Faith Camp, Bukidnon Youth Conference and the Future

Posted on July 14, 2016 | Leave a comment

Faith Camp is a one week long camp held for middle school aged students based somewhere in Vermilion Parish. There are currently two such camps held each year. While the kids are the focus it is an event that involves people of all ages. For many who participate in its various aspects it is both an optimistic and fun experience and a deeply spiritual one. The Catholic faith is celebrated in a context which is fairly complete and brings the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the experience of church into the lives of these young people in a complete way.

The last two weeks  before this posting there has been ongoing the 20th year of continuous Faith Camps. This ministry was founded by my sister Susanna whom I saw at Faith Camp last night. At the time she founded she and were regular prayer partners and she was in the area and living at Big Woods during the summer after having started her studies at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. It was a fairly small camp that year but I was deeply impressed with it and shared with her my own memories of a live-in conference  in Bukidnon when she was a child as one of my better memories and so the two things were linked in my mind at the inception although there was not much of a causal link.  Susanna wasalso a small child when the Bukidnon Youth Conference was going on around and near her in various manifestations in Malaybalay, Bukidnon on the southern island of Mindanao in the Republic of the Philippines. I haven’t been back since the 1980s but it was a time which I have always felt had a big influence on the rest of my life and other lives in the family. Many members of my family have played key roles in the success of the camp over the decades. This year a middle school aged child of one of the campers at the second camp was a camper at Faith Camp.

Austin at a faith Camp reunion a few years before he was shot.

 

 This year my sister Sarah’s eldest daughter Alyse is the coordinator of Faith Camp as she was last year. This is one of the blog posts that I write that is not primarily driven by the news. It is more driven by  a series of important experiences, recollections  and feelings which resonate in my life. This is one of those posts which combines both some vivid recollection and some fading memories: But the hope one felt at key times continues. The possibility of really putting together a history of those years is a daunting and not a very promising prospect. But the prospect of trying to recapture some of the spirit of those times seems a worthy aspiration as it will help me to convey some thoughts about the current times and some of the times in between now and then. I went from New Zealand to the Philippines with my birth family when I was seventeen and arrived there around Christmas. The bottom right hand picture below is of the Maranatha Youth Group in St. Pius X Church Parish in Titahi Bay which I left behind there on those cool windswept coasts. We passed through Australia on the way there.The top set of damaged images are from my time in the Philippines as is my better picture of myself leading my sisters on the carabao. The bottom right hand corner isa picture of the wall of my Household at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.

 

faded image of my sister’s First Communion in the Philippines.
Our family loved our rare vacations to Camiguin Island while we were in the Philippines.
Like these faded copies of pictures for which originals may still exist some aspects of my ties to the Philippines and some memories have faded.
Leading my sisters on a carabao in the Philippines.
College Household at FUS
The Maranatha Youth Group in Titahi Bay, New Zealand with me in it.

 We were in the Philippines for a couple of years (or so I remember without checking) and Simon was born with difficulties associated with Prader-Willi Syndrome. That was also at Christmas and was at the time of my Bukidnon Youth Conference which is the real subject of part at least of this post. Due to Simon’s condition we came back to the United States. While there I completed my Freshman Year at USL — now the University of Louisiana  — in one semester and in the preceding summer worked in some college and youth ministries in the church. Then we all returned to the Philippines and I renewed my ministry for a while and in the summer just after my brother Joseph was born and having overstayed my visa in a tense time in a country on edge and with a gift of a large and dangerous looking tribal sword I flew back alone to the United States.The picctures I took there for various reasons have not much been digitzed and the ones that were have not al made it into part of the cloud I can access. But the memories that I have of the Philippines are indeed plentiful and meaningful. Many of them were pleasant enough. Although the images in the pair below do not show the day to day life there as I justified that life they do show some of the rewards of the experience. Visiting the sick westerners in trouble, prison ministry, speaking to dozens of groups and working with college ministries all filled most of my days. But the Bukidnon Youth Conference was perhaps the  peak of my ministry there.  Being a 52 year old, divorced, childless near indigent was not the future among many possible futures which I saw as most likely in those days. But the journey since has certainly been a complicated on and rich too in color and texture and that sense of richness makes me feel like an expert on almost everything on some days. While that is not fair to much of anything neither or the days entirely fair when I feel that my onIy efforts to communicate come from having little else to do that is fulfilling and that I only ever feel that I  am well qualified to be a sage because I appear not to be qualified for anything else. My life has not been laser focused in a single direction and my time in the Philippines was not either. I like Faith Camp and I liked the Bukidnon Youth Conference in part because they touched many aspects of life from the arts to sport to socializing over dinner. This reminds me of one of my first Facebook notes when I wrote about  some of the extracurricular activities and hobbies that have enriched my life  and divided them into the big three categories of Faith, Science and Sports which I  chose to denominate as easy issues for that early Facebook note. These Easy Issues are not to be confused with the Easy Essays written by Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker Movement. His essays were easy,  because he easily guided the reader through the complexities of political philosophy to a simple and cohesive approach which would provide the framework fo the movement he and Dorthy Day were founding. In my Facebook the subjects are easy because of my tremendous insights into the very narrow experience I had in each of those fields — I did not concern myself with the larger picture. There was some tongue in cheek in the use of there terms and words but Faith Camp and the Bukidnon Youth Conference were also founded to give young people a real body of experience that they could claim as their own. A small window of controlled positive experience from ehich to see the world.

During those years when ministry was part of my life I did a lot of work preparing to work . One thing  or another or many things must be left out including almost all my regular Catholic  school time but I now note  the religious education I received. Some I received within the context of the schools mentioned. However, I also took a set of remote preparation confirmation classes in the Diocese of Lafayette within the Come Lord Jesus Program and the brief imediate preparation course at a Parish in the Archdiocese of Wellington, New Zealand. I was confirmed by a cardinal. In the Diocese of Lafayette I also completed instruction in and was commissioned for Evangelism as a Lay Evangelist of my native dicoese. This was also where after college I was certified as a catechist. Beyond those things, I completed the Life in the Spirit Seminar, the Cursillo de Cristiandad (en Ingles), a basic Lector’s training, Prayer Group Leaders Training Course, a salvation history micro course and stdied as a journalist the English translation of the Prelature of Bukidnon’s Alagad course which was a successful lay leadership course. I also read and discussed the Documents of the Second Vatican Council many times and in many contexts. Susanna who founded Faith Camp completed here degree in theology while continuing to build up this ministry. The two things have in common that they communicate to the kids from a depp and well laid foundation.

Like a lot of activity among Christians it is designed to provide an opportunity for a personal spiritual experience. The importance of personal spiritual experience in America is more evident than in some countries. One of the reasons for that comes from a man who was not a Christian but had a profound influence on the Christian and other populations of these United States at a critical time — the Revolution. Thomas Paine, one of the great thinkers of the American revolution basically stated that one of the profound problems with revelation as a basis for any law or covenant is that as soon as it is written down or described rather than existing as a perceived miracle or apparition or Messianic epiphany it becomes mere tradition. Three things can be said about that idea that miracles and revelation become traditions:

1. It is somewhat true and worth keeping in mind.
2. If God, the universe, the gods and Divine Wisdom were communicating with humanity they might not excuse people who said “Well, I needed that direct Apparition your Highness — didn’t get it so it’s your fault not mine.”
3.In places and times such as existed in the Charismatic renewal there was a renewal within the person which was seen to confirm the written Word and the received tradition. It is out of that third connection with the renewal of the background music and lifestyle of our family that the Bukidnon Youth Conference (BYC) and twenty years of Faith Camps have come. The Bukidnon Conference was less part of the Charismatic Renewal than was some of my work in those days and the current Faith Camps only remind one of the renewal. But the tradition is there.

St. Augustine is credited with two sayings that mean a lot to me as far as faith goes. One is “Seek not to understand that you may believe. Seek rather to believe that you may understand.” That saying is not perfect and is easily misconstrued but it remains profoundly true and truly profound.The second saying I will allow to explain itself and to be interpreted without me. St Augustine wrote “The best and the worst men in the world live in monasteries.” The idea that these young people come together to find understanding and to explore a fully lay spirituality does not mean that none will later become monks, priests, scientists or theologians some do and those around usually rejoice.  But the experience is of a different focus of informing a growing faith and living for Christ in the world.

That Filipino journey  in which the Bukidnon YouthBconference was born was one  which only temporarily ended just after the conference itself. But after returning with them from my time at USL and in this region I did not stay but went to enroll at the school where Susanna was studying when Faith Camp was founded.  I returned a bit early and went to live that summer with my paternal grandparents in a larger than most two storey house beside a park. That  is where I lived in that intervening summer have lived at other times and is also where I am living  now as I type this but I have only been here for a few months this go round. Then I enrolled as a sophomore at the Franciscan University. The summer after my sophomore year I returned to the Philippines to visit and overstayed my visa yet again by only a few days and flew home alone. I left school in mid semester for complicated reasons including some to do with problems in the Philippines related to those whom I had invited into the region to help me with the Youth Conference and  shortly after leaving school I met my parents returning to Abbeville where I currently reside. All of that was along time ago and I took a break to do some more ministry and other things before enrolling again at USL and finishing my degree there. Thousands of picture taken during those and subsequent years are unavailable to me here and now on this blog. But the family on the bottom left hand of the set below are the son of Abbeville friends and his wife who have been FMC missionaries where we once served for more than a few years now. The picture on the bottom right hand corner shows my brother Simon and my parents at an FMC Donors Dinner. He clearly survived the ordeals surrounding his birth as did we all.

Our family posing in our home garden in the Philippines
Some photos of their ministry before Family Missions Company
My Sophomore Class Award from the Franciscan University of Steubenville
New Zealand Youth Group at Botanical Gardens
Sammy and Lindsey and their family in missions. Donald long supported the mission work of my family.
A picture I took of my table at the Donors Dinner

 

Of the  actual BYC as an event I have no photos to share and never had many photos. Indeed of the conference itself very little documentation was made and far less survives. But there are a few things and here are a pair of snippets of that time. The newsletter Resounding Praise which defined so much of our communication with the rest of the world had a feature on the conference. This gathering so distant in time and space is still near to my memory and sensibility. The sense and vision behind the conference was one of bringing young Catholics and some not sure they were Catholics together to celebrate the gospel and to deal with the real challenges not only of their personal lives but of Islamist and Communist pressures from groups which in several cases were profoundly hostile to their Catholic Christian commitments.  There was also a real openness to finding what could be improved in the generally pro-American, Catholic, free market synthesis that informed the conference. There was not a tone of xenophobia or paranoia but of relatively optimistic participation in the world as it was  for young Catholic Christians. There is something in Faith Camp’s tradition that has always reminded me of that event.

 

 

There are bigger events in the world than Faith Camp or the Bukidnon Youth Conference but bigness is not everything. Nonetheless as America approaches it participation with other countries in the Rio Olympic Games I am reminded that the New testament is full of references to Olympic events. Paul wrote of racing, boxing, archery and of the disciplines of training as well as the glories of victory in those ancient games. For those going to the Olympics who are Christians while they should respect the games and the diversity there it can be both a mission and a spiritual experience in Christ.

A few years ago London prepared to see the wedding take place in Westminster Abbey there was a lot of suffering and pain in the world. Truthfully, there is almost always a lot of suffering and pain in the world.  Whatever their role may be in adding to the sum of distress in the world, the British royals do quite a bit to lessen the sum of woe and that was not the less true in a year when they were planning a royal wedding . That  set of outreaches to those in need is an effort that  is well documented. Prince Charles, Camilla Duchess of Cornwall and Prince William (the bridegroom this weekend) all have long supported a variety of charities benefiting humans, animals, ecosystems and cultural groups in distress.Prince Charles has a substantial income as Duke of Cornwall and donates a great deal of the income to charities in such a way that it leverages and is leveraged by other charitable donations. While it may well be that not a direct penny of that family’s efforts and gifts will go to help those hurt by the tornadoes whch ripped through the South last night it is also true that they are part of a philanthropic community around the world in which helping is informally circulated almost everywhere. Two babies (at least) ago the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth celebrated on the 29th of April 2011 The wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. This expensive and extravagant occasion was also a Christian ritual and gathering and an expression of faith. The scene was truly extraordinary and the elegant venue and the well prepared  liturgy and preaching were all rather impressive even for those who are not so easily impressed.  The sermon of the Anglican Bishop of London is one which I have found to be a worthy sermon to address our times:

“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” So said St Catherine of Siena whose festival day it is today. Marriage is intended to be a way in which man and woman help each other to become what God meant each one to be, their deepest and truest selves.

Many are full of fear for the future of the prospects of our world but the message of the celebrations in this country and far beyond its shores is the right one – this is a joyful day!

It is good that people in every continent are able to share in these celebrations because this is, as every wedding day should be, a day of hope.

