From BASEBALL PARKS To ROSA PARKS

        My brother Don and I recently returned from our fourth annual baseball trip.  We are now two-thirds of the way to our goal of seeing regular season games in all the major league baseball fields.  This year we finished up the Eastern Divisions by going South to Atlanta, Miami and Tampa Bay. We also caught up with our favorite college team, Virginia, playing Florida State in Tallahassee.  That was a bonus.

       Years ago we started adding some cultural activities to our trips, like The Martin Luther King Memorial on a prior football trip to Atlanta, The Underground Railroad Museum in Cincinnati, and the Museum of African American History in Detroit.  We also visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Louis Armstrong’s home in Queens, and the Chicago Blues Festival in Grant Park that we just lucked into.

         This year we planned to go to Alabama between baseball games and fill in some more of our Civil Rights Education.  It was a wonderful experience: educational, emotional, and extremely humbling. I hadn’t really put it into historical perspective until the past week when I realized that Saturday was the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Brown v Board of Education case, and this summer is the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.

Leaving Miami, we drove to Montgomery, the primary objective being the Civil Rights Memorial Center, sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  It was the perfect place to begin, with its video presentation and fountain focusing on the martyrs of the movement.  Then we moved from that tear inducing Theater presentation, into the room with the Wall of Tolerance.  Here visitors are invited to add their names to the thousands who have pledged here to work in their daily lives for justice, equality and human rights – the ideals of the Civil Rights Movement.  Don and I both did so without hesitation.

From there, we walked across the street and down the walkway to the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church. Sitting almost in the shadow of the Alabama State Capitol building, this is the only church that Martin Luther King, Jr. actually pastored on his own, according to our amazing guide, Rev, Richard Smith, who is Associate Minister there now. This is where King was when Rosa Parks took her defiant seat that led to the 381-day bus boycott that became the Lexington and Concord of the movement. And not insignificantly, it vaulted into national prominence the young pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.  Rev. Smith walked us through a wonderful mural in the basement of the church that depicts the movement from Rosa Parks in 1955, through the assassination of Dr. King in 1968. This 10 by 47 foot mural was painted in 1980 by John W. Feagin, an artist and a Dexter Deacon.  It was from his office, near this spot on the lower level, that Dr. King directed the bus boycott.

From Rev. Smith we learned about a lot more.  When we told him that we were planning on moving up to Birmingham the next day, he filled us in on that city’s unhappy contributions to the turbulent times.  Probably most distressing was the bombing in the Sunday School at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls and injuring many more parishioners.  Birmingham was also the site of vicious attacks by police and dogs on peaceful protestors. But from its jail cell, Rev. King wrote the letter that is the blueprint for ultimate victory of non-violent resistance over tyranny and brutality.

We found Birmingham to be up to its billing, steeped in the history of the movement, and now making peace with its past.  The Kelly Ingram Park, scene of some of the most brutal attacks, has become a park dedicated to Peace, with sculpture and commemorative markers inviting visitors to contemplate, remember, and dedicate themselves, as at the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, to a peaceful, respectful future.  The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, now beautifully rebuilt, has a section near where the bombs exploded, set aside for quiet reflection and remembrance. The Sanctuary has a stained glass window, a gift from the people of Wales after the bombing, of Jesus on the cross with the words, “You do it unto me.”  The Civil Rights Institute, across the street from the Church, has a comprehensive Museum, including parts of the cell in which Dr. King wrote the “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” 

Don and I talked about the reason we feel such a strong desire to relive this history, wherever we find it.  Both of us wish we had participated in some substantive way.  But we just did not know at the time, or we were too young to feel that we could make a difference. I think we feel guilt, even though we never intentionally hurt anyone or witnessed any racial violence or oppression. We were born and raised in Virginia, a Southern State, but none of these things went on around our hometown of Salem. I wonder if the guilt we feel is similar to what the German people feel when they visit a Concentration Camp or the Holocaust Museum:  “I didn’t do it, but I didn’t do anything to prevent it either.”

       Since I was raised in the mid-twentieth century South, attended schools there and soaked up its culture, I have thought there are many ways in which the South is more racially integrated than the North.  People of both races shared the poverty and economic powerlessness, which followed the Civil War through the reconstruction period.  There is a close cultural kinship between the races, which is expressed largely through music and religion.  However, Brown v. Board of Education took at least ten years to find its way into the Roanoke Valley of Virginia, and as a consequence I never attended any elementary or secondary schools with people of African heritage.  It was while I was a student at the University of Virginia that I first came to understand the urgency of Martin Luther King’s campaign for the rights of black Americans. The Council on Human Relations at the University sponsored two lectures on the subject: first, Dr. King and then, in stark contrast thereto, George Lincoln Rockwell, who was then head of the American Nazi Party.  Ever since that experience, I have been a strong advocate of freedom of speech and the free marketplace of ideas: until I heard Rockwell, I did not know the extent to which the civil rights movement needed to be.  It wasn’t difficult to choose sides after that.

