that meant. Those were the days before Dr. Spock and child abuse concerns; when spankings were more like “whoopins”. Daddy told me to assume the position, which was lying across the bed from the waste up. I heard it when he stripped off his belt. I shut my eyes in anticipation of what was coming. I waited and waited and waited for the blow that never came. I heard Daddy sniff and then sniff again. I looked around and saw the most amazing thing. My Daddy was crying. He sat on the bad beside me, wrapped his arms around me, and told me how frightened he had been that something bad had happened to me and how thankful he was that I was okay. I could only hug him back and tell him that I was sorry and I would never disobey him again. I truly meant it and kept that vow for at least two days.

Uncle Conley’s old sow had a farrow of piglets. Of all of the barnyard animals, I think piglets are among the cutest. Their little tails wrap over their backs in a cute little curly cue and their skin is a pink and smooth if they haven’t yet discovered the mud hole. My cousin Willy J herded them into a convenient pile and I grabbed one. Such squealing you have never heard. I cuddled the little piglet up to my chest and leaned my head over toward it. Before I knew what was happening that animal had my ear in its mouth and started to chew. It just about chewed my ear off before I threw it to the ground. That’s the last time I cuddled a pig.

Uncle Conley had a couple of good years and was able to barter for a second mule. Daddy and I were there when he proudly drove the wagon up with the new mule tied behind.

Daddy and Uncle Conley got the two mules hooked to the wagon, Uncle Conley mounted up, popped the reins, and said giddy up. The mules did, but they would only go in a right hand circle. Try as hard as he could Uncle Conley couldn’t get the mules to go straight, they would only go to the right.

Daddy stopped Uncle Conley, got down in front of the mules, and said: “Conley, I think I know what is wrong. One mule is cockeyed and the other is blind in one eye. They are only going in the direction they can see.”

Uncle Conley swapped the mules and low and behold, they went perfectly straight.

Now please don’t write me and tell me that mules can’t be cockeyed and they go where the reins guide them. I’m only telling what happened as best as I remember it.

That October when it was hog killing time we went to Uncle Conley’s to help and also to get a share of pig meat. Daddy and Uncle Conley took the twenty-two rifle and climbed in the pigpen. They wouldn’t let us kids watch, but Willy J knew where we could climb a tree and watch, so of course we did. Daddy was to shoot the first pig, so he took careful aim and fired. Bam, the pig squealed and took off running. Daddy, you see was an extremely poor shot. Uncle Conley took the next shot. Bam, the pig squealed and took off the other way. Uncle Conley turned out to be as bad a shot as my Daddy. They shot three more times and failed to make a kill shot. Finally, Uncle Conley called one of his field hands who promptly dispatched three pigs with three shots. Willy J and I could just laugh.

Soon the entire community had gathered for the Hog Killing. It was a festival that involved thirty or so people. The pigs were cleaned, beheaded, and halved. In the meantime, huge half barrels were filled with water and a fire was built under each one. When the water was boiling furiously, the half pigs were dunked in the water for a few minutes then extracted. The carcasses were placed on a large table and the skin was scraped to remove the wiry hair that covered the pigs.

After the pig’s skin was de-haired it was separated from the fat. The meat was cut into small pieces and placed in mason jars with some salt and water. The jars of pig meat were placed in large bins, which were filled with water. When a bin was filled with jars of pig meat a fire was built under them and kept burning all night long. This cooked the meat and also sterilized and sealed the jars. When the morning came, the water was drained from the bins and the jars of meat were divided among the participants.

While the meat was being canned, the pig’s heads were boiled until all of the meat came off them. The meat was run through a grinder, mixed with spices, placed in cheesecloth and squeezed to remove excess water. The result was souse meat, hogshead cheese. It was simply gross.

The fat and skin with fat on it was placed in a wash pot over a roaring fire. The fat became lard and was placed in tins for use during the year while the skin became cracklings. The ladies made pan after pan of biscuits and we ate cracklings and biscuits until we got sick. I won’t go into detail about what happened with the intestines, liver, kidneys, and bladder. Just know that nothing was wasted including the feet, which were pickled.

This whole process sounds gruesome, but it was a wonderful time of community, creativity and for youngsters, incredible fun. This kind of meat processing was far more humane (oxymoron) than the way pig meat is processed today, except when Daddy and Uncle Conley did the shooting.

