Musings Of A New Southern Man

My first thoughts when I considered my subject here was that my considerations were preposterous. It seemed as if no link between die-hard Democrat Harry Truman and the pompous Donald Trump could be possible. Their politics are almost polar opposites, Truman being the ultimate liberal and Trump the reactionary right winger. Truman was a Missouri farm boy, Trump the heir to a New York real estate empire. Truman was humble, Trump arrogant. Truman is said to always look to find the best in humans, Trump shows he can find the worst whenever it is expedient. However, there are three attributes that make them twins in history, the least of which is that their names are very close in spelling. 1. Political savvy about the electorate. First, both Truman and Trump were expected to be routed on Election Day. Thomas Dewey was far ahead in the polls in the months leading up to the 1948 election. Truman's popularity at the end of World War II plummeted in the years after. He then launched wha

I didn't know James F. (Jimmy) Byrnes as anything other than a name on a high school in South Carolina. I guess a guy needs to do something of interest to have a school named after him. I didn't realize the impact of the man until I started reading David McCullough's brilliant biography Truman , about the man thrust into the presidency when Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945. By all rights, the man to take FDR's place should have been Jimmy Byrnes. The Democrats faced a huge decision in 1944 as FDR was readying his bid for a fourth term as president. The current vice president, Henry Wallace, was viewed as the wrong man to remain in the job. The party wanted a man with the right qualifications, someone with experience in working with Congress and who had a strong record in foreign relations. Jimmy Byrnes was that man. FDR said as much, and the Democrats entered the 1944 convention in Chicago with Byrnes the clear frontrunner to get the nod. The problem was that Byrn

I joined millions of viewers who watched all 45 minutes of Sen. Susan Collins' announcement Friday that she would vote to affirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court. She used facts to support her vote. She articulated points of his judicial background, shooting down widely- (and wildly-) held propaganda points put forth by those opposing Kavanaugh's nomination. She cited case law. She took a reasoned, detailed approach, which was refreshing given the chaotic atmosphere in the halls of the Senate. She stood up for what she believed, she stepped into the public limelight, and she gave a rational response to justify her vote and attack wrongs committed by those who wanted Kavanaugh ousted. She is being vilified by the far left, and she is a target of big-money efforts to unseat her. Her crime in their eyes? She had the audacity to come to a different conclusion than they had. One of the big wrongs committed (and I wrote about this in a blog entry) is th

I was ready to watch the 1:30 p.m. political show known as the committee vote to send Judge Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the full Senate. I figured it was a done deal. Final expected score: Republicans 11, Democrats at least one less depending on how many members opted to abstain. Funny thing happened on the way to that done deal. It was marvelous reality TV, much more enjoyable than Thursday's battle royal featuring testimony from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Kavanaugh. We can thank Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona for Friday's surprise. Flake had an attack of conscience, or maybe he read the political winds better than his allies, and requested an investigation to last no more than one week. The focus of the investigation will be the other people identified by Dr. Ford as being at the site of the alleged sexual abuse by Judge Kavanaugh, then a teenager at a D.C. area prep school. It was the wise request. Imagine that in Congress. A major force behind the move

It was riveting reality TV. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh made impressive appearances in today's congressional hearing. There are culprits in this story, but I'll get to that later. Let me set some ground rules in this story. This is not a case of women who are sexually abused against the system. Yes, there are numerous cases of abuse that go unreported for a number of reasons, and often the system is to blame. But this case is simply a matter of whether Judge Kavanaugh abused Dr. Ford when they were teenagers. All the other cases of abuse must be put to the side as we weigh the truth of today's testimony. (By the way, I know the powerful impact of sexual abuse because I dealt with that issue within my own house. My wife was abused as a teenager, and she opened up about that incident through therapy, just as Dr. Ford did.) Dr. Ford was more than a credible witness. She was calm and believable. She stood up against her own fears of going public a

I write today as I await the start of the Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh appearances before the congressional committee. There might be no other hearing in my life that I feel compelled to view. I will watch both major figures testify. So will millions of others. What will be more interesting to watch are the judgments of those viewers. I believe a vast majority of those people already have their minds made up as far as guilt or innocence on Kavanaugh's part. Why? Because we are a nation that is deeply divided to the point that truth rests on political leanings. The perception of events overpowers the reality of the situation. As The Rock Man says in Harry Nilsson's The Point: "You see what you want to see and hear what you want to hear." I will comment on the testimonies after they are finished, but for now I will concentrate on the deeply divided nation. To do that, I will use the public comments by two of my Facebook friends, both acquainta

The temperature today was 93 and the humidity was about 70 percent at midmorning. It's the kind of day they warn you about when you move to the South. Just bear up under the conditions, veteran Southerners told me. I bear up nicely, at least on my best days. What makes this return to the Southern sweatbox is that we had three days of absolutely beautiful weather before this latest blast hit. I mean, it was chamber of commerce weather. Temperatures were in the low 80s, nighttime lows went to the low 60s, and the humidity was less than 50 percent. That's as good as it gets in August. We have an attic fan that goes unused during a large part of the summer because the humidity is so taxing. That attic fan was on in the morning for those three glorious days. Cool air swept through open doors and windows. We basked in the beauty of the day. I know my old Colorado friends would be running for their dehumidifiers if the humidity hit 45 percent, but this weather and Colorado's hav

There is nothing particularly Southern in this post, although Southerners are as boxed in by this concept as folks from Up North or Out West. It regulates our existences. It marks where we are, have been, and will be. It might even determine who we are if we allow it that much power. Time. Deb and I have a calendar on a shelf in our great room. It has metal rectangles for every day, date, and month. We follow the passage of time in 24-hour increments. There is a minor ritual, usually in the early morning as one of us interrupts our coffee drinking, in which the proper metal rectangles are put in place. What happens when you do that daily ritual? The rush of time becomes apparent. The recent transition to August replaces the one for July, which takes the place of June, which seems as if it was only yesterday. 2018 becomes the latest little box in which we exist, just as 2017 is, and 1992, 1976, and so on. Time is no longer a tame friend but a relentless orderer of things, even a t