Now I have an even greater understanding, because of my trips to the various Civil Rights Memorial venues.  I get choked up when I see pictures of the little bombing victims in Birmingham, one of whom was named Addie, our mother’s name, and the shortened version of my granddaughter’s.  The Civil Rights martyrs are more real to me now, and their sacrifices more obviously precious.  And I will speak out in opposition to losing ground in making America live up to its creed, even when - ESPECIALLY When - it’s the current Supreme Court letting the clock roll back on voting rights and affirmative action.  We can do better, because we have done better.  I would love to see the name of Antonin Scalia on the SPLC Wall of Tolerance.  If some of the members of our highest court are not committed to justice, equality and human rights, it isn’t the first time in our history (e.g. Taney and the Dred Scott decision; Plessy v. Ferguson; Korematsu).  But it is most definitely a path in the wrong direction and a further injury to the incredibly brave people who have lived and died for these principles.

The baseball trip was great!  Each of the Major League Home Teams won, either breaking a tie or coming from behind in the last inning to send their faithful fans home happy.  Better yet, the one home team that did not win was Florida State, losing in the 10^th inning to nationally ranked number one – Virginia.  So a big Wahoo Wa was exchanged by the fifty to one hundred Virginia fans in Dick Howser Stadium on the Florida State Campus.  And I think the fact that my car battery was dead when we got back to the parking lot was probably a coincidence.

I feel that my soul has been expanded by this experience, beyond even my great expectations.  When we get out to Texas and Arizona next year, I don’t know what we may find that might be similarly inspiring.  But whether we just luck into it, or have to drive a couple days out of the way to find it, it will definitely be worth it.

Dennis Clower

May, 2014

My 2003 Letter to Secretary Colin Powell

Now that the last US troops have left Iraq, maybe we can begin to assess the damage this adventure has done to the country.  I recently pulled out my letter to Colin Powell, written before the first troops were committed.  The following letter, sent February 26, 2003,  received no response.  I wish I hadn't been so right..

Honorable Colin L. Powell

Secretary of State

2201 C. Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20520

Dear Secretary Powell:

On my office desk, in my home, and on the wall of my mother’s home, there is a picture of which I have been very proud.  It shows you, my son Scott, who was then 8 years old, and then Governor (now Senator) Thomas Carper on a stage together at the University of Delaware.  The occasion was a celebration of the Delaware Mentoring Council.  You were the celebrity guest speaker and you were inspiring, as you spoke about the role that elders had played in your life and how we can do the same for a new generation of children.

Now I worry about the legacy we are creating for those children.  While the administration of which you are a part has shown admirable support for mentoring programs, the general effect of its domestic economic policies has been helpful to those who need it least and not to the most disadvantaged.  And not to the great, working middle class upon whose backs these economic policies place the greatest burden.  This, however, is not the cause of my greatest concern.  We have survived similar, shortsighted policies in prior administrations.

The thing which makes me awaken at night in great fear and dread is international in scope and it involves your Department.  Are we putting our precious children in harm’s way by making them reap a harvest of international distrust and hatred, the seeds of which we are now planting?  It seems to me that by proceeding alone (or virtually so) against Iraq, we are playing into the hands of Bin Laden and any other terrorist leader who gains strength from portraying the United States as a great, evil bully.  We run the real risk of becoming the great Satan to the world of Islam.

Yet, I am inclined to trust you.  The only member of the foreign policy contingent of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell in which I feel some confidence is you.  I talk to many who feel the same way, too:  “If Colin Powell believes what he is saying, I have to give him the benefit of the doubt.”  Are we right?  Because there is also the troubling doubt that nibbles away at our confidence:  As a lifetime military man, would you tell the Commander-in-Chief that he is wrong, if you believed it?  And if you told him and he overrode your objections, with the concurrence of Messrs. Rumsfeld  and Cheney, would you go ahead with carrying out orders like a good soldier?  Or would you go public and resign?  This is what we ask ourselves.

I appeal to you on behalf of all of us who believe in your integrity, and of those children whom we love and for whom we bear the responsibility of passing on a safe and sensible world, that you exercise your independent judgment as to the necessity of this armed confrontation with Iraq.  You, of the bellicose four, have the most experience in war as a participant.  Only you of those four, appreciate the horrors.  And only you, have the wisdom and perspective to choose the right path for us.  Please do not let us down.  Please proceed as if you hold the hopes and dreams of the next generation of Americans within your hands.  Because you do.

                                                                                    Very truly yours,

                                                                                    Dennis S. Clower

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A Primer For Candidates

As another election year comes upon us, I thought it would be a good time to share my experience as a candidate.   This was written a few years ago, and I have shared it with a few candidates.  Election laws may have changed somewhat and, at the national level, the Citizen's United case has totally screwed up the playing field.  (More on that later).  But local elections and first time candidates are still quite similar, I'm sure.