Copyrighted © by Jack deJarnette 2010

So yes, TV news suffers from delusions of adequacy. But let’s move beyond pop criticism and look at a problem academics have often identified as one of the roots of boob tube evil, the idea that its news tends to be episodic rather than thematic. Or in the words of political scientist Shanto Iyengar, TV tends to tends to present “recurring issues as unrelated events.”

Put another way, TV new stories appear as a single episode unconnected from a thematic whole.

Only if it were still so.

These concerns arise largely from research conducted in the 1980s and the early 1990s, back when the three broadcast television networks dominated the planet, when fat newspaper profit margins walked the Earth, and just before the emergence of two media institutions — talk radio and cable news — that make concerns about a lack of theme appear so very naive.

Indeed, it’s hard to find “news” today that isn’t squeezed into some narrative framework.

I use the word narrative here quite on purpose, mainly because I’ve heard it over and over again in recent weeks as partisans snipe at one another over the airwaves. Stewart blasts Fox News for avoiding stories that fail to fit its “fear-driven narrative.” Sean Hannity warns his talk radio listeners about the dangerous “liberal narrative.”

With both sides focused now on narrative, I come today to praise the episodic.

In science there are two approaches to knowledge. One is deductive reasoning, which begins with a theory and then moves to observations to test it. A lack of support means the theory needs rethinking. The other is method inductive reasoning, which begins with specific observations to arrive at some theory or explanation. If I haven’t put you to sleep yet, the difference really does matter.

News has become more deductive than inductive, more driven by an beginning theme or narrative. And that’s a damn shame.

“Opinion in all its forms,” said radio guy Ira Glass in a recent talk, “is kicking the ass of journalism.”

For those who don’t know, Glass is host of This American Life, an excellent program heard on public radio stations across the country, the kind of show definitely deserving of mention on the web site stuff white people like. But Glass has a point, a painful one. By kicking journalism’s ass, I assumed at first he meant with ratings and readers, the only true measures when it comes right down to it. Now, though, I’m convinced he means something deeper, something more sinister. I think he means the N-word. He means narrative. I also suspect he means getting at the truth, or a version of the truth, in a way mainstream media often fail to do given the constraints of journalistic practice and the artificial way, especially on TV, how stories are often told.

There’s nothing wrong with narrative.  You can read a fascinating, if somewhat academic, discussion of it here. In journalism, by narrative we typically mean a form of storytelling beyond the rat-a-tat of straight news. The Nieman folks at Harvard, for example, do a very nice job of gathering some of the best narrative journalism (see also this web site for a good read).

But these are stories, true stories, told using all the tricks found in good fiction, like plot and character and tension, with nothing invented. Truth is stranger than fiction, and it makes for damn good stories if told with skill and an eye for telling detail.

By narrative in today’s partisan battlefield, each side is painting the other as fitting facts, any facts, to a pre-existing storyline. Some might call it framing, others might call it spin, and cynics might argue it’s always been that way, but never has there been so strong a narrative in sources that demand so much attention. The TV talkers on MSNBC and Fox News come immediately to mind, but let’s not forget talk radio and a handful of web sites with the audience, and the influence, to squeeze the facts into a pre-existing storyline like a size 6 trying to fit into a size 2 dress.

This may be the future: a constellation of news sources, all with their own narrative, scooping facts from the spew of daily events and telling their truth their way. It certainly seems a more profitable approach, at least when it comes to ratings and audience. But along the way we lose a sense of common knowledge and consensus.  A starting point in our national conversation.

So I come to praise the episodic in news, the individual bit of story that stands alone outside some overall narrative about how the world is, or ought to be. Or what some talkmeister believes it should be.

He’s never picked up a lariat, roped any steers, or driven any cattle over the open range. Cowboy Dan is not that kind of ‘cowboy’. ‘Course, you’d think that ‘Cowboy Dan’ would be all ‘worn out’ by now.

Over his first twenty-five years, Ol’ Dan has written and recorded a  gaggle of country western songs, managed to graduate from UGA’s College of Agriculture, did a stint with the Braves (as a groundskeeper), been a successful door-to-door salesman, as well as written and starred in a bunch of music videos. Oh, and he’s also had six open heart surgeries.