In a sense every wedding is a royal wedding with the bride and the groom as king and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them into the future.

uture.

Mr. and Mrs. Kevin Joseph Granger arrived early after preparing the reception and were waiting in the bleachers for the ceremony to begin on a beautiful evening.
My godson Mark John Braña with his wife and children in the Philippines
An image showing the basis of all this Christmas celebration.
A picture I took of my table at the Donors Dinner
Thanksgiving Dinner 2014 — a single backlit shot to serve for a whole set of images and memories…
my fiftieth birthday
My fitfieth birthday
two of my grandparents
Me in front of my family in Micronesia
Michelle and I kiss on our wedding day.
Former wife Michelle Broussard Summers and I — Sea Island Georgia

 

The future does flow through families and gathering and weddings and the like. Churches and other communities have an obligation, it seems to me to prepare young people to be conduits of the grace of God and the hope of the future into new generations. They need to be prepared for the task. All married couples, all celibates and many other classes of not mutually exclusive kinds of people have to be educated in that complete humanity. For Faith Camp that is a Catholic Christian experience An I like that best but it also speaks to those not with us in that community. I am not a young optimist and my own view of life can be pretty bleak often enough. But while  I am sorry that when caught up in nearly apocalyptic events I often already have declared myself to have been involved in a number of calamities — sorry but not very repentant. these conferences and other things have not made me boldly cheerful in that sense. But each Faith Camp and its predecessor to my view  have in fact reminded me that how one engages with life may change over the years  but faith filled engagement  and courage remain necessary.  I know that I  was at one time more fully engaged in meeting the world and the changes going on around me with gusto and energy than I am now. I beilieve that some of those now enthused will persevere in doing good but will not have the same zest when they are my age as they do now.  The world is no stranger to my dire assessments and prognostications regarding my own life and future but the truth is I am still in the fight for the same causes and so are some of those who fought with me under that old distant BYC banner. So also is Susanna and her early team.

Faith Camp prayer - 8   But there is a time and a place for looking back on all that has happened in ones life and that place is this blog. The time is spread out over many posts and pages. The truth is that I was not always quite so late middle aged, directionless and chronically despondent as I am now.  There were times when I aspired to other and more things in daily life than a differing serving of a perpetual mix of the routine, the impossible and the trivial. I was working hard at BYC but perhaps nobody got more out of it than I. I rejoice in the legacy I see although nobody else may see it the same way exactly.

The outgrowth of my various involvements and labors over the years are not all that easy to track, however there has been an institution which has grown out of all that activity in one sense or another and which is also dear to my heart for various reasons…  My brother John Paul was the head coordinator longer than anyone else so far I believe. It is also interesting that this year’s head coordinator Alyse Spiehler has a brother who although he only went to the first camp and was abroad on his birthday during the second camp has celebrated his birthday at Faith Camp several years and probably will again. In fact all of my sibling except Simon and my deceased half brother have served ads head coordinators or coordinators although I never have. I did of course at BYC which I consider to be an ancestor of Faith Camp. The family tie is a real one with my family but there are many other family ties as well. This does not make the focus more narrow and our family does not embody any analogous local set of privileges to those that shaped the hosting of the large wedding in London mentioned before. But the family story is part of the Faith Camp story.

 

That is, with everything else already mentioned and many other things not mentioned here  — the ongoing work of Faith Camp. That is the distant legacy of the BYC. And in some way it is the universal call of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are called to be the Body of Christ as Church and to celebrate the mystery of the fullness of life Christ came to offer and assure. All of that is part of the Faith Camp Story.

faith camp week 2, 2016 - 4 faith camp week 2, 2016 - 2 faith camp week 2, 2016 - 1

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Sex, Race, Money and the American Experience

Posted on July 12, 2016 | 7 comments

While there has been a good bit of conversation about the possibility that Hillary Clinton may become the first woman to assume the Presidency of the United States the United Kingdom has in fact elected a new female Prime Minister, the second in their history. If Hillary Clinton is elected then for at least a little while the two countries would have something more in common than merely female heads of government. She is also the current Home Secretary which is an analogous position to the that of the Secretary of State of the United States.  both she and Hillary Clinton have been the beneficiary of elite educational institutions in their countries. Doubtless one could list many other similarities but in fact the two women strike me as profoundly different people produced in part by profoundly different political systems. The sexual contexts are not so profoundly different but upon looking closer at same sex marriage law in Britain and the USA one finds very different regimes and oppositions, likewise on abortion, sperm banking and literally a host of other issues. Whether it is better or not there is very often a capacity to compromise and reach legislative splitting of the difference in the UK. In addition rule by judicial review is much more limited. For those reasons as well as others May represents a different kind of feminist synthesis that the one Hillary Clinton has long been associated with in this country.

 

Theresa May is a thoroughgoing enough politician who is committed to the electoral process and aware of it. Theresa May did not become presumptive  Prime Minister in a general election but rather in the election for Conservative Party Leadership when David Cameron stepped down after failing to keep Britain in the European Union. This is not unusual, in the 24 times that the UK has changed Prime Minister in the last century half of those occasions did not involve a general election. The leadership election came about because Cameron had put too much political capital on the BRexit referendum to continue in office when the Leavers defeated him. However, as Britain has recently passed the Fixed Term Parliament Act, this change in leadership is not likely to cause a general election to be held early although it may…  This is something not only unusual but  new for Brits to adjust to, no row of whether or not to have a vote of no confidence is at all assured of amounting to much in the new set of rules.  In the meanwhile the final two people produced by the first rounds of the Conservative Party leadership chase presented the rank and file membership with two candidates to choose from both of whom were female and they have chosen Prime Minister Theresa May. Assuming Royal Assent and Her Majesty asking the woman to take the job as she did for Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher back in the day, then May will take the job in a place in the Queen’s presence sometime after Cameron officially resigns  following tomorrow’s (Wednesday, July 13) Prime Minister’s Questions. A bit of what she says about her own vision of her administration of Her Majesty’s Government can be read here. She appears to be sincere enough about bringing the benefits of her party’s vision for Britain to more people of more modest means. In America there is a lot of discussion about the wage gap between men and women and how it affects families. There is less discussion of increasing morbidity among men, declining employment among men and the myriad of other sexually related disasters afflicting primarily meant in this country — affecting men in distinction to women.  One senses that in Britain they are facing the struggles we face with a feminism that is less anti-mail than our version is in a number of ways. That has to be put into the context of two female prime ministers and the fact that British suffragettes really fought violently to bring about change early in the twentieth century. They of course suffered real violence and the disorder of their movement would make and interesting comparison to the chaos I see in the Black Lives Matter movement — but that is beyond the scope of this post.

I am quite sure that the struggle between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for leadership of our country will in part be affected by how Americans believe a man or a woman would respond to the violence, protests, police shooting and racial tensions which shape our experience of city streets and television viewing in these days. Doubtless whatever they do will be shaped in large part by their own experience as the man or the woman that in fact they are. Their views and actions will also be shaped by their experience as Americans. One factor in this Black Lives Matter centered current crisis is that the lens is very much exclusive of sexual assault against women. The lens is not inclusive of black grievances of sexual abuse under slavery, of white womanhood being subject to the attacks of black male sexual predation. The focus is on the protesting of acts of violence by police against black men who in most cases so far have a history of trouble with the law. In the case of a few like Philando Castille the man seemed to be a pillar of the community and not a violent criminal who was armed, did have many run-ins with police and was confused with a robbery suspect. Michael Brown and Alton Sterling seemed to have a number of violent criminal acts in their past. Black reactions to these deaths among the minority who lead Black Lives Matter has tended to be unreasonably indiscriminate at countless levels. the hate filled chants, throwing of blocks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails have added criminal violence to their vision of a policing ethic which would destroy the country in my opinion.   But in all this chaos we have heard no reports of sexual assaults to speak of — why I am not sure. Perhaps there have been very few.  This contrasts with my vivid memory of the Lara Logan assault during the Arab Spring protests. So far now all of this is taking place with a low level of direct connection to sexual  violence at least. Nonethless the connections of racial and sexual politics in this country cannot be entirely severed. Philando Castille looked edgy but was one of the most securely the middle class persons celebrated by Black Lives Matter movement. Most of the victims it celebrates are not financially secure. The Dallas cop killer however was apparently prosperous and was involved in this movement.

Black lives matter

Sometimes it is easy to think of all the reasons why being a  Catholic  are compelling and all the reasons why I am glad to be one. Sometimes it is easy to think of a good number of reasons why I am glad to be an American. Sometimes  not so much is obvious when I try to count the blessings of being a Catholic American. Then there are days when all of the problems and obstacles in my life seem to clearly outweigh any positive and hopeful energies that I might be able to muster.  Yet even on those days it is not impossible to find some cause for rejoicing. I recently read the Papal encyclical which  has the English language title the Joy of Love.   A pdf version should be available here: papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20160319_amoris-laetitia_en

Among Black Americans the marriage rate is low. It’s been shown to correlate to many problems in that section of the American population. The energy behind gay marriage masks the decline of marriage rates as a whole. Marriage plays many important roles in society.  The professional agitators in leadership in many American movements today benefit from the single state of more people who are more attracted to protests.   I’m aware of myself as being single in a way I never saw coming. Many people are single in such ways. The pope is urging the Catholic Church to find ways to make meaningful and personal weddings accessible to young couples in a context which encourages lower cost options. This is addressing the real role cost plays in keeping people from tying the knot. That’s especially true for church weddings. This is kind of a crisis, Pope Francis has addressed among others. I’m not going to quote all of his attempts to set forth a vision for Christian sexual and marital institutions,

Sexual politics is not a simple matter today in America and never has been a simple matter for anyone anywhere. politics has never been a simple matter and human politics never has been a simple matter.  But I think these are more challenging times than most. I think that the Pope has some things to say that many Americans need to hear or read. But I think white Americans are really facing a moment for coming to a sense of sexual clarity and I think that the Pope has something to say to them, to us. The encyclical reminds us all of what a basic sexual ideal for our society or any other might be.

What does the drama of American sexual politics as evinced in the Pulse Nightclub shootings, the debates over same sex marriage and other tensions of our society have to do with the recent encyclical from Pope Francis?  I myself think that the real emphasis we are losing on a livable sexual ideal is something that we need to consider as a great risk. To a remarkable degree sexuality in America in my lifetime has been typified by open conflict between the sexes. A resulting atmosphere of suspicion and distrust has colored relationships between persons most committed to building enduring relationships of trust and love. Approaching members of the opposite sex has seen new challenges emerge.

One group of Americans who have played and continue to play a role in our struggle to understand sexualtity or an informal and unofficial group of women who are the American sex symbols. They are usually not pornographic symbols and are not courtesans by and large. They vary tremendously in what they represent and how they love but they somehow make us aware of both challenges and ideals we face as a nation. at any given time their names and a faces and bodies speak to us of different struggles and hopes we have as sexual beings in this country. It is in their real lives and selves that we are sometimes able to picture what we wish our sexual identity to be and how it relates to womanhood, procreation and love among other things…

 

The future of this country is nonexistent without families and without a reasonably healthy sexuality. We will not resolve the tensions between blacks and the police or  the tensions that resonate in our political dysfunction without recognizing where we have gotten and where we have come from and without thinking seriously about where we are going as regards the realities of sex, race, money and how those matter to American families. Likewise we will not get anywhere good without seeing all the ways Americans are eager to protect their families however flawed they are and also the real limits of that protection in every case.    I include here a verse from an acrostic love poem that I sent after sending another and receiving no answer.  It’s about flirting on the internet after a fashion. About finding the limits of seeking love without a close personal association in real life.

Now comes the time for a pause in my poetic email,

One thing is sending verse to the love one has at hand.

Too different is this shooting into the dark gaps across the land.

Even the madness of the laws of our time 

That poem is not the issue but what our society believes about sex and how it portrays the appeal of sex is very relevant to what direction we are going in. My life is nobody’s sexual ideal. But my life is lived according to certain sexual ideals.

Ünderworlds of love and sexuality deserve to be remembered but the Pope reminds us of how love makes family and family shapes both society and the Christian faith. Sexuality is to be both ideal and ordinary for people of all races and cultures. That is the Christian vision he invites us to share.

 

 Jesus himself was born into a modest family that soon had to flee to a foreign land. He visits the home of Peter, whose mother-in-law is ill (cf. Mk 1:30-31) and shows sympathy upon hearing of deaths in the homes of Jairus and Lazarus (cf. Mk 5:22-24, 35-43; Jn 11:1-44). He hears the desperate wailing of the widow of Nain for her dead son (cf. Lk 7:11-15) and heeds the plea of the father of an epileptic child in a small country town (cf. Mk 9:17-27). He goes to the homes of tax collectors like Matthew and Zacchaeus (cf. Mt 9:9-13; Lk 19:1-10), and speaks to sinners like the woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee (cf. Lk 7:36-50). Jesus knows the anxieties and tensions experienced by families and he weaves them into his parables: children who leave home to seek adventure (cf. Lk 15:11-32), or who prove troublesome (Mt 21:28-31) or fall prey to violence (Mk 12:1-9). He is also sensitive to the embarrassment caused by the lack of wine at a wedding feast (Jn 2:1-10), the failure of guests to come to a banquet (Mt 22:1-10), and the anxiety of a poor family over the loss of a coin (Lk 15:8-10).