I respect and admire the impulse to put yourself out there.  Even after years of serving on Ethics Commissions, I still think most of us seek public service for the right reasons.  But it's hard to run a campaign, and particularly hard to maintain a reasonable perspective while doing so.  I hope my little primer helps.

A Primer for Candidates

“Don’t Take Yourselves Too Seriously”

            Recently as I was cleaning out the garage, which involved moving my accumulated memories into my office, I ran across a piece I wrote in May, 1986, during the primary campaign that I was waging that year for the State Senate.  It was four months before the primary and I was already disillusioned - not so much about the effort to find and influence votes of people who did not know me, but more by the reactions and statements of a lot of my “friends.”  I was upset by the sudden re-evaluation of my motives.  All the years I had worked as a volunteer to create and nurture such things as Family Services, the Arts Council, Covered Bridge Theatre, my church, the PTA, Little League, Ethics Commission and many other good deeds were all being re-examined now.  Where it was previously believed that I was a community-oriented, selfless worker, the act of offering myself as a candidate proved, to many, that I had always been a selfish, egomaniac who only did those things to promote my chances for attaining political office where, if I should be successful, I would undoubtedly confirm all the suspicions they suddenly had.  Why could they not understand, I argued, that the desire to serve the public in little ways, working for charitable, educational and cultural organizations, led logically to a desire to serve in a political office where more people could benefit from my efforts?

            But speaking of ego, there is nothing like the roller coaster effect of a political campaign upon that fragile but easily inflated piece of personhood.  Most of us go for weeks, even months without having anyone ask for our opinion about anything.  We fight for the opportunity to express our opinion and usually find no one listening.  This is not the case when you are a candidate:  Suddenly, everyone from the League of Women Voters to the Ingrown Toenail Support Society wants to know what you think about everything!  Everything, that is, except what you want to talk about.  Heady stuff.  Those are the highs.  They really seem to want your opinion.

            Then there are the lows - probably more of them for a first-time candidate, like when you realize that no one has bothered to read the opinion you so laboriously wrote or to listen to your carefully articulated spoken position.  There are times when people act as if you don’t exist, or certainly, don’t matter.  This attitude is most likely to be exhibited by the old pols, the people who believe that they have power which is derived from a relationship with those currently holding office.  They lord it over the poor candidate but, if that candidate should be successful, they will be the first ones to offer their hands and assurances that they (quietly, but effectively, working in the background or underground) are primarily responsible for that success.  The flatterers, who feed the ego without sincerity are not much better.  Each extreme makes it harder to maintain a sense of balance.

            And finally, never underestimate the lack of interest of the average voter in those issues which you have labored for hours to develop and perfect and which you have at great pain and expense, published in every form of communication media in the district.  The great majority of voters are paying absolutely no attention.  This was illustrated most graphically on the morning of the primary.  We had raised more money (and spent even more money) than anyone in the district ever had to that date.  We had blanketed local newspapers with position papers.  We had volunteers lined up to work at every polling place in the district (the largest in the State covering hundreds of miles) with ample literature.  We had completed massive phone polls and door-to-door canvassing to thousands of homes.  A mass mailing went out the last week to every registered Democrat in the entire district.

            It was my plan to vote at home, first thing, then go from poll to poll, encouraging all my precinct workers for the rest of the day.     As I drove up the road to the elementary school which served as the polling place that year, I saw my name posted on signs, on both sides of the road every two hundred feet as planned.  There were at least a dozen of them on the short street and they had been placed there just an hour before the polls opened.  I greeted my volunteers in the parking lot, noting their banner, buttons and literature, and walked in.  I went to the desk  marked “A through C” in my home precinct.  The clerk looked up at me, and though I thought I recognized her and was sure she recognized me, I spoke up (not to be presumptuous) and said, “Clower  - - Dennis.”  She looked down at the list of registered voters in front of her.  “How do you spell that?” she asked.

                                                                                                Dennis S. Clower

                                                                                                226 E. Main St.

                                                                                                Elkton, MD 21921

                                                                                                410-398-7400

HOMECOMING

Thomas Wolfe was right, you know.  We return to places with memories and find our memories at war with what is now.  I’ve always related to literature that explores the conflict between ideals and reality but it has been forward-looking before.  I mean I’ve come to accept the fact that I’m a hopeless romantic (though acceptance of the fact belies the hopelessness of the condition).  My brother says he has been accused of speaking parenthetically.  (But that is an aside).  Anyway, I understand now that life has not produced all the ideals I had as a nineteen year old, leaving Salem.  But recently, when I was in town for what was probably the longest time since then (“then” being 1963), I confronted a profound truth (or what is posturing for some consideration as profound):  now my memories of the past are clashing so much with the reality of the bustling city that I wonder if they too are misty ideals that cannot stand up to close scrutiny.