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Charles de Gaulle, then the President of France, once said of Lyndon Johnson, “If he didn’t exist we’d have to invent him.” De Gaulle could have just as easily been talking about Andrew Sawyer, better known as ‘Cowboy Dan’ to his friends on the Braves grounds crew and others. If we actually had to cook him up, the recipe would perhaps call for three parts musician, two parts medical miracle, one part economic theoretician.  Add almost two full stints in the Turf Management School at UGA. Voila!, you’d have ‘an Andrew Sawyer’… er, ‘Cowboy Dan’.

The thing, as they say, is that Andres Sawyer is greater than the sum of his parts.

I first ran into him a few months ago just after he’d come to Atlanta from Douglas, somewhere near the Heart of Georgia.  I bumped into him (literally) at my local Booksellers while trying to decide between a Roy Orbison CD and the Greatest Hits of Hank Williams.

“I’d try Hank Williams, if I were you. He’s real country and western…three chords and a truth,” Dan says.”That’s what C&W is all about. Did you know that Ray Charles started out singing country and western? I Can’t Stop Loving You, I think it was.”

We chatted for a while and despite our disparate backgrounds, learned that we had a number of common interests…storytelling (in his case ‘songwriting’), baseball, and airplanes.  Before the conversation is over, he shows me this raft of songs that he has written. They’re stuffed in the near numerous pockets of his jeans and jacket.

One topic leads to another and another. Then the kid almost forgets and then remembers to bring up the little matter of having just excited the hospital after a sixth open heart surgery. Andrew…er, “Cowboy Dan,” was born with something called pulmonary atresia. When you strip away all of the technical lingo, his condition means that he’s had to have valves replaced in his heart three times. The first three operations occurred on the day of his birth. The doctors over at Emory University have held his heart —and his life—-in their hands three times since.

If you think that all of this atresia stuff is complicated, expensive and serious stuff, you’re right.  (See his medical  story at Emory Healthcare.) In some way’s Dan’s lucky to be here. Ol’ Cowboy acts like he knows it too. Seems as if he’s never met a stranger and even a brief conversation with him reveals the most optimistic person you’ve ever met…or perhaps never met.

Watching his YouTube videos of “A Man Named Red” or “Four Letter Word (That Starts With Love)” or “South Georgia Pine” one sees that Cowboy Dan has a way with words and lyrics (maybe he’s a latter day Tom T. Hall?) and he can more than carry a tune. The kid can sing too. You figure that  Atlanta would just be a way station on the journey to Nashville. You’d be wrong… for now at least. Dan says that there’s plenty of time for Nashville. “The responsible thing for me to do is to go to work and start giving back to my family. They’ve given me so much. I am going to be selling insurance services for a major insurance company pretty soon now”.

I gotta believe that Dan will end up on the radio or in Nashville someday. He’s just got to. In the meantime, I figure that he’ll sell a lot of insurance or do anything else he chooses to do….even learn to use a lariat and rope a few steers if he wants.

The kid’s got heart.  Even Charles de Gaulle would agree.

And with all of the bad news stories lurking around and sucking up all of the oxygen, who says that there’s not some good news ‘out there’?

© Copyright 2010 Will Cantrell

We have been preventing and fighting forest fires for a couple of hundred years believing it was the best way to preserve our forests and our way of life. We were wrong.

Left to themselves, naturally occurring forest fires were frequent, slow moving and limited. These fires cleared the weak, dead or dying trees. These fires burned the brush and vegetation from the forest floor, which supports destructive insects and has become the fuel of the major fires we know today. These fires diversified the environment, made the soil richer and forced the trees to develop thicker bark, which protected them from the heat. Many types of trees require the heat from these fires to release their seeds. New growth occurs most often within a couple of weeks as the vegetation thrives in the nutrient rich and uncompressed ash left from the fires and the lack of competition for sunlight.

Since we have protected our national forests, fires are less frequent. They are also much hotter – often consuming the old growth trees and moving too fast for the forest animals to escape. With enough firefighters and money, we can protect some special sections of the forest, but the moonscape left everywhere else takes much longer to grow back.

Mother nature, nor mother economy, will not be denied. No matter how many trees you plant, or how much stimulus fertilizer you provide, it is just going to take a while – that is, unless, there’s another fire.

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Postscript: I was torn as to whether I should share this as it may have seemed that I was both uncharacteristically hopeful and suggest that I am anti-regulation or anti-stimulus. I am not. BTW, if there is another fire, it’s best to run like hell or jump in a lake with the other animals and the snakes.