I end this reflection with another quote from an unsuccessful love poem. I will say that love poems were part of my life when love was more a part of my life– so they have not all been unsuccessful. But perhaps the difference was in the life context. This poem reflects on the changes in situations..

My youth is long behind me, an almost forgotten circumstance today

Young men’s loving words and bold lines are not mine to safely say.

Aside from my own life, I think we have to look at the vision for love in this country, for sex and for sexuality. Where is it heading and where should it be heading?

 

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Remembering Dallas Cops and Asking:What Constitutes A Crisis?

Posted on July 8, 2016 | 2 comments
This is  the day after July 7, 2016 it is not clear how famous that day or the July 8, 2016  when the most deadly law enforcement  incident since 9-11  began and ended in Dallas. Much remains unclear and much is likely to remain unclear for some time. These are surely troubling days… and it remains to be seen how famous or infamous these days will be in the history of the United States or even in more narrow histories of the period of the struggles of various parts of American society or in the histories of the Obama administration. The shootings of Philando Castille and Alton Sterling both armed black men one in front of a convenience store in Baton Rouge and one in a traffic stop in Minnesota have been the occasion for a vast amount of upheaval, protest, and perhaps have led to the violence enacted in Dallas.
The Washington Post has tried to react to these three events and to round up reactions to them in a way not so different than what I do tin this blog. Their story draws out the connections for consideration.

 I am reminded in a way that might seem trivial and inappropriate to some of a John Denver song from his later and less glorious years but before he had ceased to really be an important star in his own part of the musical firmament.  I have put these lyrics up on my Facebook timeline before. In fact, they’ve appeared probably three times or so. But every once in a while I have to let John Denver say something about my own life. Except that I am now  writing about my country as well  and writing much more bluntly than the speaker is in the lyrics. But I still relate to the way the song sounded when I first heard it. It is time for Americans to realize that many very serious problems must be addressed in our society. Wr would all like to say that thinngs will work out bu they may not, we would like to say that the crises on our streets and eslewhere almost every day do not define our country but in part they do. the song expresses that well in the personal sphere.

“When you asked, how I’ve been here without you
I’d like to say, I’ve been fine and I do
But we both know the truth is hard to come by
And if I told the truth, that’s not quite true

Some days are diamonds, some days are stones
Sometimes the hard times won’t leave me alone
Sometimes a cold wind blows a chill in my bones
Some days are diamonds, some days are stones

Now the face that I see in my mirror
More and more is a stranger to me
More and more, I can see there’s a danger
In becoming what I never thought I’d be

Some days are diamonds, some days are stones
Sometimes the hard times won’t leave me alone
Sometimes a cold wind blows a chill in my bones
Some days are diamonds, some days are stones”

The song then repeats these refrain lyrics

It is important that we try to see the value of our civic exercises, it is important that we care about the lives of all Americans, it is important that wc recognize the price paid by those who form the thin blue line in times of trouble. It is important that we try to support out President as he negotiates difficult situations near Russia. But there comes a point when one has to admit that there are serious problems in the country and that things are not going along just fine. There comes a point when  the existence of national instability has to be admitted and a national crisis has to be addressed. This is a day when it would be good to be able to write about one tragic situation at a time. This is a day when it would be good to be able to focus on positive things going on in my  personal life. This is a time when it would be good to be able to focus  on th issues without writing anything that might seem paranoid or lend credence to the fears that many Americans have — but that is not the day that I am actually writing about or in which I am actually writing. But there is a great deal on my mind which is not going to be resolved in any kind of post that meets any of those standards. In fact my own personal situation for dealing with anything at all is very poor as well. Let us remember that this killer in Dallas was killed by a bomb he had made, 9-11 involved box cutters taking planes, Timothy McVeigh took down a building with fertilizer and a van,   the current serial killer in San Diego seems to be content to murder homeless people by burning them alive and beating them to death.  But guns do make it possible for the law abiding citizenry to face a country filled with protesters flirting with violent extremists (not only Black Lives Matter but many other groups) and make a realistic plan to continues living their lives.

Originally many highly credible reports were filed that spoke of multiple shooters in a coordinated attack on police.  But the new orthodoxy after Obama and his feds made contact is the traditional lone nut idea. The focus is increasingly only on a suspect who died after  a robot destroyed  a bomb he had made or placed and after he had spoken with negotiators in a  standoff with Dallas police. That man said that  he wanted to kill white people — especially white police officers — and that he was angry about “the recent police shootings”. Conveniently for the great American narrative that all is well this man may have been recorded saying  that he acted alone and that is the narrative put forth by Dallas Police Chief David Brown after the  told reporters Friday that there would be no questions answered about suspects. Early reports can be seen here and here. The original posting of the first article online was,

Four gunmen shoot 11 police officers – killing at least five – and … Daily Mail

While these texts are fluid and are changed to fit the evolving narrative it is clear that there was enormous evidence that this was not a lone nut situation. In addition there is a great deal of interlocking tension in the country. There is a very limited amount of real and effective political discussion about these tensions. Political discussion is not a cure-all by any means  and the country might move into greater crisis with such discussions. But the lack of effective discussion of the forces straining our national consensus and the framework which  allow for our differences — that lack of effective discussion is an important part of our daily reality.

The struggles related to race go back a long time and are not likely to end soon….
The Civil Rights movement has shaped much of my life experience. I am fifty years old.
Gettysburg settled upon our country many parts of a new consensus . . .
The seal of the Confederacy ties the Lost Cause to the Revolution and the past long before that war.
race is one part of understanding human diversity it is not the only part.
We have a responsibility to understand the words we use to shape our live and society. This is a picture of the Declarators committee.
Two civilians it appears were also were injured in the shootings, the office of Dallas’ mayor has said. Most of the injured Dallas police officers have by midday of the Friday on which this post appears  been released from a hospital, Chief Brown told reporters. The officers’ conditions are improving, Brown said. He seemed to be clearly aware of a set of underlying tensions to be dealt with. “All I know is that this must stop — this divisiveness between our police and our citizens,” African American Police Chief and Dallas area native Brown said. “We don’t feel much support most days. Let’s not make today most days. Please, we need your support to be able to protect you from men like these, who carried out this tragic, tragic event.”
Twelve officers were shot it appears and the chaos affected the entire city in one way or another but especially the area around the protests.
I think about what Chief Brown said and am aware of a post that appeared on Facebook which I quote liberally hear from a Facebook friend that I only know slightly in real life:

Over the years I have known a lot of cops. The very first was Willie Brady, the town marshal in my hometown of Lecompte and my across-the-street neighbor. Back then Lecompte did not even have a police car, so he used his own. There were no uniforms, so he worked in street clothes. Sometimes he wore a badge. He did not wear a gun belt. He kept his pistol in the glove compartment. And he maintained law and order. He also made kites for me and took me out to fly them. Knowing me to be an astronomy buff, he let me stargaze using his big binocular telescope. He was an incurable practical joker who once wired oranges to a bush to ‘prove’ to a friend that it was a citrus tree. He had a pet raccoon at one point. He told tall tales. He took care of his nephew and my friend, Anthony. He was a lot like Andy Taylor (Griffith). He was a good man.

Later Lecompte’s first African-American marshal was a big guy named John Baptiste. By that time the town had a police car, the cops had uniforms, and the police station had moved across the street from my family’s hardware store. John used to come over and swap stories on a pretty regular basis. One night some of my friends were hanging out in front of a grocery store down the street, and a couple of smartass white boys from out of town pulled a .357 on them. John arrived shortly after. He never took his own gun out of the holster. He just walked up to the car and said, ‘I just took a gun away from a n—–across town who as a lot bigger than you boys, and I’m sure not scared of you.’ They gave him the .357, and that was that. Nobody got hurt. He, too, was a good man.

This is an image of policing which seems far from the realities of lines of somewhat militarized men dealing with highly organized mobs.  this does seem moving and I would quote the whole passage if it were not that there are limits to how much I am willing to  stretch the limits of sharing even on days like this. He is not an author of this post. But the rest of the post is a really worth American tribut to cops. I shared it on my timeline with the following  post:

“(The named there on Facebook college professor and Louisiana native) and I have met once. We disagree on a lot of things and nonetheless I think his. very personal response to this tragedy.and related incidents is a well written and insightful piece of prose. God bless the thin blue line today especially….

 But where does that leave us? In an America where few aspects of our lives are not in trouble; where early on two of the shooters were snipers who fired “ambush-style” from an “elevated position,” Brown had said. and where after federal intervention a new fantastical story began to emerge to protect the democratic right to protest and cut off inquiry by the press.  There are no simple answers.
17 dallas shooting 0708 RESTRICTED24 dallas shooting 070829 dallas shooting 070826 dallas shooting 0708
But whatever is going on we need to be able to face it. There is not so much mystery as there is a set of problems and stresses which never cease to get worse In my opinion the next four years are likely to see more trouble than most Americans are willing to imagine. but perhaps it is getting easier to imagine. For me
19 dallas shooting 0708 RESTRICTED21 dallas shooting 0708 RESTRICTED 20 dallas shooting 0708 RESTRICTED22 dallas shooting 0708 RESTRICTED
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— Officers killed include one officer with DART, the Dallas Area Rapid Transit agency, which operates buses and commuter rail in the city and surrounding suburbs.
— DART identified the officer killed as Brent Thompson, 43. He joined the transit agency in 2009, and was its first officer killed in the line of duty, DART tweeted.
— Thompson got married two weeks ago to a fellow transit officer, DART police Chief James Spiller told CNN’s “New Day” on Friday.
— Witness Ismael Dejesus said he filmed a shooter from his hotel balcony about 50 yards away. He described the gunman as carrying a weapon with a “pretty big magazine.”

 

 

In between we had a bad cop that the city fathers eventually fired. It happens. Cops are humans just like the rest of us. But the vast majority are good people, just the like vast majority of people in other occupations. And like other first responders and people in the military, they routinely take risks that the rest of us rarely face in order to keep us safe, and I am grateful for that. When there are episodes like those in Baton Rouge and Minnesota this week, I hold the bad cops responsible as individuals, not as a representative of all cops.

A lot of cops have helped my family and me, not least those men and women who stood out in the wind and rain for hours and hours during Katrina and Gustav. A lot of them have been my friends and neighbors. John and Danny Cummings—the sons of my dear friend Big John, who taught them to call me Uncle Bill (which I like)—have both been cops, and I am proud of them.

A lot of cops have been my colleagues on the faculty at Southeastern Louisiana University, for example, Ronnie Jones, the one-time spokesman of the Louisiana State Police, who was a great teacher and a great cop. In the latter guise, he was on hand a few years ago when a truck started leaking explosive chemicals less than a mile from my house, and emergency workers had to set off a controlled explosion to destroy it.

A lot of our campus cops have been my friends, including Paul Marek, who served as chief of the University Police and whose previous job was as a U.S. Army Colonel and head of Southeastern’s ROTC. And O’Neill DeNoux, who writes brilliant crime novels when he is off duty. And all the others who have defused dangerous situations on campus, been the first responders when faculty, staff, and students have been injured, and in one instance bailed out a shamefaced department head who accidentally locked his keys in his office.

One of my former graduate students is a state cop named Clay Schutz, who has been the driver for every Louisiana governor since Roemer and who still calls me from time to time. In fact, a lot of cops have been my students, including several who retired at the end of their hitch and went into teaching in an effort to get kids into good jobs and keep them off the street. I learned as much from them as they did from me.

That is why I pray for the cops who lost their lives in Louisiana over the last week-and-a-half and those who died in Dallas yesterday. That is why I do not hold all cops to blame when one does the wrong thing. That is why I do not identify cops by race, gender, or anything else except the badge. That is why I, diehard civil libertarian that I am, regard cops as my friends. God bless all those who serve, who uphold the law, who take risks on our behalf, and who in some cases make the ultimate sacrifice. I know who you are, and I thank you.

 

 

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Posted in 1, Louisiana, United States of America

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Clinton’s Campaign: Does She Have Credibility, a Creed and a Contest ?