There has been a subtle shift, in the last couple years, in my gaze.  Perhaps it is what all people go through in the middle of their life but since this is the only life I’ve been able to remember, I don’t know.  So when I reached the age of forty, I was anxious to scrap the past and redirect myself for the future that hadn’t happened yet (as far as I knew) with a vengeance.  It didn’t take as long the second time before I realized it wasn’t going to happen.  Again!  I hope I learned it completely this time because bumping your head against reality, when you’re in a full sprint to avoid it, gets more painful as you get older.  No matter where you go, there you are.

So the subtle redirection of focus from future to past may indicate some degree of acceptance -- some education from past painful experience.  Well, guess what!  The idyllic past may not have happened either, from what I have observed.

My brothers and I were born, and I lived my first eight years (my brothers’first twelve and sixteen, respectively, as you range from youngest to oldest), in the Pizza Hut on West Main Street.  I became a left-handed dead pull hitter in our front yard because if the ball went all the way across the street, it was a sure home run.  The middle brother (about whom I speak from time to time, parenthetically) started conceding them after his second trip to the doctor with a concussion from his aggressive pursuit of baseballs across the busy (then, two-lane - - now, five or six lane) street.  It was better than the Polo Grounds for lefties.  These days it would take a major swat to clear the highway and, if it did, the ball would go right through a plate glass window (after two major league [artificial surface]bounces on the asphalt parking lot) of a Long John Silver Kentucky Fried Burger King Super Grocery Store Strip Mall Shopping Center.  Back then, (this “then” being the early Fifties)Tennessee Walking Horses abode there.  (Do horses reside, or do they merely abide?) 

All of my children, who seemed fairly convinced of my veracity before the return trip, have started looking strangely at me.  “So where, exactly, do you think the airplane salvage yard was, Dad?”  Well, back then it was a “junkyard,” but I guess about where the auto parts store is, now.  “Angus steers and Tennessee Walking Horses, you say?”  Yes, that would be about where McDonald’s is, right?  Hope they aren’t using any leftover parts at either of these places.

Take away my future if you must.  I am no longer the quivering mass of potential who shot (or slinked) out of the Roanoke Valley some thirty-three years ago.  But please don’t take away my past.  Without that, I am not distinct from everyone else I run into.  Please write to me and tell me that some of my memories are real:  there were mock orange trees growing  along Main Street that I passed on the (five miles if it’s a foot) walk from my home at the (now) Pizza Hut, next to the Skyline Cleaners Dairy Delight, to Academy Street Elementary (or was it, “Grammar?”) School, (now it’s a luxury condo) with the twisting covered slide fire escape that was so cool.  And there was water in “Dry Branch” and a troll that lived under the bridge who stole my lunch every Friday when they served hotdogs in the school cafeteria.  And the “patrol boy” named Basil on the corner of Academy and Main in the winter of  1950-51, whom I decided to slug because he called my brother (who must have been speaking parenthetically at the time) a “liar,” was really an amazing (for that time) six-feet, ten-inch, two hundred, ninety pound, twelve-year-old fifth grader.  Someone else must remember this behemoth with the fragrant name, who later preferred to be called the more generic, “Herb.”   But never, never pronounce the “H” unless you are in England.

There was “The Alley,” that ran down from Main Street one house (Skyline Cleaners) east of us, perpendicular so that their back yards were an extension of our back yard; and if we had still been there ten years later when Sally Jo turned fifteen, all those fences would not have stopped me from getting back there to (“accidentally”) be walking (or vaulting) through her back yard.  I probably would have become a world class hurdler with those fences being the only thing between me and Sally Jo.  But by then we had moved on to the house on the hill, west of town, that was moved when the Interstate came through and replaced with a Holiday Inn parking lot.  Thus we moved from the Pizza Hut to the Holiday Inn.  And Sally Jo never knew what she missed (and she still won’t, even if she reads this, because “Sally Jo” was not her real name).

Someone please write to me and confirm that my paper route was not (as it would be, now) wall to-wall fast food joints all the way around Wildwood Road and, by the way, it was appropriately named at the time, wasn’t it?  I remember learning to drive on that road, on Sunday mornings, after delivering all the papers and it was quiet and beautiful.  It still is, in spots, but you have to go through gasoline-fast-food-convenience store Hell to get there. Wasn’t there a “Shale Bank” around there where locals went for advanced anatomy and physiology courses back then?  Of course, I didn’t; but it was legendary what everybody else was doing up there.

