Sprawl-Mart

Am I the only one in my town not happy about the new Wal-Mart? Seems like it. Others will fill up the fat parking lot, climaxing their pants as the big fat doors of consumerist-anger open to reveal Asian sweatshop merchandise and a clusterfuck of aisles.

But I'm staying away.

So they're they are at the edge of town. Hope the farm fields are safe. This town has done a lot in recent years to get its soul back -- beautification and business revitalization efforts. Hope it all doesn't go down the drainhole now. Wal-Mart has a tendency to turn downtowns into graveyard skeletons.

Oh but Wal-Mart is such a driver of the community economy, the asshat community boosters say. With the giddy little press releases they drop on the city newspaper office like turds falling lovingly into their toilets of pearl. The stressed out reporter's going to have another cigarette and instead of rewriting a damn press release, make a few phone calls and ask a few pointed questions to salvage his soul and add some bite to this happy, shiny whitewash.

But what the hell is he supposed to do? His big boss, the publisher, sits on the rotary board with two or three of these porter house fucks. Last week, they went down the revitalized town hanging yellow ribbons to welcome back the son of the banker, just acquitted in the rape trial. These people have nothing if not taste, class and good old Sunday morning morals.

In many communities, the babbits have used all the powers that be of press and social shitting media to push for a sales tax (the most oppressive kind of tax there is) to pay for a Wal-Mart. I once read about a city that imposed eminent domain to build a Wal-Mart. The Walton corporation in cahoots with the city hired a team of double talking lawyers to get around all the Constitutional arguments. All this before the store got built and brought anti-climactic effects upon the city before screwing them.

Oh my God, the sex will be great! No, not so much.

The community boosters will extol the benevolence
of Mr. Wal-Mart, this American enterprise generously bringing jobs to the community. Factory shut down. People lost their retirement, insurance and life savings. That's okay. They can get minimum wage jobs at Wal-Mart. Mr. I-Love-This-Community is prostrate at their feet. Why not, he won't work there.

When Mr. and Mrs. Community Booster are sitting at the one swanky restaurant in town, gossiping over a three-hour lunch, I'd like to ask them how they would like working in a place where their bathroom breaks are monitored. How would they like it if they were reprimanded for socializing with their co-workers and committing "time theft?"

Hatred, like seeds, budded early and grew like a mushroom cloud. Every evening, my mom came home in a foul mood, still wearing her Wal-Mart "smock" as she fixed dinner over the stove.

It wasn't until around eighth or ninth grade that I started feeling embarrassed that my mom didn't have some "important" job like all the Important Popular kids at school, sitting at their own damn lunch table. As if your parents didn't pay a fucking dime to support public schools. Why couldn't my mom be a stockbroker or realtor or at least work in a bank? Why couldn't she have a college education?

I mean, jeez, my mom could be such a bitch, driving us to school in the morning. (Please God, don't let my friends see me riding with my mom.)

"I'm gonna have a better job than Wal-Mart when I grow up."

(Words I would later eat.)

"Good Jeff, I hope you do."

I'm 21, in college, struggling. Said I'd never do it, but I get hired at Wal-Mart. They suck on struggling people like Dracula thrives on human blood. Orientation time.

"Wal-Mart doesn't believe in unions," the blond assistant manager says.

Mind drifts back. Something Mom once said.

"My dad worked in construction and if the job wasn't backed by a union, he would not even think of going there."

I'm damn proud of my family heritage.

Fat blond woman. Feminine-rich voice sweetly dissing those skanky unions that only want your dues. (We'll take care of you.) You and me are gonna have a problem, I think to myself.

"I didn't raise you kids to be ass kissers," Mom told me.

Sometimes I wish she would have. Probably would've made my life a lot easier, being a yes man, going with the flow and not rattling any cages. No questioning of authority. I don't know. My wife has to answer to a board of directors in her job, running a non-profit agency.

"Sometimes I wish I just worked at Wal-Mart," she said.

Years later, I'm a reporter in some piss Oklahoma town, writing for some paper run by some fat publisher-lackey for the corporation who's on the rotary club. Former Top Gun naval pilot turned motivational speaker and "educational speaker" addresses an audience one evening at the high school. Wanna know what's 'gonna happen to your life if you don't get a four year degree? he asks.

(Speaker voice initiated) "Attention K-Mart shoppers, we have a blue light special in the shoe aisle."

A woman in the audience, sitting by the store manager, raises her hand and tells Mr. Joe College, "I work at Wal-Mart, I'm proud of my job and I'm not stupid."

A multitude of sins committed in life and I just revealed to you a major one. Can't tell you how many times I've begged for God's forgiveness.

Mom has dementia now. Remember that Oasis song from the '90s? The lyrics, There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don't know how.

So yeah, I have a college education. But it doesn't mean much to me anymore. Just a piece of paper, only made special because I dedicate it to ---

Victoria Lou McElroy Guy.

Super guys

I want to briefly reflect on a friend who passed. This is kind of along the lines of my previous published column. Last Monday, while learning about the death of a national hero, my wife informed me that a local hero from my hometown had died.

There's a family owned pharmacy in my hometown and that's where I get all my drugs. I do not use Wal-Mart, Walgreens and I darn sure don't use Kober Brothers supermarket pharmacy. Those stuck-up jerks have been rude to my wife and I one to many times.