Posted on July 5, 2016 | 1 comment

Will Secretary and Senator and Former First Lady  Hillary Rodham Clinton be the first female President of the United States? It certainly seems likely. Here you can read my first post when she became the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.  Since the very first version of this post came out the Washington Post has run an article saying that her credibility is damaged, that article is here and it may or may not represent political reality. But the contention made here in all versions of this post so far is that there appears to be a small chance that she will be indicted, arrested and charged in the email scandal or in any matter to do with Benghazi. By small of course I mean that there is not a large chance. There appears to be a miniscule chance that Bernie Sanders will mount a successful revolt or set up a powerful third party challenge which would derail her path to the presidency. There is more or less no realistic chance that she will be stopped from being elected except by the victory of Donald Trump as the Republican Nominee over her as the Democratic Nominee in the general election. Almost no chance is not the same as no chance. Any number of things could happen including death of physical impairment. But the odds seem to be better than fifty percents that she will be the next POTUS. Few people have ever had more relevant work or official experience when approaching the highest office in the land. To be a Senator is a lot, to be Secretary of State is a lot, to be First Lady is a lot — to be all three is a staggering degree of experience. Of course I physically stagger more easily than some more physically gifted readers and so I go to that adjective and the related adverb more readily than they might. But if one does not stagger one at least must take notice of the degree to which she embodies tremendous experience. Compared to her:

  1. Donald Trump has never held elected office,
  2. he has never lived in the White House,
  3. he has never lived in the executive mansion of a State,
  4. he has never held an office appointed by a President,
  5. he has never led a sustained policy discussion as Clinton did with healthcare,
  6. he has never been officially invited to sit at the table to negotiate  a formal treaty on behalf of the United States.
To safeguard liberty we must be able to adapt to the changing times.

To safeguard liberty we must be able to adapt to the changing times.

On the other hand they do have some lack of experience in common:

  1. Neither on has held a major post in a religious institution,
  2. neither has served in the military,
  3. neither has served in the workaday world of the intelligence community,
  4. neither has lived on our borders or in border towns for any length of time,
  5. neither speaks Spanish of French well, official languages of our neighbors,
  6.  neither has lived and worked as a citizen in the way business people, missionaries, journalists and  volunteers do every day across this world as they forge an American identity abroad.

Ambassador Stevens was an unusually high ranking victim of violence abroad. In the last few days other Americans have lost their lives around the world but a glimpse into the kinds of decisions he faced is also a glimpse into kinds of decisions that Americans who believe in what they are doing abroad face every day.  The following excerpt is from the recent report on the Benghazi incident:

While the end of the fiscal year funding deadline was looming, the Diplomatic Security Agent in charge at the Embassy in Tripoli was, nonetheless,
concerned about Stevens’ trip to Benghazi. Although his first planned trip to Benghazi in the beginning of August 2012 had to be canceled because of security,14 Stevens was adamant, however, about going in September.15 The Diplomatic Security Agent testified:
Previous to this—to his decisions to going up there, there was— we would meet weekly to discuss the security situation in Libya.…[
T]here was a specific meeting regarding what was happening in Benghazi. In that meeting, we reviewed incidents and  probable causes, what’s initiating it. And a lot of discussion was that it was the conflict or the incidents up there were, you know, local population against local population and that that they weren’t specifically targeting Americans … up there. I expressed my concerns about the incidents that did involve us. And the basic response was that they … were anomalies.

We all have images of what leadership should look like which are not simple portrayals of reality.

We all have images of what leadership should look like which are not simple portrayals of reality.

Romney was a missionary in France during anti-American times, Bill Clinton visited Russia as a student in the Cold War years and there are other connections to tat least the same world Chris Stevens lived in that can be found in other political lives outside the military but not in the lives of Hillary Clinton or Donald trump so far as I know. Both have traveled a great deal. both have been at some risk but the proportion of risk to resources has never been equal in my opinion to the baseline many Americans abroad have experienced every day all of my life.

The other thing that they have in common is access to fame, fortune, privilege and the people in power. This is not an even contest between the two of them but neither does it really matter who has had more of such opportunity. These opportunities have defined both of their lives for a long time. One big difference of course is that Trump like all previous American Presidents is a man and Clinton is a woman. I visited that in the post where her candidacy was all but assured but I am not going to deal with it much in this post.

There are issues related to Clinton that have very little to do with the fact that she is a woman. Trump recently said he just knew very little about her religion and she responded by declaring her self emphatically enough to be a Methodist. My own take on some of the discussion of Clinton’s religion has been posted in this blog before and can be seen here. Of course there may be more to say as time goes on.  One fact about the election of the first Clinton to the Presidency is that the result was likely determined by the most credible third party candidate in presidential politics in my lifetime — Ross Perot. He made it more than possible for Bill Clinton to defeat George Bush Senior. Thus Clinton did not face the kind of intense contest he would have otherwise.  This kind of splitting is well established in British politics and may have been fostered in some way or another by the Rhodes Scholar, Bill Clinton as the biggest take home lesson from his time in Oxford. Some may see Trump as Ross Perot on steroids. He is the third party candidate who became the  candidate of a major party and the main obstacle to Clinton’s election. that would still be true even if Romney or someone becomes a real third party candidate somehow. So how does trump match Clinton on matters of faith?

To see Clinton’s faith in political terms this season means to examine Donald Trump’s faith as well. He seems to be a person, like Clinton, about whom one could say a great many contradictory things based on pretty good evidence. That is not necessarily because he is deceptive or a hypocrite but may be because of the place he comes from in his life context. Interestingly enough he has made it clear that he supports Christmas as a national holiday and seeks to preserve it. That was the narrow subject of my original blog post about Clinton’s faith and the faith of other candidates.    Christmas was of course never my only interest in the religious identity of candidates. I love Christmas very much and the Christian observance of it by this country is a tradition I think worth striving for and worth some sacrifice. However, it is interesting that the ugliest rumors and suspicions about Donald Trump involve the ways in which he reminds people of the NSDAP or Nazis and the Third Reich. While many Christians nothing like the Hitlerites have rallied around Christmas, there is also no doubt that the Nazis made Christmas and especially the control of Christmas tree sales and early focus of political activity.  In further clarification, it is interesting to note that the list of candidates in the Democrats poll I posted in that article did include Biden but did not include Sanders. Even more interesting is that Trump does not appear among the six Republican candidates who appear in the poll I posted and reviewed in terms of the religion of the candidates. Huckabee was the leader in the poll and he was of course a Baptist minister who claimed the same hometown as President William Jefferson Clinton — Hope, Arkansas. So where does that leave the discussion of religion as I saw it back in 2014? It is not a perfectly relevant post in every way  then.  But here is the principal quotation from that blog post as it pertains to understanding Clinton’s faith in very general political terms. The first paragraph below deals with how Americans likely to vote Republican were thinking about Republican candidates in 2014 and how that related to Christmas and it observance by the Christians of this nation . However the remaining paragraphs  relate to what Clinton’s religious identity is likely to be. It is perhaps best to look at the text:

There is a lot of shaking out to do if these numbers mean any thing before any Republican can claim the nomination.  But it does indicate perhaps the streams of thought that are shaping the country as regards finding a religious root for values expressed by America’s  “right” in politics.

What then about the left? Where does the other side of American  political energy come down on our connecting with the roots of Christianity.  Unlike the possible GOP nominees, Hillary Clinton has tended to tower over her challengers for the 2016 Democratic nomination. Some people are saying that candidates like Elizabeth Warren are poised to show explosive growth but it would take a lot of growth to challenge  Clinton in the primary.

Joe Lieberman who ran with Al Gore was not a Christian but a Jew who seemed to tolerate a good deal of public Christmas. Mitt Romney belonged to what most scholars consider to be a post-Christian religion but it is one that celebrates Christmas as an American holiday and the birth festival of Jesus Christ. Many presidents have been devout Christians: Washington, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, Woodrow Wilson, John Kennedy and half a dozen others are clearly men who in my opinion must be seen as Christians entirely. Whatever they did not achieve of the Christian ideal is not because they did not adhere to that faith and religion. Richard Nixon was reared as a Quaker and (though many American Quakers seem pretty much to be Christians) Quakers as a whole are not a Christian faith but one which grew up among Christians.  It is hard to say what Nixon was when he was President. With men like Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and  a few others it hard to say where they stood in terms of religious classification and identity.

So that brings me to Clinton. She is a favorite enemy of the Christian Right and other religious people in American politics and she may well deserve it. She has a background which is mostly verifiable: Clinton was reared a Methodist Protestant Christian, belonged to a Senate Prayer Group and has spoken at Prayer Breakfasts.  Her profile may seem different to American atheists than to most other people. Here is an atheist site evaluating Clinton’s background and religious values.  It is hard to know how  she would deal with Christmas.

I have just finished observing the Independence Day  holiday in a minimal sort of way. It is always a time that I like to think about what it means to be an American and posts about those thoughts can be seen here. But although those ideas have been posted here they have more often been shared in other places and my thoughts about America have been posted here on other holidays. Those holiday thoughts on Memorial Day have been  here and on Veterans day have been here. While I have in common with Clinton and Trump that I have not a day of service in the military in my past it seems to be the military holidays that most inspire my patriotism. My observation of the Independence Day holiday was not entirely minimal by every standard and I did post quite a few notes and the lyrics of the National Anthem on my Facebook profile but minimal my observance  certainly was  in some measures. Neither Trump nor Clinton were very visible in my own perusal of our nation’s birthday. But one of them will likely be the American Head of State by next Independence Day. Unlike Christmas these holidays are not specifically Christian. I am a Christian and for me Christian prayer is part of these national holidays. I am not sure how the faith of either major candidate informs  their celebration of these days.  But faith and the most gung ho kinds of patriotism are linked by many as can be seen at links here and here. What else does  America expect from a leader and does Clinton have it?

Clinton has a lot of government experience, but the range is not infinite. One of the big achievements of this week has been the placement of the Juno observatory in position as a satellite of Jupiter. Some of the reason many people around the world are interested in this project can be gleaned here.  Neither Clinton nor Trump seems to be the kind to play an extraordinary role in blazing a pioneering trail into space.  These kinds of brave explorations may shape the future or not but they do not seem to define the vision of either Clinton or Trump.

One question many people have about religion is whether or not someone who prays for help should be President. Perhaps prayer means one cannot do the job. But some contend Clinton had private emails because she did not want to disclose the degree to which she could not do her job. That story can be seen here. It is to be noted that this not entirely clear story comes from a publication as biased in favor of Clinton and against Trump as one can get. But the point is here only that Buzz Aldrin, a rocket scientist, astronaut and space planner is a noted public prayer promoter in his own life and not being known for religious acts makes nobody a scientist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in 1, Christianity, France, Independence Day, Religious Holidays, Russia, United States Armed Forces, United States of America, Western civilization, White House

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Dudley Leblanc Exhibit at the Acadian Museum

Posted on June 30, 2016 | 2 comments

On August 20, the Acadian Museum of Erath will celebrate its 25th anniversary by hosting its annual fundraiser and several special events, according to Andy Perrin chairman of the museum’s executive committee. At 5:00 PM at the museum, 203 South Broadway Street, Michèle Le Blanc, Sen. Dudley J. LeBlanc’s granddaughter, will sponsor the re-release of LeBlanc’s historic books The Acadian Miracle (1966) on its 50th anniversary of publication and The True Story of the Acadians (1926) on its 90th anniversary. Both of these books will be available for purchase, with part of the sales being donated to the museum. Both the museum and Dudley Leblanc have long been among my significant interests. But those interests have only recent led to a greater degree of  actual involvement directly with the institution.

 

 

In recent months I have become much more involved in the Acadian Museum.  I am by no means as engaged as some and yet am quite involved in thsi worthy project and ongoing institution of the Acadian and Cajun people and culture. The museum and its work are by no means entirely new to me.

That's me with docent Casa Vice at the Acadian Museum several years ago

That’s me with docent Casa Vice at the Acadian Museum several years ago

However in recent months that latent involvement has increased. This means that instead of simply having some vague influence and being an avid observer there is now something that I can really say that  I am officially attached to going on there.

On the date just mentioned in August  the museum will then induct Morgan LeBlanc, as representative of the LeBlanc family, into the Order of Living Legends and he will officially open the new Sen. Dudley J. LeBlanc Sr. permanent exhibit at the museum. The exhibition will contain over 100 historical photographs, articles, and objects—many displayed publicly for the first time—including the diary and scrapbook of Corinne Broussard, who in 1930 traveled by train to Grand Pré in Nova Scotia, Canada, with 22 other “Evangeline Girls,” to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Acadian Deportation. Some mention of this book and some images of it have appeared in this blog already but the quality of this material will be greatly superior in the exhibit.