One thing which seduced me to keep looking forward (some day I would be famous) was the fact that both of my childhood homes were moved when they fell victim to progress and were not destroyed.  Therefore, simple commemorative markers or plaques on the Pizza Hut and the Holiday Inn sites can advise the public of the significance of those respective spots and give directions to the new location of the homes that were once there, and which now, (I envision) would be the repositories of my childhood memorabilia:  the unexpurgated King James (with underlines, notations, and generous use of clear cellophane tape to bind together the “India Paper”) New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs which was my most memorable sixth birthday present; the game ball from the 1956 Salem Little League All Star Game which I was awarded for snagging a wicked line drive down the first base line with my most memorable twelfth birthday present (a Rawlings first baseman’s mitt); and a traffic citation issued by my brother to a policeman (who ever since that day has devoted his career to the elimination of parenthetical speech) which was the last hurrah (or gasp) of the feud we had with the Salem (then) Town Police force.  The first shot or salvo had been a letter to the Roanoke newspaper suggesting that “Salem’s Finest” could possibly be finer if it didn’t have so many “Hooligans” on the force.  This letter was instrumental in providing for me and for my (parenthetical) brother a police escort throughout the remainder of our life in the valley, which we appreciated a great deal.  (This legendary confrontation was later trivialized by a stupid Television series called “Dukes of Hazzard.”  Those old boys on the tube never had the grit to issue a traffic citation and make a citizen’s arrest of Roscoe.  We did).

But all that is (as they say) in the past and has long been forgotten by everyone except me (and my brother).  The now clashes so much with that past that it makes me wonder about my power of recall.  When they do the film version of my memoirs, I fear that it will have to be moved to Australia.  As for  the Museum, something small and tasteful would be good - - no Taj Mahal will be necessary.  Something like the Walton’s Museum would be just fine.  All that is needed is something strong enough to preserve, and gentle enough to protect (or perhaps, revive) today’s dreams of yesterday.         

                                                                                               

                                                                                          Dennis S. Clower

                                                                                           226 East Main Street

                                                                                           Elkton, Md. 21921

                                                                                           (410) 398-7400

Looking Back - At Bertie

Yesterday would have been my Mom's 97th birthday, if she had not left us in her 91st year.  But in her honor at this time, I want to post something I wrote while she was in her eighties, and still very much alive.  I know everyone loves their mother, and that is wonderful.  But I want to let you know that everyone loved MY mother, too.  And she pretty much loved them all back.  Here is my tribute to "Bertie," the most influential person in my life.

FLYING, LOOKIN’ BACK

            When I was about twelve years old, I received my most memorable lesson in avoiding stereotypes based on sex about household responsibilities and duties.  It came from my very traditional, role model mother.  I don’t remember if I was asked or not, but I do remember that I washed or dried the dishes after dinner.  My brother and I usually made a high-stakes game of it by tossing the dinnerware across the kitchen, piece by piece, from the drying rack to the cabinet where it was stored.  This was how we honed our skills as football receivers and gold-glove baseball defensive players.  It takes concentration and soft hands to avoid parental remonstrance.  In my memory, there was never a broken piece of pottery as a result of our game.

            On this evening, I do not remember if I was washer or dryer, pitcher or receiver.  What I do remember is that I sassily said to my mother after the last piece was put away, “That’s gratitude for you; you didn’t even say ‘thank you’.”  My mother was (and still is) the most traditional of Southern women.  She did not work for money outside the home except for a brief stint at a family restaurant which her brother was managing at the time.  What she said to me was all she needed to say to turn upside down my half-kidding reference to the belief that the household was her total responsibility.  She said, “And did you thank me?”  You see, she had made the dinner, as she always did, and it was ready for me when I returned from the paper route (from which I kept all the income).  The dinner probably consisted of four or five vegetables (three or four of which she had canned, pickled or preserved after picking from our garden), maybe some meat of an inexpensive variety, and at least three choices of dessert.  She always did that.  No, I had not thanked her nor had I thanked my father, whose labor provided the funds with which the purchased food was bought and who worked with her to plant, weed, and harvest the home garden.  It was all taken as my due until that night.

            Arresting and memorable as this moment was, it does not scratch the surface of the quotes, slogans, poems and prayers that are the pieces that make up the mosaic of my mother’s legacy to her children and to the rest of the world.

            We began calling her Bertie by the time I was in my teens, a name that had evolved from the time when I was six and was first allowed to see her after she had a serious operation.  I thought she sure was “purtie.”  Through the convolutions of time and word play (one of the favorite family recreations) her name became Bertie, just as my next elder brother became “Fog” and I (the youngest) was “Bones, Sr.: or “Sens Bonior,” alternately while the eldest brother evolved from “Bones, Jr.” to “Jones.”  And the last word on any factual disagreement was hers.  She knew everything and she remembered clearly, “Everything.”  It was not just an article of faith - it was fact.  When she spoke, we would look at each other, acknowledging the frailties of our own remembrances with the debate - ending litany, “Bertie Knows.”  She didn’t argue.  She didn’t have to.

            The store of sayings is folksy, funny and frequently obscure.  “Fine as frog’s hair,” is not original or particularly unusual.  But  “looking like he had corn to sell” seemed to describe a particularly self-congratulatory stance or manner.  To me it conjured up a vision of pomaded hair and a puffy chest.  The articles of clothing were not essential to the image - could be bib overalls or could be blue serge suit.  It was the attitude that mattered most.