I'd heard about this Southern hospitality long before I moved here. I pictured folks with wide smiles and thick drawls wishing me a nice day. (To get the proper drawl, hold on to the vowel for a lot longer, so it's niiiiiice day.) It didn't take long to find out being helpful isn't a chamber of commerce rumor. My wife went to Chick-fil-A to get midday meals for all the movers hauling items for us when we arrived in South Carolina. That entailed handling a couple of large bags and a few large soft drinks. It was a difficult load to carry. She wasn't left to bear that burden alone. A teenager employed by the fast food palace stepped up and asked whether she needed help. He then carried much of the load, and finished with a nice "thank you" before hustling back inside. That isn't an isolated incident. My son posted a photo on Facebook recently that showed a Chick-fil-A employee with his head under the hood to help a patron who couldn't get his car s

I knew it was coming because the weather radar showed big areas of red and yellow nearby. That meant heavy rain (and possibly heavier rain) along with thunder and lightning. I walked out to our screen porch and pulled up a rocking chair so I could witness the show. It was tame when I arrived. The only sign of pending trouble was a darkening sky as thick clouds gathered. The actual storm started gently with a slight breeze that ruffled leaves on the stand of tall trees behind our home. I could imagine that breeze swaying palm trees on a tropical beach rather than sweet gums and poplars. That breeze turned into a solid wind. The bigger trees nearer our home simply had the upper branches moved, but the spindly young trees at the back of the lot started moving back and forth like a collection of drinking straws swaying to the music. The dark clouds huddled closer. The wind changed identity and became a small gale. The young trees were bending deeper toward the ground with each curren

The route to get to where we built our new home is Manse Jolly Road. I figured this Jolly fella was a former civic official or rich guy, the kind who usually have roads named after them. Turns out Jolly is one of those figures that reminds me that I am in a Confederate state that was bound and determined to split from those Yankees and form their own nation. Manson Jolly was a young man from Anderson who went off to fight for the South in the Civil War. So did five of his brothers. Manse was a member of the South Carolina cavalry and made it through the war. None of his brothers did. Four died on the battlefield and the fifth by other means. Manse returned to Anderson to find his family decimated by the horrors of war. To make matters worse, those Northerners were occupying his hometown. Times were tough for Southern families who routinely had whatever crops or animals they raised taken by the Union soldiers. Manse didn't take kindly to that and became a trained horse soldier ben

This wasn't supposed to happen this soon. Yes, my brother Steve had health problems for years. Nothing indicated that he was so close to the time of his passing. There were no messages or warnings. We were caught off-guard. I have spent considerable time weighing the impact. There is so much information and emotional baggage to weigh. I have found few answers, only more questions. I won't detail those here. The only certainty I have reached is this: Steve's death affects me most because he was of my generation, the first family member of the younger set to pass away. That brings the reality of mortality that much closer. I wrote in one of my novels of a man explaining why he made death such a major factor in his writing. (There is nothing autobiographical in this, by the way.) His point was that most death doesn't affect us much. We read or hear about deaths of many people by many means, but those deaths don't hurt us because we don't know.these people. The

Goodbye literary angle. Hello commentaries on daily life. Welcome to this son of eastern Oregon becoming a transplanted son of the Deep South, with intervening times in northern California wine country and the Front Range of Colorado. It's not as tough a transition as one might believe. I was getting a haircut a few weeks ago in my new hometown of Anderson, South Carolina, and I was wearing a T-shirt with a big yellow O on it. A young man in the chair as I waited my turn said, "Oh, you must be a fan of the Oregon Ducks." I hurried My  to correct him. "No, I am a Duck, an official graduate of the University of Oregon." He smiled and continued the conversation. "Being here must be a culture shock, this being the South and all." I had to correct him again. "I was raised in eastern Oregon, in an area where many people work in cherry orchards or on wheat ranches. It's not the Portlandia view of the state. People tend to be conservative, and they

Every author has a central focus in stories they write. Some love vampires or zombies. Others swoon for those caught in romantic dilemmas. Each has a delicious range of possibilities. None of those appeal to me. I am a former journalist, so it is a rational path I've traveled from the stories I've written or edited over the years to this: #PerilOnYourStreet I covered a story of multiple murders by a mother on her family members. I covered more auto accidents than I care to remember. I wrote about fires that threatened homes, relatives who threatened relatives, and bosses who threatened employees. Those had a common denominator. Each could have happened in your home or neighborhood. I write novels in which the time is now, and the place cis just down the street from where you live. Even my lone self-published novel has that trait. One Summer Season: A Young Man's Brutal Baptism Into Love And Baseball had its genesis in my coverage of Class A, short-season baseball whil

Moving into a new home is never easy. It ruins routines, adds pressure that has no business being so dominant in my life, and disrupts any social activity. Maybe most damaging of all is that it trashes an author's schedule. Revisions on my novel sat idle for slightly more than a month. I prefer to write on my PC, but I was limited to my laptop. I thought the time between writing sessions would be much shorter, but weather (too many nights of below-freezing temperatures) delayed our move-in date because it delayed the installation of our driveway. No driveway, no installation of carpeting. No carpeting, no final inspection from the county. No inspection, no chance to do our move-in. Longtime Anderson residents said they never saw such a protracted cold spell. The weather finally broke, but everyone with a delayed concrete project demanded action. The first warmer day went by without a new driveway. Our builder finagled a way to get on the second-day pouring schedule, but we had to