The Honorable Dudley J. Leblanc — Acadian Icon
The Acadian Miracle by Dudley Leblanc is fifty years old this year.
HADACOL was once the second largest advertiser in the United States.
Press from Acadian Museum Corinne Broussard Scrapbook
press from Corinne Broussard Scrapbook — Acadian Museum
Pieces from Acadian Museum archives not really included in my book but showing the richness of new information coming in…

This exhibit will introduce this wonderful scrapbook which records in impressive detail what was the first of three trips by Cajuns to visit their ancestral homeland—all organized by LeBlanc in his life-long efforts to re-unite Acadians of Louisiana, Canada and France. LeBlanc, who lived in Erath until age 14, and much of his life in Abbeville was born on August 16, 1894. There is a bit more to be said on the matter of his association with the Town of Erath, which just had its very splendid Fourth of July Festival this weekend  before these edited sentences joined this post.  The Abbeville Meridional, as cited in my book, Emerging Views (appearing in draft here on this blog) in chapter on Dudley Leblanc, considered DL an Erath man when he married his Abbeville bride. She was apparently  also received in some Erath residence after the honeymoon.  However the house in Abbeville that is usually considered their first residence together was nearly finished by the time of the wedding… They also seem to have spent some of that time in hotels…

I have no idea where that residence in Erath may have been and assume it was rented. He had lived in and out of the region in the course of his business and had branch offices in many states if not all states for one or another of his enterprises. Some of those would only have been a post office box, a salesman with a sideline of TBA and a pending trade style registration with some county…. So a residence before marriage was not a big priority… The primary contributors to the exhibit, which is  jointly curated by museum director Warren Perrin and a local historian known as Frank W.  Summers III, were Robert Vincent, Winn Murphy and members of the LeBlanc family.

 

These events will not be the end of the festivities but the start of them. there will be another ceremony in the great tradition of living legends. The total event will be one that will have meaning in memory for years to come.

At 6:30 PM in the Erath Community Center in City Park, the newly-appointed La. Commissioner of Conservation—and former La. Attorney General—Richard Ieyoub will be inducted into the Order of Living Legends. “I am really pleased to be honored by the Acadian Museum and look forward to again visiting my friends in Vermilion Parish,” Ieyoub said. Marilyn Melancon Trahan will have her student chorus sing French songs and several authors will be present to sell their books–Tom Angers, Josh Caffery, Michèle Le Blanc, Mary Perrin, Sheila Hebert Collins, and Nelwyn Hebert.

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Posted in 1, Abbeville, Abbeville, Dudley Leblanc, Erath, family, Frank W. Summers III's family, Living legends, Louisiana, Louisiana writers & Literature, The Acadian Museum, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Vermilion Parish

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Louisiana and the Lost Legacies

Posted on June 28, 2016 | 3 comments

The  recent study that is reported on by the Washington Post here brings up issues familiar to readers of this blog. Louisiana is ranked the third worst state in the nation in which to grow up. The article reports on the recently released  Annie E. Casey Foundation’s release of the findings of its 26th annual Kids Count report. While the report deserves more critical and sanguine analysis of methods, biases and presumptions than it receives it remains a professional and respected investigation into the health, education and economic well-being among American children and seeks to determine what trends are indicated by data collected and compared in the study. I have visited the issues of Louisiana’s low rankings before almost exactly a year before this post came out in fact. That post which is excerpted here from time to time appears at this link.

Louisiana has often been ranked at or near the bottom of various surveys and  studies that claim to show the relative position of various states in the United States as regards the kind of excellence a particular study seeks to define and understand. Those seeking to lead or hold public office in this state have long had to contend with the perception of inferiority as well as with the rankings that proclaim that inferiority. There are few enough conversations regarding policy which do not include a discussion of these realities: Louisiana is perceived as straggling and in many regards (even if the studies are flawed in some ways), it is straggling as regards the United States. One hesitates to post pictures with this kind of  an opening paragraph and to identify people with the negative comments and  categorization of the State. But most of those deeply involved in life here are well aware of  these perceptions and both the problems that cause the poor rankings and the problems that arise from  the poor rankings.

There was a ranking of Louisiana schools among the schools of the United States of America last year at about this time that inspired my earlier post. That article was discussed in the Daily Advertiser and  if the link still functions should be accessible here.  The survey ranked Louisiana schools at 47 out of perhaps 51 systems with the district of Columbia. Interestingly, the  Yahoo News did a ranking of fifty states about the same time and did that ranking on the broadest possible basis and ranked Louisiana of all fifty states and in that ranking Louisiana came out ranked fifth.  The two surveys may have been profoundly different and the new Casey Foundation survey may have  looked at different things as well. But surveys are tricky things, as are polls, studies and rankings. The question of what is good is a philosophical one and philosophy is very much in decline in this country and the world. We may ask if California’s horrible history of unsustainable water policy was built into the Casey study, or Oklahoma and the Northern plains far above them had to account in some way for soil depletion in the thirties and the resulting horror of the Dust Bowl. Or whether displaced Aboriginal Americans were made to count against people in terms of determining the tolerance of New England and the Mid West. My guess is that a trained critical and philosophical inquirer being honest would find that almost nothing like this was attempted but that in countless ways a punishment for slavery and the Confederacy’s perceived rebellion was built into the study.

Press from Acadian Museum Corinne Broussard Scrapbook
Pieces from Acadian Museum archives not really included in my book but showing the richness of new information coming in…
The Honorable Dudley J. Leblanc — Acadian Icon
The Acadian Miracle by Dudley Leblanc is fifty years old this year.
Young but experienced reporter from Abbeville was on the job… Not sure who she is with these days, I have known her since she was an infant…
Toby Takes Charge: DOTD set out state of I-49 Connector plans
Double rainbow at Big Woods in August of 2015
More or less what Acadian means to those who do not know…
Mom with a Christmas tree in a previous year. Today she is scheduled to buy a tree.
Me in front of a Christmas lights nativity scene shot by one of the proprietors on my phone as I walked into the Donors Dinner.
My mother poses in front of the statue of the Hero of New Orleans who fought the British Empire and become President and the Church of the Sainted Crusader King.
Window in St .Louis Cathedral showing the Crusader saint’s body being borne back when he died after launching a great war against Islamists who were terrorizing local Christians and others.
Window in the Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans showing the sainted King of France for whom the church is named caring for the sick directly.
Two of my maternal uncles working that same father’s Day work day at Kisinoaks.
These are the fruits I hope will weather today’s storm.
My brother killed his first deer taken with a bow today at Big Woods and brought it back here to our house.
I have a dearth of images of him available here and now but this retreat house is one place of many where he and I were together.
These are different horses at Big Woods. But one memory I have of interacting with the Romeros is catching the horse Champ to give to Donald’s son-in-law D.J. to load into a trailer and drive to their home for Gabrielle and their other children.
The reality of the South as a subjugated and oppressed region of the United States does not cease to exist because things are never reported that way. Assumptions are never perfect in any of our major policy discussions and deeply held assumptions are seldom closely examined.  While we decry global warming and other forms of climate change  and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and the rise of ISIS and many other groups devoted to modern Islamist Terror Jihad, and the crumbling US infrastructure and signs of geopolitical tension the tendency which defines our era most of all is the unwillingness to consider how larger systems of thought and belief distinctive to our own time might need to be reformed to handle the crises of our times. My undergraduate alma mater got rid of its philosophy department since I graduated and there are many reasons for this and the simple existence of such a department does not in fact assure anyone or any institution of very much but it is nonetheless a significant datum.
This sort of  deep and pervasive intellectual blindness is grievous beyond being simply sad and  when closely examined only goes to show how horribly out of balance the priorities of this society are in fact. Such decisions  as what to do with budgets, whom to hire and what courses to teach are often made very much in direct response to studies, polls and surveys which are really malicious in design if not in human intent (although that should not be taken for granted). Therefore a truly horrifying decision can make a kind of sense when one reasons from many bad starting places provided by highly respected sources and reinforced by federal policy all at the same time.
The Vermilion Parish School Board employed me as a substitute teacher for several years and then a few years ago employed me in a chaotic and abusive mess without definition through a new computer system. But it was not the worst system I have been exposed to. I have a GED diploma from Abbeville High School to bring together study in over a dozen pre-collegiate institutions and my dearly cherished niece and goddaughter graduated from the same school in a year after being admitted  and having done two years at John Paul the Great Academy in Lafayette. The institution struggles for money often enough and I have been shorted, had supplies misplaced or lost because of odd conditions symbolic of shortages and have known others who have experienced similar problems. But lately the Board has been praised for having very high graduation rates compared to the rest of the State of Louisiana. This has not ended the budget crisis and there was an announcement that no human French teacher would be assigned to Erath High School in the Future. The Parish  public system has several High Schools but not a plethora. As I recall there are now Abbeville High, Kaplan High, Gueydan High, Erath High, North Vermilion High and none other that I can think of at this time. There used to be more and some students travel a long way past old high schools to their new facilities. There are many home school students, various correspondence schools and a few modestly sized but not tiny sectarian or private schools in addition to the old  Catholic  high school which was refounded and renamed Vermilion Catholic High School when I was more or less and infant (it is a successor to Mount Carmel High School). Its hard to know how much the public schools represent the totality of education in the parish.  I reacted strongly in an email circulated in the aftermath of this decision and my reaction was very negative. I feel that  this single decision was made possible by rankings of graduation rates and is a horrible attack on our Vermilion Parish professional community and on our cultural life and heritage.
Every part of the country lives in a tension with these national rankings and their local consequences and there are many ways to respond badly. I found the VPSB choice horribly disloyal to the local community and its needs and traditions — although what will happen in the end I am not sure. However, others have supported their local communities in ways that undermine all integrity of the whole system. But the education picture in the country as a whole is far from clear. Lying, fibbing, making up nonsense and ignoring reality are very important parts of the reporting of schools and of educational performance in this country more than most. I discussed the Atlanta Public Schools in those terms in a post linked here.
But I  will revisit the most relevant parts of the post within this blog post. The Atlanta Public Schools were reacting to their very poor performance  on these tests which are another basis for making so many decisions. I respect their concern that the tests are not perfect measures of anything and do not always produce worthwhile goals and incentives for educational policy. As those who read me extensively in this blog or otherwise will know, I have been a teacher in numerous contexts as well as being a person who has taken many standardized tests. I have also advised people I cared about who take standardized tests.The testing culture which shapes testing results and does not produce the prosecutions which occurred in Atlanta is not a pure and pristine testing culture by any means.  Let me assure anyone unsure that people provide skinnies and acquire early copies of master forms and provide for special conditions for pretty girls who can use their favors to influence the right people, for stellar athletes who cannot make the grade after extensive tutorials and for the relations of rich donors to universities and prep schools. Teacher’s pets can sometimes be rewarded with hints that are unfair to others. That kind of impurity which is not so shocking but offends a sense of the sportsmanship that goes with standardized testing regimes is rampant enough to offend but not pervasive or normal in most testing regimes around the world. Beyond all of this in our own country margins are attached to scores to provide affirmative action for racial minorities, for women, for veterans and for the disabled before making decisions that will apply the scores. Different people react differently to different elements of these variations but  they all make the tests something other than pure objective scientific measurement.  Similar things happen in the world of polling, surveys and  studies.
 In addition to all of these ways of shaping  results not very good but very old techniques of  intimidation, cheating lies and abuse not much modified since the early stone ages still occur in all sort of places around the world and are not absent from educational measurements. If that is the case then does it matter if the  kind of criminal cheating on a massive scale occurred in Georgia under what amounts to official gangsterism as the APS scandal  of 2013  and before? Does it matter that Beverly Hall and others in the Atlanta Public School System presided over wholesale distortions in public school testing, motivated largely by inflated racial loyalties driven by distorted national policies and false perspectives? Yes I think it matters.  Just as it matters that the VPSB superintendent Puyau who appears to be of at least partial Louisiana French descent is not able find the loyalty to fight for our region’s heritage Just as the it matters that the President Anthony Fontana child of a Sicilian American father who was a teacher  and a Cajun (therefore American) mother who was a teacher could not find motivation to fight harder to preserve this key teacher if he fought for that at all. It is not so much that compared to the Atlanta system in a state that did better in the Casey Foundation study the VPSB were not paragons of ethics. Compared to the APS the VPSB deserved none of  all the horrible and relatively obscene things I was calling them in my inside voice as I type that first email response to the news — that is not the point. The point is that in response to all of the vast supply of objective information that is supposed to make things better the VPSB in this instance became part of a vast and comprehensive societal movement to worthlessness. I write these angry and inflammatory words about them or about the APS or about the measuring  establishment  and  yet anyone can guess that I wonder if  perhaps we  who dislike these outcomes largely deserve them. I write that because I know the basic futility of my complaints because I surely cannot make all the difference alone and apparently others feel much the same, the people who feel that sense of hopelessness are not stupid. The measures  of the Board I called the Very Poorly Structured Budgeters  in my email were based on a contempt for their constituents that comes largely from national studies designed against these people and which they use to calculate needs and resources and make decisions that arise from accepted practices and from the parameters by which they define their objectives it is a larger picture and not their specific practices which are entirely flawed. That does not mean there is no personal are moral fault. I was not then and am not now  afraid for my critique to come to the attention of Puyau, Fontana or anyone else in my small community.  Nor was I afraid to offend the Black Exaltationists of the country in the APS post.  I believe they should be grown ups and perhaps they believe that as well. But despite whatever differences we may have this is not only about personal values. Just as I criticize them I also know there is wholesale lying and cheating is occurring in many school districts around the country.
I myself have mixed feelings and a mix of things to say about standardized testing itself. I know we have visions create by national standards and studies that are shaped by those who do not believe high schools should ever have more diverse educational outcomes leading to apprenticeships, tech schools and work programs for a good portion of seniors who will still graduate and take some classes in the main school. Those are things that I think should happen.  Likewise they should offer advanced college prep and individual classes. I also think a military track should exist in each school. In other words I think the public school system is broken. I think reliance on studies that are assumed to be well intended but are not  must change or we will pay an ever higher price.
This sense of what the ideals are is very real and very powerful and the APS case in Georgia illustrates that fact.  Consider the stature  of Beverly Hall and the thirty or so other school officials indicted in the investigation of cheating in the Atlanta Public School System. This is especially important because Ms. Hall has been honored as National School System Superintendent of the Year and has been a symbol for many of the direction in which our American educational culture ought to be moving.  Hall’s behavior cannot be understood without reference to the national policies arising from the issue of race and the significance of these events being first uncovered beneath the Georgia flag. In this struggle by the State of Georgia and other authorities to deal with these issues the colors which were the confederate battle flag has waved above this instance of endless and widespread nonviolent black supremacy. The flag has often been attacked in Georgia but the falsification of all standards to promote the relative position of the Black race in our society has been fostered by all our learned and moral opinions. Now the  the whole Confederate history is nearly wiped away  because homicidal action of Dylan Roof in a very political but also sacred church. This action surely needs to be condemned and I have done so, but it has a context in the violence of our society more than in the Confederate Flag. The events and actions of this young man are much horrifying in appearance and also so prejudged that any chance he went in to do something other than murder cannot be considered by many who never prejudge any other homicide that way. He may have been looking for trouble but not planning to kill anyone — a trial should determine that.
The Washington Post article cited here at the start of this post is Christopher Ingraham’s continuance in a well established tradition of  showing the horrors of the South carrying onto the future from the past. But other horrors are little examined. We have not as a society correctly calculated the consequences of rhetoric and policy extolling equality in a way which destroys ethnic and regional richness and replaces it with shallow absurdity. Or the consequence of an indoctrination maniacally  demonizing racial distinction and white supremacy of any kind.   We do not consider the consequences of failure to investigate highly organized falsifications and badly designed standards while pouring resources into repeatedly simplifying the mechanisms of stopping fraud at many points. We do not understand the exigencies of any kind of meritocratic institutions on which we must rely. Today as we think back on the Independence Day anniversaries of 150 years since the greatest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere was drawn out at Gettysburg and the horror of the Vicksburg siege ended in the failed Confederacy we must recognize the change which Gettysburg assured has been a complicated kind of change bringing both good and evil to Georgia and the South. We must also consider that process launched in and for our nation. The occupation of the South and the repression of its state institutions by the federal government has never ended and has not abated. The morals of it have never been fairly examined.  But examining and measuring have been part of the oppression. But before focusing on race let me examine some other implications of all this horrific mess.
The creation of a destructive class of vicious and entitled black abusers has been one result, Dylan Roof and others who may be like him has been another result, but they are not the only groups empowered and supported against the society and culture of these states and all of the union. Just as not all in our School Board are eager to destroy our heritage and there are  in countless school districts many African Americans who would participate in a more positive system drawing on a diverse set of roots of progress. But these people are overwhelmed in the stream of a fantasized racial exact equality in our land. The Black Republicanism which many in the South and the Northern Opposition sought to stop in the War Between the States has reached its fruit and full flower in many places across our society. This racial element is very significant in all of this although one must applaud the black officers of the court who are involved in the prosecution and the black teachers and administrators who lost their jobs in droves opposing the total adulteration of scholastic integrity. There story is not much being told yet and may not be told. It is a story which ought to inspire us to give to the United Negro College Fund and to see in institutions like Grambling and Southern University in my own state. There is in such racially conscious institutions a different ethic than the wholesale cultural terrorism that the US Supreme Court has imposed upon the Union of the States. We are not likely to see such an outpouring of generosity to the UNCF by “Southron” whites of the old school.  We are more likely to see the anger and resentment captured in at least some of the Trump supporting movement. I am not sure Trump is a bad guy but his approach breeds alienation. It is more successful and appealing than anything I have to say in a country rocked by hopeless resentment or racially charged righteous anger.
Right now  when they meet a blindly accepted  national standard relatively honestly and their graduation rate is high a school board may feel that they can do anything they want and they are the good guys. What something like the last French teacher or the last teacher’s absence in any major subject and this subject most of all can do to a community is a hard thing to calculate. I do not know even now in the case of the VPSB who voted which way and I do not no know the depths of their budget crisis, I do not know just how intransigent the teacher’s union was in preventing other settlements.  But while this situation of crisis and the structural maladies are enormous that does not absolve the persons involved. The standards received from some national measuring apparatus are not to be examined in detail they are to be used to define all aspects of life and not to be criticized by anyone who know what I consider most worth knowing for any reason. Often time a norm is not a standard of excellence but a prohibition of excellence “Making every child a little behind” who is “common to the core” is my idea for a good honest name for our pedagogical history.
California has migrants and illegal aliens whose educational status is often less honestly reported than ours and I recommend reading Leah Remini’s book Troublemaker and asking yourself if her memoir doesn’t indicate that lots of the Scientologists in the Golden State are not getting much of an education as we usually measure it. Tom Wolfe’s  novel Bonfire of the Vanities describes a fictional public school outside the Deep South that is horrifying and is based on his deep and meticulous factual research. And are we supposed to believe that in the horrors of Chi-raq — bloody Chicago they do all the even we know they do but tell the truth about children’s welfare?   There are troubles here but there are troubles everywhere and the national lying campaign does not help.