            In my middle teens, my mother made sure I learned, “An answer to a maiden’s prayer is not a chin of stubby hair.”  This delayed my mustache for twenty years and my full beard for another fifteen.  By that time, I was no longer looking for maidens.  The only other advice I remember in the romance department was that in looking for a mate, I would do well to spend at least as much time considering the idiosyncrasies of the mother as the charms of the daughter.  Once again, Bertie knew.

            I’m not sure I ever figured out what a “Drugstore Cowboy” was.  I am reasonably sure it was not a compliment.  Maybe it was the way they straddled the stools at the ice cream bar.  More likely it was the way they sort of hung out in front of the store, looking important.  I’ll bet some of them looked like they thought they had corn to sell.

            The most obscure saying but also the most intriguing is the expression, “Flying, looking back.”  It seems to evoke in each person, a slightly different image:  maybe recklessness from not looking where you are going; or speed so great that the wind forces you to turn your eyes away; or such a happy feeling of being alive that you are looking back in pleasure over the movement, excitement, and the joy of life!  That’s my image.  But there is also just the slightest bit of the dog with its nose turned into the wind that we have all seen in windows of cars and the back of pickup trucks.  Excitement, happiness but speed so great that it’s not entirely comfortable.

            There are other stories and other sayings.  But the common thread that emerges is that they are about people, their attitudes, their foibles and their eccentricities.  And they are funny, rather than hurtful.  They are empathetic and not critical.  They recognize that we are all wonderfully different but yet distressingly similar.

            Bertie has always been a student of human nature, an affirming, loving and humorous observer of people.  On the affirming and loving side, she is the confessor, the therapist and the lay psychologist.  She is an unschooled practitioner of the therapy of just listening without comment.  My strongest memory of childhood is of Bertie, holding the phone to her ear and saying every five to ten minutes the only word needed to provide the talker on the other end of the line a breath before the next onslaught.  She would say, “Well,” in a slightly lilting way as if it were preceding a sentence which never followed; or as if it were a question; or an expression of sympathy.  That one word served to provide her side of the conversation.  And people always called with their problems.

            She has always cared about people.   When she’s worried, she bakes cakes, cookies and pies.  I had one uncle who, when presented with the usual three or four options being offered for dessert, would say “Have you been worrying about something this week, Addie?”  Most of the time, when she worries, it’s about other people.  That’s what her life is about.

            There is no way to describe the “little girl” sense of humor she has retained into her 80’s.  I can only give quick snap-shots of a seventy-something woman, sitting with her grandchildren around a table having a contest to see who could make the most realistic animal sounds.  She always won the donkey sound and I swear, I could see her nose vibrate.  Or the time we got her on a go-cart at a track.  She may not have broken the record for speed or shortest lap time but she still holds the record for smiles per mile. 

            No discussion of Bertie would be complete without mentioning her faith.  When I was about six or seven years old, I asked her about heaven.  I told her that  although I  enjoyed singing with the family, the thoughts of floating around playing a harp and singing all the time was not my idea of  fun.  I thought we should play baseball, hide-and-seek and flashlight tag.  Bertie responded with something which comforted my young mind a great deal. “ We don’t know what it’s like, but we can be sure that it is going to be much better than anything we have ever known here.”  Another example is when I complimented her on the dress she wore to her eldest granddaughter’s wedding.  She told me it was an answer to prayer.  I asked her if she thought God really cared what she wore to her granddaughter’s wedding and her response was classical simple faith:  “He might not care what I wear to the wedding, but He cares about the little things that are important to me.”

            If anyone ever gets to heaven it should be Bertie.  And on her way to heaven I believe she will be able to remember her life of service to others.  Then, maybe for the first time and maybe not for the first time, but definitely and for certain at that time, she will be flying, lookin’ back.  Looking back at a life well lived and a world made infinitely better because she was here.   

                                                                                                            Dennis S. Clower

                                                                                                           

                                                                                                           

                                                                                                           

The Ubiquitous Apostrophe

            For a long time I have been noticing a proliferation of little puppy dog tails in print (i.e., the apostrophe).  I have a tendency to over-punctuate in the comma area and I’ve never met a semicolon I didn’t like.  But commas which float above the line, at about crossing level for t’s and dot level for i’s, are distracting.  I’ve concluded that America’s love affair for the elevated comma must be stopped.

            I was taught almost all the grammar I know by Mrs. Hopkins in the seventh grade.  What I learned and still believe is that the apostrophe has two uses:  1) to indicate possession, as in Charlotte’s  Web, and 2) to show that letters are missing as in “I would’ve if I could’ve.”  I try to apply these rules as I drive around, looking at signs. 