Last week we saw the last combat troops leave that piece of quicksand in the desert. Even though we leave 50,000 troops and will have a military presence for decades to come, it is time to evaluate whether this pyrrhic victory has been worth the loss of 4,500 soldiers, the current and future expense tied to more than 32,000 injured, and $750 billion dollars. A discussion such as this must point out that every reason we were given for invading Iraq turned out to be false. I wish we had found WMD’s and links to the 9/11 terrorists. That might have provided justification for this tragedy. However, nation building and spreading democracy are not reasons to invade any country. Hating that toothless tiger Saddam was not sufficient reason to pay such a heavy price. Our increased security would have been but where is the evidence that this is true?

Many political pundits are worried that Iraq cannot remain stable without our combat troops. That may be true or it may not. However, don’t you agree that it is time for Iraq to determine its own future? By August of 2010, we have trained and have in place 410,000 Iraq police officers and 245,000 Iraq military personnel. Those numbers are far higher than the number of US and coalition troops at the height of our engagement. If those police and troops cannot maintain stability in their own country then they need to accept the consequences. Our investment in their stability cannot be greater than theirs. And if Saudi Arabia is worried about Mideast peace and stability, they should spend some of the tons of oil money we send them on promoting stability in Iraq and the region. Since when should we be their policeman?

What we have accomplished with Iraq is to reveal the limitations of our military. We were no more prepared for guerilla warfare than the British were during the Revolutionary War. We did not have the proper strategy, equipment, or training to deal effectively with an insurgency. Our troops have been strained to unacceptable limits, divorce and suicide rates have skyrocketed, and we have had an over reliance on contract troops (mercenaries) that make six figure incomes.

It is too subjective to ask whether the price has been worth the results and consequences. Everybody has a different answer. In my opinion, our treasure and talent are better spent in non-combat pursuits such as tracking terrorist funding and improving passport control measures. There are, literally, hundreds of ways we can fight terrorism without placing our troops in harm’s way. We just have to be smarter about it. I wish we felt safer as a result of our eight year struggle but we do not.

Unlike Sea Island, I’ve never visited Amelia Island and I’ll tell you why. I first heard about Amelia Island from a close neighbor whose major interest in our community revolved around “protecting” our in-town neighborhood from the depredations of university students, illegal in-street parking and our periodic invasion by football fans. It was the latter which the neighbor took to escaping by booking a weekend at Amelia Island Plantation with her medical doctor spouse who (this was three decades ago) needed to get away for a bit of refreshment from the burdens of his all-consuming profession. Back then, though they lived modestly, doctors, unlike their colleagues in the liberal arts, could afford to splurge at a fancy resort. Which was fine. The other participants in the neighborhood association trying to keep our streets clear for ambulances and fire trucks and debris removal after the football fans left didn’t begrudge our “leader” absenting herself.

Indeed, I barely remembered the name of the fabled escape from which she regretted having had to return. Besides, for someone living in the middle of north Florida back then, the trek to the beaches, both east and west, was a driving chore that seemed increasingly worthless as the traffic became more congested and the waters of the Atlantic and the Gulf more polluted and lifeless. Then, just by accident, we discovered Georgia’s Golden Isles, almost two decades later, and our interest in the Atlantic Coast was rekindled and we drove down to explore the remnants of American Beach, a storied African American resort, which turned out to be located just north of Amelia Island Plantation, a resort with a gated guard house.

Sea Island, at that time, had a guard house too, sitting on the causeway connecting the upscale neighborhood to the more pedestrian St. Simons. But, the Sea Island guard house was only manned when some famous personage visiting The Cloister or staying at the Lodge (George Herbert Walker Bush, having honeymooned there, returned with Lady Barbara from time to time and President Eisenhower was honored with a plaque on a live oak planted in honor of his visit for a bit of golf). At other times, Sea Island, including its quaint Post Office was readily accessible to visitors who arrived on foot or horseback or in tour buses to “conspicuously consume” the cottages and gardens of the wealthy and a colony of artists. Driving to the beach was problematic because the beach access ways were posted for no parking, unlike the ones on St. Simons. But, the Sea Island beach was never much of a beach anyway and seemed to accumulate a lot of detritus that gets washed down from the Georgia mountains by the Altamaha and its tributaries.