The struggle of life in Louisiana is an easy one to simplify.  The student who struggle in many ways with situations in our public schools and post secondary education  are preparing for a life of struggle here or away from here. But the struggle is not always fairly meaured as regards what we achieve in an ongoing struggle as to where we stand in the country.  Louisiana has been amazingly dominant in the millions of pounds of seafood landed at saltwater ports. There are times when half of the top five or ten ports were Louisiana ports in that category. We have never done as well in ranking of the dollar values of catches landed. Although the seafood industry is still a big deal.

Louisiana has done an amazing job of leading in the production of offshore oil and gas at various times but has gotten little of that money into state coffers to invest in things like education. The federal government has taken most of that revenue from huge categories of mineral production and has sent back funds in other forms with less social benefit like transfer payments to needy in systems that foster permanent poverty.

The Gulf of Mexico's oil reserves remain vital to our country's future.

Louisiana has a vast treasury of cultural resources but exists in a society committed in general to degrading and destroying those resources over time.Jean Lafitte National Park and CODOFIL notwithstanding there has been a constant war on the distinctive values and traditions and assets of the state. So one has to ask what people here are being educated towards and why and how.

This may be one of the many reasons why although Louisiana has above average military enlistment it ranks below some of its neighbors in the former Confederacy. The military establishment here is significant but certainly not the biggest Fort Polk came out of recent reductions pretty well but over the decades has lost ground to other bases like Fort Hood. Fort Polk may have to change its name to Fort Parks but for now is named after a Confederate General. So rankings are part of the overall struggle to make sense of our place in the world.

 

My cousin Severin was killed in battle in Afghanistan.

Not very many people read this neglected blog compared to its heyday. However many of those who do have not heard of the term Silicon Bayou. There is disagreement about all aspects of the term. However the truth is that the area from New Orleans to Houston including Baton Rouge and Lafayette most of all is a technology center for the nation many aspects of the industries and universities in the region are ranked well in the fields of technology and information science.  The future is being built and sought here and has been for a long time. The results are always going to be mixed for many reasons.  I myself once led a group of interested people around the world in developing a plan for colonizing the Moon and Mars. There are thousands of ventures that do not achieve major recognition that have some influence. But there are also large operations and institutions.

How a crater on the Moon or Mars might be developed.

That brings us back to the idea of perception. Louisiana has a substantial tourism industry and a substantial film industry. Both of these industries labor to improve perceptions of the state in different ways. Nonetheless, there is little perception nationally or globally of how much this state faces challenges for the world and the nation and not caused primarily by the negligence or incompetence of this society itself. In fact I am very discouraged about the state, personally discouraged and discouraged at all kinds of levels. But the State has problems brought on us from the larger society as well. Those problems and our reactions to them affect our children’s lives as well.

Shrimp boats become skimmers

In the face of all the challenges of Louisiana life in this time it is interesting to not that Lafayette has been ranked as one of the happiest or the happiest city in the United States of America.  This happiness is not indifferent to or disconnected from all of our modern struggles but is perhaps rooted in our older heritage. That is perhaps also a key to how we perceive ourselves.

 

my great grandmother's painting

As we all seek to find our way forward it is useful to remember who we are, to see who we wish to become and to try to help our young people realize dreams they and we both can value and affirm. The future after all is uncertain and we cannot be sure where everything will end up. I know that we will not find a way forward if we lose all respect for one another.

Congratulating Louisiana State Senator Fred Mills on reforming Marijuana law...

 

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EU: Bye, see you on the other side

Posted on June 27, 2016 | Comments Off on EU: Bye, see you on the other side

 

St. Hilda's and St. Hugh's School in NY, NY where I went to 2d. Grade

St. Hilda’s and St. Hugh’s School in NY, NY where I went to 2d. Grade

I’m reblogging or pressing the following with a personal introduction. Tizres only occasionally comments here but still is my most prolific comment author. She is a British, well informed and well connected. The NYSE is reviewing its contacts across the pond today as well…. By the way, I also went to kindergarten in London….

 

EU: Bye, see you on the other side

(From Word Press blog Cracking Cheese)

I was sure that the my vote would help the UK to stay in the EU. That was Thursday; I’ve moved on, the markets have moved on, but the opportunists and those with vanity projects are moving in…

Source: EU: Bye, see you on the other side

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BRexit from the Bayou

Posted on June 25, 2016 | Leave a comment

What will become of the Special Relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom in coming months and years?

What will become of the funds in peoples varied accounts and peoples varied investments in America and the world?

What will become of the European Union?

These are all questions brought to the fore by the recent event called the BRexit Referendum.  They are important questions and will only be slightly ventured into within this post but it is possible that some more insight may be forthcoming from other portions of this site past, present and future.

This blog is a place in the wide world where very ambitious plans (which to many would seem absurdly ambitious and very unusual) are put forward. But the reason that I do put forth such plans is in part because the economy does not just respond to purely economic forces and purely economic plans made by typical economists are not likely to steer it all that well. Nor do I believe that conservatism — which I lay claim to here repeatedly –means having no plans at all. In fact I believe both planning and a limited socialist and communitarian element belong in any  healthy conservative economic philosophy. Among many plans in this blog is a desire expressed to bring the United States to a floating quatrimetalism which is something like the gold standard. As I type this many are rushing to gold. Compared to either panic or the pure gold standard this standard might actually seem moderate. But in recent years it would usually have seemed very bearish and conservative indeed.

 

The Current Queen of England and Scotland's United Kingdom with Eisenhower

I don’t think any two constitutional changes are the same. The British Monarchy is not our target here in the problems I as an American and a Cajun may point out.  But it was among the targets of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.

Do you come to this blog to get a sense of what stock market and financial  trends are urgently important? Perhaps you should. I seldom discuss market volatility or warn of impending short term risk in that aspect of life but prior to one of the biggest crashes in my lifetime my humble blog warned of the possibility in time for a handful of readers to have called their brokers and accountants if they were inclined to do so . But I make no claim to being unique in pointing out the risk, nor to having given specific advice. Nonetheless, the overall pattern of advice here seems to have been better than that being offered in some other quarters.

US Marines guard many embassies where our diplomats seek peace with security around the world.
Because of our Memorial Day traditions we only tie in indirectly with British Remembrance Day
The voting booth remains a powerful part of our society.
June 5-7 model and projected trajectory
British Besiege and Attack Baltimore in war of 1812
British invasion and repulsion in the Battle of New Orleans
Local efforts to block oil incursions
money is always part of the law but fiscal policy is separate here and elsewhere from other laws
Paper legal tender will still be around.
America is used to paper money as a great symbol of National unity as well as the tangible form of our unifying preoccupation.