            One of the most common uses is on mailboxes.  I say “uses”, though I suspect they are more commonly misuses.  Consider the following:  “The Smith’s.”  We must examine all the ways this two-word message may be correct before concluding it is wrong.  First, possession:  This mailbox belongs to someone named Smith.  But if that is the case, what monumental ego has convinced the owner of this insignificant piece of metal with a flag on it that of all the Smiths in the world, he or she is THE Smith.  If he, she, or they wish to convey the message that it is a plural possessive, a box claimed by a number of Smiths, the apostrophe should follow the word - The Smiths’ mailbox.  I suspect the real intent is to indicate that some Smiths live in the vicinity and, if that is the case, the apostrophe is unnecessary, superfluous and incorrect.  The only way I have resolved that The Smith’s is correct is if “The” is short for Theodore.  But even then, “The” should be followed by a period to denote an abbreviation as in Wm. for William or Thos. for Thomas.

           I was passing a Nursery or Garden Shop when I noticed the handpainted sign, “Mum’s.”  I thought, “How nice!  Someone has named a shop for their mother - probably an English mother.”  Then I realized it was late Summer, early Fall, and they were probably advertising the sale of Chrysanthemums.  Funny thing is if they had written ‘Mums, they would have been correct.  But as it was written, it could only mean that the shop belonged to Mum.  Or maybe this amateurish message in paint hearkens back to the saying encouraging confidentiality, “Mum’s the word.”  But why paint the word at a nursery and why include the contraction for “Mum is”?  I think they fell into the strange trap where any short word which is pluralized picks up that superfluous tail.

            Another sign, “Sno Ball’s.”  It has to be owned by someone named Sno Ball, I guess, because if the intent is to impart the message that snow balls are being sold at the roadside stand to which the sign is affixed, then the apostrophe (if there must be one) should be on the first word, indicating the missing letter,” w:” Sno’ Balls.

            Say it’s poetic license if you want, but I’m not buying that.  Poets use the device, ‘tis true, but while sometimes forced to preserve rhyme or meter, the apostrophe does fall into places where letters are missing.  Oft’ ‘tis o’erdone, but still it has a purpose, a raison d’être.  Which raises another issue:  the French.  They will throw in an above grade mark just for pure cussedness.  Some are straight, some are crooked, some slant left, and some, right.  Whole paragraphs can change their meaning I’m sure, depending on whether there’s a slight bend in the floating fleck of ink.  Accent grave, accent acute, and apostrophes all blend together in a mind bending display of above the line, below the line, and on the line spatters.  I think it’s like playing a pipe organ with three banks of keys and foot pedals.  The floating flecks are the chimes, I suppose.

            But to get back to the mother tongue of King James, Shakespeare, and Bill Bryson, this is not ‘nit-picking nothingness about which I write.  Consider the following:  their (possession); there (location); and they’re (contraction for they are).  There’s (contraction for there is) a world of difference among words that are pronounced almost identically!  So the apostrophe must be used with precision to avoid complete confusion of the English speakers.  It’s really a matter of correct spelling as well as punctuation.

            I am not making a case for the elimination of the dangling dart - it has its place. (Though not between the t and s in “its” when denoting possession [this is an exception to the usual rule]; that  would turn an intended possessive pronoun into a contraction for “it is”).  I only object to its overuse and its incorrect usage, particularly in the pluralization of words.  For instance, the plural of gun is guns, not gun’s as I see it advertised consistently in the flyers of a local auctioneer.  And they are flyers, not flyer’s.  The plural of Smith is Smiths, not Smith’s as I wrote about in the beginning.

                                                Pity the poor apostrophe`,

                                                When dangling or just leaning;

                                                ‘Tis oft’ o’erused by the confused,

                                                ‘Til it’s lost a’ o’ its meaning.

Jefferson's Response to Darwin's Challenge about Slavery

Dear Sir:

Your last welcome favor has been duly received and I hasten to acknowledge and respond to your inquiry.  Indeed I welcome the opportunity to explain my thoughts, as well as my actions with regard to the Negro race and the blight of slavery upon my generation of Americans.  First, you have done me the honor of familiarizing yourself with my statements on the subject.  I believed then and now, with all my heart, that no man should have the ownership of another.  In my younger days I sought, by various means, to find a solution to that immoral institution.  There was no man on earth who would have been willing to sacrifice more than I to relieve us from that heavy reproach in any practicable way.  But as it was, we had the wolf by the ears, and we could neither hold him nor safely let him go.  Justice was in one scale and self-preservation in the other.  In order to make you appreciate fully the dilemma we faced, you would have to be transported to that time and place.

In my Notes on Virginia, in response to Query XIV, I set forth a plan for emancipation and migration, proposing therein a date after which no one would be born into slavery and that in due time, after educating and preparing them for independent living, all would be given passage to another colony, under the protection of the United States.  It was my belief then, and I never received sufficient evidence to change it, despite my wishes, that the deep rooted prejudices of the whites, the recollection by the blacks of past injuries, the real, natural distinctions between the races, and other circumstances would produce convulsions that would probably never end but in the extermination of one or the other race.  It is my strongest desire and my fervent prayer that now, with the wolf having been set free by the Civil War in America, I may be proven wrong.  The prospect is not made more salutary, however, by the means by which this event has come to pass.  War and its attendant sufferings can only deepen the prejudices and the hostility of the vanquished.