In any case, the manned guard house at Amelia Island Plantation might just as well have been occasioned by the presence of some important personage. So, we inquired whether it would be possible to purchase lunch at one of their restaurants, presumably situated overlooking the ocean, like those at the King and Prince on St. Simons were Sunday brunch is a long-standing tradition after church. (Or was. That too might have changed during the last decade when Sea Island tore down the Cloisters and rebranded itself as an exclusive community). After some consultation by the extremely friendly staff and a phone call up to the resort, we were informed that, of course we could have lunch, if we left our credit card at the gate. What a clever way to maintain exclusivity! We decided to forgo the honor and drove off to find a plebeian fish joint. And that’s why I never visited Amelia Island plantation.

Sea Island is now advertising on the radio, inviting Georgians to visit and take advantage of special considerations. That is, they want our money now that they’re bankrupt and being sold out for pennies on the dollar.

Sea Island Co. filed for bankruptcy protection Tuesday in federal court in Brunswick. Court filings say the company is unable to pay more than $482 million in debt used to finance costly renovations and expansions completed in 2007.

Since the 1920s, Sea Island has catered to wealthy guests, celebrities and even presidents. In 2004, President George W. Bush hosted the Group of Eight world leaders’ summit on the resort island near Brunswick.

Ah yes, and just to be sure the privacy of our public servants would be protected, it wasn’t enough to activate the guard house. No, the press were all lodged up in Savannah, some seventy miles from the venue, so everyone could pretend that’s where the big-wigs were “working,” in storied, Savannah, of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil fame.

And so it goes. There’s one other item worthy of note about the Amelia Island Plantation sale.

At Thursday’s hearing, Paul Jorge, vice president and general counsel for TRT, said the company intends to pay the $67.1 million with “cash on hand” and no borrowings.

Good to know that another private corporation has $67 million just lying around. Though, that’s not likely to be part of the $837 billion we recently learned about. Though it might be. You never know about private corporations that are “closely held.”

While it lacked the precision of a Steely Dan concert, the laconic sway of a Boz Scaggs concert or the drive of a Doobies Bros. concert, The Dukes of September was a steady entertainment that probably heralds the next big thing in Retirement Rock, but more on that in minute.

First, to the matter at hand: how do three unwilling rock stars, famous for flying under the radar while compiling complex catalogues and decades of remarkable music, create one headlining event that showcases not just their hits, but their roots? The answer is haltingly. This because their reluctance to just play their own hits potentially means a bored audience and crummy word-of-mouth about self-indulgent musicians. But balanced against the artists’ boredom with playing their own hits for the ten thousandth time, the compromise is to mix in a lot of relatively deep, obscure blues and rhythmic oldies. Their stated case was to play the songs that inspired them as impressionable young men. So we got Ray Charles’, “Tell the Truth” and David Ruffin’s “My World Ended” along with some better-known stuff like the OJays’ “Soul Train.”

It’s a compromise, usually a dread term in music, but it works, at least as far as it goes. Their greatest stated fear, voiced in pre-tour interviews by Michael McDonald, was that they would have a great time, but the audience might get lost in the weeds. I think that result has been—barely—averted.

Anyone in attendance would have been happy to let Donald and company lay down the jams till the girls said when, but with only two hours in which to cram forty years of music, something had to give. Boz treated us to the “Lowdown” done to elegant perfection. Mike McDonald got the most individual microphone time and acquitted himself of the obligation to perform “What a Fool Believes,” “Takin’ it to the Streets” and “I Keep Forgettin’.” The solo disappointment might have been that Fagen only did “Green Flower Street,” a fairly obscure mid-late Steely Dan number, and the huge crowd pleaser “Reelin’ in the Years.”

I know, it wasn’t a Steely Dan concert (although the nine-piece band has been the touring Dan band for most of the decade, and Donald is the putative leader of this ensemble), but there was room for more Steely Dan in the show. It was very cool that the back up singers, jazz aficionado fave Carolyn Leonhart-Escoffery and Catherine Russell were both given solos. It may be Donald’s thing, but it is very democratic. So much so that there’s a Band/Levon Helm tribute where each of the principals sings a Helm song. It was fun, but for the audience’s sake, not the artist’s (that balance-of-interests thing again), the time would have been better spent on their own material. But just when things were getting too obscure, “Help Me Rhonda,” the tireless Beach Boys classic, shows up to lighten the load.