 

Britain Exits — the United Kingdom is finding a path forward without EU membership. Company will not be kept by the same countries in the same way ant longer — or so it all would seem. The news which has been developing includes a seeming set of contradictory signals from various places as to how fast this split should be. Voices are urging speed in the EU, as seen in detail here. But there have been voices from Spain, the UK and several other countries that have emphasized the need to proceed at a measured and not overly hasty pace.  The question on the most minds these days seems to be how severe the financial and economic impacts will be. Alan Greenspan. former Federal Reserve Chairman of the United States of America  has been a voice warning that there could be extensive and extended effects. TIME has been able to put together an article that is much more optimistic, that is linked here.

France one would think is still France, Germany is still Germany, the UK is still the UK. Italy may even be Italy and so forth. One feels when a severe corrections sets in that there were reasons in the market for panic. One suddenly sees Europe, the U.K.,  stock markets and financial markets as well as other institutions in a different way than one saw them before. During the Chinese crisis a while back I urged a more moderate view of the crisis than was then in vogue but I did not produce any large autonomous piece on the subject which I can now locate. However in the case of BRexit I posted on this subject just a day before the historic vote. That post is here.

I began with these words:

 

The British who it seems are by far America’s closest association in the world — even if to me it is not obvious that this must or even should be the case or deciding whether of not to leave the European Union.  NATO is surely in decline and is troubled despite being very big and victorious. As a Cajun I would like to see better relations between the US, France, Belgium,  Spain and the UK especially. But realistically those relationships may be as good as they are going to get.  the Brits who want to stay in the EU fall into those who see Europe as a country and say the sooner it becomes a superpower nation state the better and those who believe it is better for British interest to stay in the EU.  Those who want to leave include people who fear woes of limitless migration, economic collapse and cultural corruption in the new order. But the real thorny issues are not simply resolved into two camps  — but the votes are in tow camps. Some have said the shooting in Orlando helped the leavers most — called Brexit. BRexit can argue that families like the Mateens can arrive anywhere in Europe and strike anywhere else and nobody has a chance to know the risk.  Some who want to stay in believe Europe must change and offer better collective security and that will be best for Britain.

My niece Anika at her confirmation with her baptismal godparents who are my sister Mary and myself. Anika’s mother, my sister Sarah took the picture.
My recent reunion with my godmother Cousin Mickey or Aunt Mickey depending on my mood.
Congratulating Louisiana State Senator Fred Mills on reforming Marijuana law…
Just another selfie …

Armed with a few links to various articles, I raised the alarm on a potential Stock Market  Crisis to those among my readers who might not have been prepared.

The lack of certainty this vote has created in the stock market and elsewhere is discussed here.  But this is an analysis mostly of how the markets will react if BRexit beats the Remainers. It is a bit more complicated to decide whether the current process itself is affecting financial markets and other economic indicators, perhaps some of that complexity can be recaptured here.

So BRexit has happened. Why did it happen that Britain left first because there was a referendum. Lord Norton discusses that here. TIME has put together an approach to why there was a referendum as well, a sort of history linked here. But here is a telling quote from Lord Norton in a post linked herein a post linked here:

In the post-war era, the issue of European integration has been a fault line of British politics.  Both main parties have been divided internally  and both have changed their stance on the issue.  However, there has been no formal requirement for a referendum on the issue.  Harold Wilson used a nation-wide referendum, a constitutional innovation, in 1975 in order to resolve conflict within the Labour Party.  David Cameron moved to initiate one in response to conflict within Conservative ranks.  The roots are to be found in the last Parliament.  Details can be found in the chapters by Phil Cowley and me in Seldon and Finn’s The Coalition Effect.

There was no commitment in the Conservative 2010 manifesto to a referendum on continued membership of the EU.  The crucial development was the decision of the newly-formed Backbench Business Committee to schedule a debate, initiated by Conservative MP David Nuttall, in October 2011, calling for a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU.  Had the Committee not come into existence the previous year, with responsibility for scheduling debates (which it did on the basis of proposals from private Members), there would almost certainly not have been a debate – the Government would not have found time for it.   Despite a heavy whipping operation against the motion, 81 Conservatives voted for it.

The Referendum may or may not have been the right or best thing to do but it was note purely inevitable. Had it not happened the EU and the world would have muddled a long a bit longer on a more similar path. What happened after that is up for debate. I discuss reasons below why I think that things were not so secure as they seemed. But for now let us turn to what did happen.

This is the link to the speech in which David Cameron announced his intention to resign after the BRexit vote.  Cameron invested his very considerable political capital very heavily in this referendum. We may well hear from him again but he is tied to it forever. Tizres a commenter on this blog on occasion has on her own blog posted a while ago a post linking Cameron and the EU over time and this has surely proven her right on that and other scores as well. The BRexit may well see a resurgence of the Commonwealth, a stimulus to improve the EU constitution, the impetus for liberty enshrined in better rules around the world. It may be a very good thing. Whether good or not it may be necessary. But today it is a scary thing for many and the most obvious sign of that is the crash in the stock markets and the worldwide wealth erasures. We shall see where all that leads.   There is a great deal more that can be said about BRexit and that has to be said somewhere and perhaps many places if the current political environment is to be properly understood. Here is one place I have been discussing such things. Lord Norton had already had something to say on all of this issue which has led to BRexit, he tangentially discussed it here and has now said a good bit about the mechanic of the thing here in a brief and early post. The results of all this are likely to be significant for many people.

The European Union has 28 member countries, here is the list from the European Union’s own official website :

On the road to EU membership

Candidate countries

Potential candidates

The list above shows the difficulties compared to the United States of America. In the United States we have the Senate where votes are equal and the House where votes are by population. Then we have an Electoral College where votes are identical to a State’s votes in each of these houses and they elect our President. We have a Supreme Court charged with seeing that the basic system is preserved.  i think our own system is corrupt and this blog is a place where I have spelled out model constitutions for the United States and for Louisiana.  But our Constitution as it was originally approved and as  it exists today has the basic components to make it possible to preserve healthy state identity and a healthy federal union — just barely so in my view. However, the EU is made to work by will and skill without really having anywhere near and adequate constitutional framework. Whether others leave or not that is clearly the case. But it has been a socially and politically cheap arrangement and now it has failed a major test.  The people who paid r it to survive as it as it was were equally the US tax payers and the Soviet and Russian people who kept up a nuclear terro balance that left Europe’s great powers and their vast depository of skilled diplomats and diplomatic resources free to patiently deal with many issues while not being pressured to clearly lead or fight for survival. Would it have been good for them to become a true United States of Europe? People will disagree for good reasons about the answer to that question.  But they never built the structures we have. The comparison was always a misplaced one by any standard. Now what will happen next is a different matter — I am not making predictions in this posting.

 

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How to Blog in Uncertainty

Posted on June 23, 2016 | Leave a comment

The British who it seems are by far America’s closest association in the world — even if to me it is not obvious that this must or even should be the case or deciding whether of not to leave the European Union.  NATO is surely in decline and is troubled despite being very big and victorious. As a Cajun I would like to see better relations between the US, France, Belgium,  Spain and the UK especially. But realistically those relationships may be as good as they are going to get.  the Brits who want to stay in the EU fall into those who see Europe as a country and say the sooner it becomes a superpower nation state the better and those who believe it is better for British interest to stay in the EU.  Those who want to leave include people who fear woes of limitless migration, economic collapse and cultural corruption in the new order. But the real thorny issues are not simply resolved into two camps  — but the votes are in tow camps. Some have said the shooting in Orlando helped the leavers most — called Brexit. BRexit can argue that families like the Mateens can arrive anywhere in Europe and strike anywhere else and nobody has a chance to know the risk.  Some who want to stay in believe Europe mus change and offer better collective security and that will be best for Britain.

Press from Acadian Museum Corinne Broussard Scrapbook
We have a responsibility to understand the words we use to shape our live and society. This is a picture of the Declarators committee.
Liberty must evolve but not be abandoned.
Gettysburg settled upon our country many parts of a new consensus . . .
US Marines guard many embassies where our diplomats seek peace with security around the world.
The Acadian Museum was on site I visited with a friend who is discussing starting a tour company.
British invasion and repulsion in the Battle of New Orleans
British Besiege and Attack Baltimore in war of 1812
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge out and about
I don’t think any two constitutional changes are the same. The British Monarchy is not our target here.
Revolutionary Iconography is part of the TEA Party experience…

The uncertainty that grips the world is  much larger than the issue  of one political referendum outside of the country where I am blogging today. We are not sure who will be the next President of the United States, not sure how the  tensions over issues of guns, terrorism, Islam, LGBT issues, migration and wars will shape up in coming years and months. We are not sure if Britain will leave the European Union. To undertake any blog with a political awareness in these times calls for an ability to embrace some high degree of uncertainty. Of course that is largely true for all journalists in most situations in which they earn their keep.  Nor is uncertainty limited to journalists. I am bringing attention to my resume being more accessible on this blog now and in that resume I have something about published writing:

Publications

Academic Publications:Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television; 1993,  Review – FDR’s Moviemaker: Memoirs and Scripts.

Journalism:   Extensive journalistic work in the: Abbeville Meridional, The Daily Advertiser, The Vermilion, Bonne Nouvelles ;Straight Street, Malaybalay, Bukidnon, Philippines. Resounding Praise newsletter, International , Serve  (Global) newsletter,  Family Missions Co.

More or less what Acadian means to those who do not know…
Dr. Boustany and I at a town hall meeting. This was several years ago.
This blog itself represents a good bit of my work in recent years.
News paper article about China
Hurricanes have been a part of life here since before I went to China and since I returned. But some have really shaped my life in a variety of ways.
The world always goes on around family events and sometimes they get a bit of notice.
Protests are going on in many places

Those positions and opportunities do not make me a world or national figure in journalism. But they did give me a chance to see what it is like to write in uncertain times.  In every life and almost very job we find that managing the unusually stressful and difficult situations that arise is a part of our lives. For many people that is to some degree  the secret to earning a living as opposed to not earning a living. Just a few example of my won life experiencing some kind of crisis management modality are on my mind as I blog today. Some instances included under the heading Crisis Management Experiences in the brief resume that I now include in the links on the blogroll of this blog are that I:

  1. Taught extremely long hours as a substitute teacher after Hurricane Lili.
  2. Cared for my brother Simon as IBC caregiver during Hurricane Rita and afterwards.
  3. Directed a Youth Conference in Bukidnon in the Philippines while in my late teens during a set of separate national, regional  and familial crises.

But the truth is that a reader of that document would find other things that relate to my own belief that I can and do manage to deal with uncertainty.   I cover a great deal of ground about my personal life and background very briefly when I write a simple section that gives some sense of my journey through these fifty two years:

Special Adaptation Challenges:

Have lived in and adjusted to new conditions in: Mexico City, London, New York, New Orleans, Manila, El Paso, Saltillo, Yantai,  and other urban environments. I also have lived & adjusted to new conditions in rural Colombia, Mexico, Philippines, Louisiana, Virginia, Tonga & other rural environments.

Have had a great deal of exposure to people under extreme duress, the poor, the sick, those in disciplinary education situations, those in special education, those in need of transport to and from jail and so forth.

America is shaken by the sustained carnage which has not been  so easy to categorize politically and culturally. It has many faces and many issues emerge in any discussion including which issues to include in the discussion and which events to look at when describing the carnage of which I am speaking. It is clear to me that these shootings do not occur in a vacuum. They are connected to the violence of crime, “protests”, riots, war and other facets of our troubles and current struggles.

The Civil Rights movement has shaped much of my life experience. I am fifty years old.
My mother in front a Confederate monument in New Orleans reminds us of what complexity there is in violence and duty.
My mother poses in front of the statue of the Hero of New Orleans who fought the British Empire and become President and the Church of the Sainted Crusader King.
Window in the Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans showing the sainted King of France for whom the church is named caring for the sick directly.
My mother toured the Great Wall of China/ I did a good bit of touring but I did not get to really tour the Great Wall in my longer stay in China
My cousin Severin was killed in battle in Afghanistan.
To safeguard liberty we must be able to adapt to the changing times.
The seal of the Confederacy ties the Lost Cause to the Revolution and the past long before that war.
June 5-7 model and projected trajectory
Fighting for the Coast
The popular mass street politics of the left may yet be telling …

In the United States house of Representatives the Democrats have rallied to a significant degree behind the sit-in demanding a vote on gun limiting bills that are linked to others already voted down in the Senate. One can find  stories about this revolt against House governance and procedure here and here. The protest is led by Representative John Lewis who has a long history of protest in the Civil Rights movement in his own background. In the trying and uncertain times that the country currently faces it is somewhat natural for him to bring this new level of seeking change through Civil Disorder to a new level. Many around the world feel and have felt that even if protest and demonstrations can be condoned on the street this is exactly the kind of thing that does not belong in a legislative assembly. On the other hand, many may see this as just another kind of extension of the Senate filibuster made famous beyond the norm by Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and which has been a part of our lives during many crises in American politics.    The occasion for all this acrimony and uproar is the shooting in Orlando of scores of people. I dealt with that shooting in a post on this blog which can be found here. The implications for discussion of gun control, Islam, LGBT issues and terrorism have continued to shape the American political season.  Trump has shown a strong support for the idea that Terrorists do appear on the no fly list and are then conveniently found to be prohibited from buying guns. But he has conceded the merits of Republican plans for a due process mechanism that would review the cause for not being allowed to buy a gun. This comes in the context of his campaign’s overall support for gun control. Hillary Clinton would like to restore the Federal Assault Weapons Ban as  instituted under her husband’s administration, would support Democrat bills making the No Fly List also a No Buy List for guns. In addition there is no doubt in the minds of conservatives that no real conviction would keep her from evolving as far as she could toward a completely disarmed lawful citizenry. But she insists that such characterizations of her intentions are not fair.