Before I passed from the scene of the living, it was my belief and constant counsel that until such time as a workable plan of emancipation and expatriation could be implemented, we should continue, with those whom fortune had thrown on our hands, to feed and clothe them well, to protect them from ill usage, to require only such reasonable labor as would be performed voluntarily by free men, and be led by no repugnancies to abdicate them and our duties to them.  This counsel I followed throughout my life.  In so doing, I was ever mindful of the duties imposed upon me as I saw them and as I stated in my last letter to you:  A moral instinct arising from a duty to and love for others.

When I previously wrote to you that my supreme delight was in the field of science, and that I envied your ability to devote all your energy and creativity to that noble pursuit, I was referring to the difference between the tranquility of your quest for pure knowledge and the turbulence of public life into which I could not seem to avoid being thrown.  This is not to say that your career has been devoid of controversy, by any means.  I do not doubt that the storms you have weathered to this date are not the only ones that your theories and conclusions will spawn.  But you have been able to pursue scientific knowledge for its own sake, as an end in itself, while my life in the public arena has been filled with compromise.  My first draft of the Declaration of Independence included clauses condemning slavery. They were stricken from the final document by the majority.  As a young man, I proposed legislation that would have ended the ownership of humans as property, but it did not receive sufficient support from the other delegates to the Virginia Legislature to become law.  During my presidency, we were able to enact a law, which prohibited trafficking in slavery.  This may seem a small step but it was all we were able to do at that time, given the constraints of democratic government.  I therefore was obliged to leave to the next generation the completion of the job.  One Revolution for each generation seems to be all that it can successfully handle.

Your own work, sir, speaks persuasively of the process by which species adapt to their natural surroundings and, by natural selection, the species is “improved.”  Such improvement, you lead us to believe, takes many generations.  But that improvement by alteration to surrounding conditions would be no improvement at all if the creature were to be uprooted and placed in a totally different environment.  Here he would be forced to compete for survival with members of his species who have been equally “improved” by natural selection to fit their natural surroundings and enhance their opportunities to survive and thrive.  The transported creature would be at an extreme disadvantage in the other’s environment, would it not?  This was the plight of the African, brought against his will to live in a society dominated by white men of European descent.  Indeed it was inhumane to force such people to work as slaves at the arbitrary bidding of their white masters, regardless of their own desires, of their talents or particular skills, which had been inbred through many generations of natural selection to improve their abilities to cope with life in tribal Africa.  They were not equipped, however, to take their place in the society into which they had been transplanted, without many generations of adaptation to it.  Neither were they likely to be aided in the process of adaptation by a continuation of involuntary servitude unless wise and far-seeing “Masters,” of great vision and integrity took it upon themselves to prepare those unhappy people for a time when they would be thrown into that world to survive on their own. 

These were the only alternatives which presented themselves: (1) Emancipation and
Migration; or (2) Education and Assimilation.  I failed at the former because I could not summon enough support and will among my contemporaries to make the necessary sacrifices.  As legislator, as President, and in all my public roles, I did all that I could to accomplish this goal of returning the creature to his natural habitat.   Failing that, I did only what one man could do.  I saw that those whom Providence had placed in my care were fed and clothed, expected to do only a reasonable amount of work in exchange for their sustenance, treated fairly, and that they learned skills of carpentry, masonry, animal husbandry, agriculture, and some drafting and architecture.  In this way, I hope to have aided their transition into the alien environment to which they had been transported.

As you see, I was forced to compromise in this matter, which, like so many others in life, did not lend itself to absolutes.  I could have made the grand gesture of setting free all of these people and have been praised by many righteous and well-intentioned people for that act.  In my failure to do so, however, my conscience is clear.  I followed the moral precept to which I previously referred, of deciding a course of action based upon the sum of good it would do for the whole.  I suppose this may seem to you like a long apology but I am indeed grateful for the opportunity to explain to so great a mind as yours, the factors which led to the actions taken, and those not taken as well.  I believe that your scientific training and experience will be beneficial in reaching an understanding of a time and location that you did not experience first-hand.

 If I may indulge myself further to refer back to your response to my ethical musings, I like very much the suggestion that Nature has implanted in us a moral sense (my words to you) by means of natural selection (your words) under which the species has learned that social, even altruistic, behavior is beneficial to the perpetuation of the species.  This would be in accord with my belief that a lack of the moral sense in a human being is an imperfection more degrading than any physical deformity.  But it is a deformity, and is an aberration in the species.  The cure for this infirmity, when it is found to exist, is education; and we can be said to owe to our species the development of this moral sense to do good for the whole of mankind in pursuit of its perpetuation.

I look forward with great hope for the continuation of our correspondence.  I hope that upon reflection you may continue to hold me in some measure of the esteem in which I do most sincerely hold you, my dear sir.

Respectfully,

                                                                                    Thomas Jefferson