All told, who wouldn’t love spending an evening with these pros, no matter what they played?

The most interesting aspect of the event, however, was the fact that it was there at all. The smart money says that after endless rounds of diminishing returns with “farewell tours,” Retirement Rock has figured out a winning new angle. The aging boomers are recombining in new touring alliances that hint at the old, but are not obligated to play the catalogue ad nauseum. This summer, economically the worst in the modern touring industry’s history, has seen high ticket/service prices run headlong into under-established acts. The result has been cancellations and lame excuses for weak sales. While acts and promoters are re-thinking how many seats mid-size youthful acts and American Idol can sell, the Boomers are buying tickets. James Taylor is selling out every venue in his nostalgic tour with Carole King. Elton John and Billy Joel have been sharing coliseum stages for a few years now. Tom Petty has brought Crosby, Stills and Nash along to good effect. Eric Clapton has re-engaged with Steve Winwood for some new-old Blind Faith, as well as with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker for some fresh Cream. Robert Plant and Alison Krause made a hit record and toured together. And last summer Elvis Costello, perpetually bored and stretching his chops, was on the road with Emmy Lou Harris.

It’s actually exciting out there again, so I will take a little obscurity and forgive Fagen and McDonald for not reprising their Steely Dan hit “Peg,” so long as it amuses them enough to do it again tonight.

I’m there on the first row kneeling and hands folded in lap between 9-year-olds named Herbert and Virgil, one black, another white. On the back row at the side stands Mrs. Scott, also black, a somewhat stout figure in a simple navy dress and shiny black dress shoes. In the picture, I also see Joey Jackson, Douglas Shaw and Mark Wiggins, three childhood friends who I haven’t seen since our family moved from Jesup in 1974. Looking at the photo forces other names to the surface — Michael, Greg, Dawn, Joanne, Tony, Chuck, Wayne and Christy.

Back in July 2006, I wrote Mrs. Scott to let her know how she was the best school teacher I ever had:

“I want you to know how much I appreciate your compassion, kindness, strength and warmth all of those years ago. Enclosed is a book of columns I’ve written over the last four years in South Carolina newspapers. Read and you’ll easily see the influence of my parents, Elliott and Barbara. Read a little more closely and you’ll find your influence too. While some of them are about arcane pieces of South Carolina politics and policy, the columns strike recurring themes of fairness, justice, tolerance, acceptance and common sense.”

Nine days later, Mrs. Scott, then 75, replied:

“I looked at the envelope and said, ‘Who could be sending me a book from South Carolina?’ So I began to open it up and the first thing I saw at the top was ‘Andy Brack.’ I said, ‘It can’t be. Andy from the fourth grade. Not my fourth grade class.’ So I began to thumb through and saw the autograph. I said, ‘It must be.’

“I was so happy it brought tears to my eyes. You really made my week and added another year to my life (smile). I really know that my 37½ years of labor with children in Wayne County, plus three of my own, was not in vain.”

With schools across South Carolina and the country back in session now, we need to remember – and thank – our teachers and those of our children.

If you really think about teachers, you realize they’re one of the nation’s most precious resources. Every year, we entrust those most precious to us, our children, to their care so they can develop into educated, young citizens who eventually will lead our cities, state and nation.

Our teachers in public and private schools often aren’t paid enough, work long hours and have to deal with situations (bad behavior, kids with cell phones, lack of resources, and on and on) that interfere with what they want to do – teach the children. Many stay up late at night grading papers or put in long hours coaching eager athletes on the field.

And for all they put up with, they stick to it.

As South Carolina embarks on another political season, we really ought to think about how we treat teachers. We ought to pay them more than a Southeastern average. We ought to invest better in their lives, just as they’re investing in our children’s lives. And we ought to recognize them for how they’ve impacted our lives.

I’m fortunate to have written the best teacher I ever had, Mrs. Scott, before she passed in 2008.

“I will cherish this book and letter,” Mrs. Scott wrote at the end of her 2006 letter. “May God continue to bless you and your family. Thanks for such fond memories. Overlook the shaky writing. It is 75 years old now (smile).”

Tell one of your former teachers how much they meant to you. Or inspire a younger one by recognizing their hard work. You will make their day.