Beyond the fact that the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando was shot up by a man who seems to have given countless warnings that he was likely to do such a thing as he actually did there are many questions about how he did what he did that are not answered. It is also unclear whether Latin Night at a Gay bar was a very important part of the targeting strategy are only a clearly relevant one as regard this killing by a man who pledged allegiance to the leader of ISIS. The human cost even if one limits the discussion to those killed is huge. Having given the killer’s name in my earlier post I add a link to a site discussing the victims here. I also take the time to list the names themselves here: In the wake of so many other mass shootings it is clear that this issue will not go away as a gun violence issue despite having many other facets.

Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34 | Stanley Almodovar III, 23 | Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20 | Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22 | Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36 | Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22 | Luis S. Vielma, 22 |Kimberly Morris, 37 |Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30 | Darryl Roman Burt II, 29 | Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32 |Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21 | Anthony Luis Laureano Disla, 25 | Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35 | Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez, 50 | Martin Benitez Torres, 33 | Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37 | Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26 | Amanda Alvear, 25 | Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35 | Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, 25 | Simon Adrian Carrillo Fernandez, 31 | Oscar A Aracena-Montero, 26 | Enrique L. Rios, Jr., 25 | Miguel Angel Honorato, 30 | Javier Jorge-Reyes, 40 | Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32 | Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19 | Cory James Connell, 21 | Juan P. Rivera Velazquez, 37 | Luis Daniel Conde, 39 | Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33 | Juan Chavez Martinez, 25 | Jerald Arthur Wright, 31 | Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25 | Tevin Eugene Crosby, 25 | Jonathan Antonio Camuy Vega, 24 | Jean Carlos Nieves Rodriguez, 27 | Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala, 33 | Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49 | Yilmary Rodriguez Solivan, 24 | Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32 | Angel L. Candelario-Padro, 28 | Frank Hernandez Escalante, 27 | Paul Terrell Henry, 41 |Antonio Davon Brown, 29 | Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz, 24 | Akyra Monet Murray, 18 | Geraldo A. Ortiz-Jimenez, 25

Britain is considering leaving the European Union. It is a  special time of turmoil and many people are affected by this whole vote directly. That includes the recent death of Member of Parliament Jo Cox , who was shot dead while campaigning for the United Kingdom to remain in the EU. One of my relatively long-time correspondents Lord Norton of Louth has blogged about her death and about some political aspects of it without blogging much about the BRexit vs Remainers debate itself.  His link should be available here however.   The lack of certainty this vote has created in the stock market and elsewhere is discussed here.  But this is an analysis mostly of how the markets will react if BRexit beats the Remainers. It is a bit more complicated to decide whether the current process itself is affecting financial markets and other economic indicators, perhaps some of that complexity can be recaptured here. The Lords of the Blog which has been a major influence on this blog has been notably quiet as of and up to this date of June 23 at noon on America’s great central river valley, deltas and Gulf Coast. It is also interesting that some have suggested that American Neo Nazis helped the killer of Jo Cox to arm himself. It is certainly true that Britain has rigid gun control and it also seems well documented that Cox’s killer had ties to America’s Neo Nazis. Lots of people will draw contradictory conclusions about what the all means but ties between the killer and American Neo Nazis are spelled out here. One possible belief, which I myself espouse is that when large and compelling ideals, plans and dreams for societies and nations become less successful then individual acts of violent and murderous  political expression abound and are more influential. The role of Neo Nazis in Europe’s politics is clearly on the rise and violence is likely to play a major role in their politics.  How does one deal with an act of violence? Lord Norton has been an influence on this blog for a long time and his post is relevant if only for that reason…

Lord Norton’s Post does bring up some interesting points about politics and political perception in Britain.

The appalling death of Jo Cox, the MP for Batley and Spen, generated considerable reflection on the role of an MP.   There was recognition that MPs are generally dedicated public servants.  Jo Cox was a remarkably able and dedicated Member.  She was one of many.  There has been a tendency to generalise from the unworthy few rather than the hardworking many.  MPs work long and unsocial hours and the demands of the job have got greater over time.  If there is one positive thing that may possibly come out of this tragedy (other than the amazing public response in donating to Jo Cox’s favoured charities) is a better public awareness of what MPs do.  It may provide some balance to the cynical and generally ill-informed view taken of MPs and the work they undertake.

 

Lord Norton has a compelling position from which to comment on the events shaping Britain at the moment as does Representative John Lewis and as do the major Presidential candidates. My own position is less to be envied but I have included my resume on the blogroll to provide blog readers with a concise summary of my experience and  other relevant information related to my life and work and availability for future opportunities. But Also and principally to give some context to my writing. I am able to mention there, and have it stay accessible, that I have accumulated the marks of a measurable education. These studies have included receiving  two degrees — Master of Arts, Louisiana State University, August 4, 1993. Cumulative G.P .A. 3.846 and Bachelor of Arts,  University of Southwestern Louisiana, ( now University of Louisiana at Lafayette), May 14, 1989. Cum Laude G.P. A.:  3.686. In addition, the resume lists some  distinctions acquired along the way.  These include the 1991-1993 Board of Regents Fellowship, 1989 Outstanding Graduate, Alumni Association Honors at Spring Commencement for then  USL,  being  the 1989 Outstanding Graduate of the College of Arts and Humanities and also the same  season being the 1989 Outstanding Graduate of the Department of English, USL. The Document recollects that in 1987  I was admitted to Phi Kappa Phi Honors Society and in 1985 recieved  Sophomore Class Award for a male student at the  Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio.  It was in 1990 as a memeber of the business community that I was recipient of the title of Honorary Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana. While a graduate student I received a 1992 LSU Research Grant to study at the Ekstrom Photographic Archives, University of Louisville in  Louisville, Kentucky. It also includes such data as the fact that in 1992 I was admitted to Mensa. Further that in 2012 I became a Grand Prize Winner Lord Norton’s Quiz on the official blog of the House of Lords.

Those distinctions do not mean more or less than they mean and they connect in ways not altogether clear with other parts of my life like the work I have done or have not done in various years.But today as i watched Macklemore and Ryan Lewis on the Today Show and was reminded of the role celebrity plays in getting a hearing in America I could not help comparing my blog to the popular songs and the comments associated with them that also influence policy.  I recently wrote about America’s national conversation.  That focused on journalism and violence but as we also consider legislative procedures, blogs and popular song we get a fuller picture.

This is one of those posts that only appears really in my blog. It does not really introduce all the main elements of my resume. it does not really resolve any questions related to Britain leaving the EU. It only adds these to discussions of American politics and enables a few readers  get a bit better grasp of how a few things fit together in our world.

 

 

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Fathers Day, Poverty, Harsh Reality & Sports

Posted on June 18, 2016 | Leave a comment

Last night I watched LeBron James lead the determined Cavaliers against the super professional Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors. The beloved King James who had seen his jersey burnt in Cleveland when he signed to play in Miami was not quite in the land of ordinary men. He was  crossing over a bit into legend on that moment.  It was Fathers Day and a lot of American Fathers (and other fathers too) are sports fans. It seems likely that for many families in Cleveland this was Fathers Day they are not likely to forget.  Of course for the Curry family and the fans of the Golden State Warriors it was a bitter disappointment. The moment one team and one man and one city flirted with legend was the moment that another story fell short the best regular season in NBA history ended with a hard fought  seven game finals but it did not end with the championship.

A moment of triumph for Cleveland

Competition is not the only value worth having and really is not the central value of my own life. But it is part of life for all of us and it is part of male identity. This Sunday Americans celebrated Fathers Day. I had an enjoyable time with my father.  I brought him gifts and we enjoyed drinks at the Riverfront restaurant in Abbeville and a beautiful meal that my mother had prepared. During this occasion most of the attention goes to the stories of fathers bringing up children in pretty good situations.  But fathering is done in many parts of the world that are far from ideal. The sense of struggle is almost endless for many people and many of them are fathers too. The Syrian refugees, the destitute in camps, homeless shelters,  and squatting in sites around the world — many of these are fathers as well.  This is one very compelling study about what is happening in the world.  It does not focus on the whole world but on one part of it very specifically, the world of a large group or class of Syrian refugees.  My Dad has spent a lot of time with those who were in trouble. We have lived and he has lived and visited regions where people were involved in the kinds of lingering and sporadic civil wars that were common in the twentieth century, places where mass migrations had strained local resources,  places recently devastated by hurricanes and places under various kinds of social change.

Being with him in some of those times  and places where the trouble and need which attracted us there were prevalent was not always easy. The path of a life in the missions was certainly not one without real challenges. The story of those challenges and the joys that go with them has been a story that has long been a part of my life itself — not just the events of the story but the telling and retelling of that story. Even the journalism I have made a little bit of a living doing from time to time and the fiction that has not yet paid any bills –even that is informed by the really extremely varied story of that life and those years especially spent together often dealing with crises.

News paper article about China
The novel I wrote online before many but never yet published receives paper form.

Crises shape the community, hardship shapes a community and depression shapes a community.  So does the fear of violence. Americans are subject to a considerable amount of fear of violence and there is not that much agreement about how to deal with it. The cultural hostility to a person achieving any kind of self reliance whatever can be very much manifest in groups of people that inhabit many people and intimidate the family oriented, hardworking and insightful people trying to prevent those neighborhoods from turning to living hells or remaining such. A country like ours that is so dotted with riots and violence and punctuates it life with so many bombings and mass shootings is not necessarily a place that will not be crippled by more emphasis on disarming the citizenry . The Obama administration has often been criticized  here and so have  those around him who want an unarmed lawful citizenry. They are criticized in large part because I believe that they do not know how profound the savagery, disorder and decay is in its effects in destroying the quality of life in this country.  Limiting the arms of besieged American beset with violence, chaos and resistance to public advancement on many sides will certainly increase this sense of a society where it is not safe to try to survive and thrive. Here is a story about these matter in terms of what American guns mean to maintaining a balance of terror. The bad guys will not be disarming much any time soon.

My Dad is a gun owner. He is not a big preacher of the value of an armed citizenry and in many rough places where we lived we could not keep weapons at home. In addition the radical nature of our involvement with those in need  required us to risk a level of vulnerability  — but my dad is, as I have always been, a man who knew and used guns and respected and enjoyed them.

My mother in front a Confederate monument in New Orleans reminds us of what complexity there is in violence and duty.
My father is a lifelong outdoorsman and that is a passion we have shared though for me like most good things it has just been in decline.
Our family has always hunted and fished though I do less now than I would wish

 

But the arts of shooting and killing like many other things have not been the only part of his life that we have shared. Family, ministry and other values and themes of life have really been much more important without undervaluing those things.  There have also been times visiting tourist sites, wealthy friends and relatives, living in neighborhoods near stable work and hanging out on the beach.

My 52 years celebrations…

 

But I think back on my life as life in which the moments victory in dark places and hard times mattered a lot. Compared to opening a new harbor facility, a new factory or a new large piece of permanent public infrastructure a lot of the victories our family shared were kind of fleeting and heard to define. Life the elated Cleveland fans who must go back to the problems that their city faces tomorrow. But Cleveland is building back in many ways over the last twenty years. Form the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, to the improving Browns, to American Splendor and  the story of King James and his knights of the round ball — Cleveland is a gritty place in a gritty state looking for and finding some real meaning and hope.

I never forget the connection between the Saints winning the Super Bowl and the devastation of Katrina and Rita. Things are far from perfect now but the Super Bowl did help to keep people who stayed in the struggle in the struggle. In America a lot of fathers watch sports and find a little hope in their own struggles from the struggles of sports. That happened to us when the Saints won it all.

Owner Benson lifts Lombardi Trophy
Tight End Jeremy Shockey Celebrates the Game’s Highest Achievement
Saints Quarterback Celebrates with his Son After Winning The Super Bowl

Whatever come in the coming year that is difficult and challenging I am sure tha watching the game last nigh after getting back from Dad’s will not be my favorite memory. I am not a huge NBA fan really. But I am also sure that it is a Father’s day even that has some meaning. It is a moment in time that many will treasure  as dads and with their dads.

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