Exhausted

These tiny river towns are nice. Sitting on the edge of the mighty Mississippi, they die slow deaths each generation of residents smaller than the one before. Few chain stores or restaurants have ventured into them. Minus a few rehabbed homes, they are the same as the pictures from the 1950s.

I spent two days in these towns yesterday and the day before. Visited with some great people and spent time in stores time trapped twenty years earlier. I enjoy these towns very much. But for some reason they sap my strength. Driving into each one drains me a little bit more. All I want is good sleep and a nice restful weekend.

Simplicity

Porches, the calendar was of nothing more than porches: high in the Rockies with an oak chair; in the deep south with a high back rocking chair; and overseas so close to one another that their fences almost touched. The purchaser of the calendar would spend hours staring at the pictures imagining him or her out of the cubicle and onto the porch.

It is such a simple thing this porch. A convenience found even in the most poverty filled areas. A place where one can sit, relax and watch the world drift by.

Anyone can own a porch and enjoy its comforts. Yet, we live in a world hectic, crazed with demands that a simple porch is a fantasy held in a thirteen-month calendar.

Thoughts in Chicago

College is far away. A mere six years ago seems to be a lifetime. Is it possible the body of mine was young? Was my mind ever carefree and confident? Was my income unregulated, small and easy-come easy-go as if the dollars spent on movies and beer was meaningless?

There once was a time when were producing was reading and thinking. No evidence exists of it here in this hotel bar in downtown Chicago. A plush couch engulfs my body as conversation between salesmen, sports fans and a May-December romance surrounds me. Here production is closed deals. Thought is on Grossman’s arm strength. An aura of success can bring you a woman your daughter’s age with a mouth of a sailor.

I have been in this real-world for almost three years. It still feels foreign and strange, but not as much as it used to.

Am I becoming one of them?

Behold, I Have the Truth

On Tuesday, December 26, I drove into Austin to visit some friends from childhood and college: a loafing day after the continuous celebration of Christmas. On the way home, I scanned the dial eventually settling on Radio Free Austin home of conspiracy theories, alternative news and antigovernment rants all brought to the good people of the Republic of Texas free of Charge. What little I heard, until the station went out of range 10 miles out of Austin, was the that the ‘black Pope’ was trying to subvert Protestantism and the current government under George Bush was socialistic almost communistic. A charge few would level, but the truth according to the host.

On Wednesday, December 27, I flew home to The Lou after a relaxing five day Texas Christmas. A layover in Dallas-Love afforded me a second opportunity to hear an unknown truth. A truck driver on his way to KC to pick up a load was proclaiming that there was no cure for AIDS to a disinterested terminal.

I had been reading a few rows in front of him and kept hearing a commotion behind me. A lady walked past me on her cell phone thanking the caller for saving her. After a trip to the restroom, I investigated what was causing people to flee the area behind me.

Sitting down across from the man, I made eye contact with him as I found my page in the book. A second look was all he needed for him to determine I was a willing listener.

“You a student?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Work with computers?”

“Nope, I’m a fundraiser for a non-profit. We do ministry and social work in forty-one countries.”

“That’s great.”

“What do you do?”

“I sell poems. Here let me show. I wrote this and have sold over 400,000 copies.”

He handed me a brown piece of paper. On it was a simple rhyming poem describing his definition of love. Mixing references to the Bible along with laws of monogamy, marriage and heterosexuality, he painted a picture of an intimate relationship with little Gospel.

As I read the poem, he handed me his other life work, a well-worn laminated paper, which ‘proved’ that AIDS could never be cured, because it was a lack of love in the blood. To test his hypothesis, he showed every way to get AIDS, transfusions, intercourse, childbirth and drug uses were all cursed by all religious writing including the Bible, Koran and Buddhist teachings.

I explained my organization led some AIDS work in Africa. This turned him to how Bono might have used drugs in the past, and he thought still did. For the poet, the fact that Bono did drugs destroyed any good done.

Challenging him, I pointed out that blood transfusion was safe and people could give their own blood to themselves. He agreed that giving of blood to oneself would be all right, if the hospital did not screw it up. Later as I boarded my plane, he overly apologized for any offense made about transfusions. He did not agree with me; rather, he wanted to apologize to someone, and I was the only one listening.

In a confused nutshell, he had this thought out. That AIDS would never be cured, because an act by the victim forced the love out of his/her blood. The only way one could keep love was to follow a set of rules. Love was not an emotion, but an act. That was his truth.

It always shocks me to hear a conspiracy theory nut talk. Unlike bookmakers, consultants and advisors, the truth they know is hidden from all else and is an earth changing knowledge. Like the ego to say you should be President to say you have a truth we have all missed takes an ego few have and fewer need.

The Unthinkable Choice

This weekend I watched The Howard Zinn Movie. As Dr. Zinn stated his desire for peace without military action, President Bush prepares to address the nation in which it is expected he will ask for around 20,000 additional troops for Iraq. Two widely differing views on how America should use its military power.

Personally, I believe there must be a middle ground. A spot where our nation can defend itself from military/terrorist attacks while respect the rights of those in other countries and restrain from brining terminal punishment upon the innocent. This middle ground is not hard to find or filled with contradicting nuances. It is as simple as any statement by Bush or Zinn. The late President Ford said best in an interview with Bob Woodward in 2004, "I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security."

It is the first duty of all elected officials to provide security and safety for the people they serve whether a school board member, Congressman or President. As a public servant, you are a public defender. Sometimes force will be needed to achieve security. It is with this knowledge that the United States has a standing army: an army of volunteers who will put their life on the line to defend others.

War is a terrible thing. It mangles life and leaves scars on both the victor and defeated that take generations to heal. To enter war lightly is to give little value to human life. For an elected official to refuse military action in defense of the nation is degradation of duty.

A Post to SL

SL:

I was wondering if you received my e-mail in reply to your latest post. I enjoy your comments and would like to continue in our debate. If you can not get my e-mails, I will post my response here. Also, do you have a blog yourself?

A Forgotten History

On Christmas day near midnight, I was driving from Round Rock back to my parents’ place in Walburg. With Spanish music on the radio, I admired how much the much the outer limits of Austin had grown in the last six months much less since I was a small child. New subdivisions, strip malls, movie houses, and well lit access roads blurred by as I opened the car up on a traffic-less I-35. Cruising at 80, I passed Oxford Place one of the few buildings standing in my childhood.

Built in the boom of the early 80s, the Oxford Place was a typical strip mall that included an odd four story, three-football field long building. With windows in every room, I’m not sure what it was intended to be used for. In its history, it served as a nursing home before being evacuated in the late 80s never to be rented again. Repeatedly a sale sign would appear on the side of the strip mall starting in the bust of the mid 80s ending a couple of years ago. Most of the time, the whole place lay vacant with at most two stores tried to entice customers before dying out due to the lack of traffic.

The Oxford Place remains relic to the boom and bust economy and our need for newness.

As I write, construction surrounds the Oxford Place. New strip malls, restaurants, and stores appear in the months between my visits. Never does one rent into the Oxford Place, nor is it torn down. It is too expensive to dismantle too odd, old, and unlucky to make work. All the while, every prospector says this boom season will never bust.