So in my hometown of Jett, Kan., it's always been Cooper Drug for me. Cletus owned the store from 1956 until around 10 years ago when his son Brett took over. Still, although long retired, Cletus showed up for work about every day. He kept his pharmacist license current and displayed on the wall. He continued to fill prescriptions and give consultations. I think he liked wearing that white pharmacist jacket. Working right to the end at 83-years-old. I'd say that's a good way to go.

The funeral took place last Friday at St. James Catholic Church. My cousin, Scott, a friend of Brett's arrived in town for the memorial and was quickly back on the road to preach Sunday at the church he pastors in South Dakota. Several of Brett's friends came to lend support. He's a super guy with a super family and he brings out the best in people.

Like his old man.

Let's be good to each other. Have a great week.

Community driver

Sunday evening, time continues unforgiving as I retreat to the start of the week now ending. History is one of my favorite things. The past is something we place into perspective and context in walking roughshod and forward.

Listening to NPR through endless driving -- that's my ever present lifeline behind the world. Silent, anonymous, yet, like the sounds of BBC radio in pre-dawn hours, it affords me a connection to the world more profound than any social media.

I remember my old job with the nursing home in the dinky town of Potwater, Kan. and driving elderly residents to appointments at places like the Robert J. Dole VA Medical Center in Wichita. Mr. Ferris was the old man I most identified with. He and I had a connection. He liked stuff like NPR and Newsweek magazine, same as me. A lifetime ago, he was a young naval ensign on a ship bound for the Pacific.

Last Monday, on NPR it was reported -- and would be throughout the week -- that long-time U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey died. The senator's office reported that Lautenberg was "the last remaining World War II veteran serving in the Senate." http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/06/03/188291880/sen-frank-lautenberg-dies http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-06-03/local/39702959_1_smoking-ban-domestic-violence-lautenberg http://articles.philly.com/2013-06-05/news/39766836_1_u-s-senate-gun-laws-democratic-senator

I'm always sad to see a good era end. Around eight years ago, I was in a college classroom, preparing to pursue a master's in history, and talking about how only a handful of World War I veterans remained on this earth and how sad it would be when the last one died. Later, the last man did die and one of my favorite bands -- Radiohead -- recorded a tribute.

Now, the last World War II veteran to serve in the U.S. Senate.

One of my greatest thrills as a young newspaper reporter back in the '90s was interviewing the old men around town who had served in World War II -- either in Europe or the Pacific.

One old guy, Mr. Epsom -- once a 19-year-old preparing for the invasion of Japan when it was announced that a bomb had been dropped over Hiroshima -- agreed to meet me at his stomping ground at the VFW near the south edge of that dusty Oklahoma town. He ordered a Bourbon Cherry Seltzer for himself and bought me a Coke as if I were a little boy. (I was around 25, but looked about 16.)

Mr. Epsom talked about how the Depression era farm kid from the country and street fighter from the city had gone off to war. He'd settled down, managed a printing plant in town and did things like coach his kids baseball teams and run for school board.

All this brings me back to Mr. Lautenberg, one of those street kids who went on to a career and public service.

Born in Patterson, N.J., the son of poor Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants, Lautenberg had a hardscrabble childhood and "grew up feisty and strong-willed, rarely shying away from a good scrape," the New Jersey Star-Ledger reported.

Lautenberg took care of his mother and sister after his father died, working, while finishing high school. At age 18, he joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps. and was stationed in Europe. Like so many other young men returning from the war, he went to college on the GI Bill. In 1949, his degree in economics was handed to him by Dwight D. Eisenhower, then president of Columbia University.

Years later, as a successful businessman, he landed a spot on Nixon's "enemies list" after donating $90,000 to the Great Plains Populist George McGovern in his '72 presidential bid.

Lautenberg launched his senate career in 1982. He never chaired a committee, nor sought the limelight, but worked hard behind the scenes, pushing for things like mass transit, highway and aviation safety, championed organized labor and increasing veterans' benefits.

I learned this past week that Lautenberg is the guy to
thank for clean air on domestic flights. A former two-pack-a-day smoker, he authored legislation that banned smoking on commercial domestic flights. And this was back in the '80s when wonderful bodies like Phillip Morris and R.J. Reynolds had a hold on Congress similar to what the NRA has today.

Oh he was progressive on gun control as well. He authored a bill that would prevent domestic abuse violators from owning firearms. In 2003, he voted against invading Iraq.

Isn't it funny how veterans are usually the most opposed to sending young soldiers into combat, while neocons like Dick Cheney, who never wore a uniform in his life, tend to be the most vociferous at beating the war drum?

Sacrifice and public service. Those are the qualities that personified the men and women of The Greatest Generation.

Just yesterday, Democratic U.S. Rep. John Dingell, Jr., of Michigan, became the longest serving member of Congress -- 57 years, five months, 25 days. This 86-year-old started serving in 1955, somewhere around the time Bill Haley and the Comets were climbing the charts with Rock Around the Clock. Dingell took over the Congressional seat his father had occupied since 1933. http://www.npr.org/2013/06/06/189270809/michigan-congressman-to-become-longest-serving-member

Among that generation, I'm sure there have been many conscientious servants on both sides of the aisle. Dingell told npr that the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were his proudest moments in public life and rightly so. That legislation represented the pinnacle of bipartiasianship and social amelioration in the political arena.

You probably never heard of Lautenberg or Dingell, but I bet you've heard of Michele  Bachmann, the arch-conservative representative from Minnesota who made news by announcing she wasn't seeking another term. She never effected squat for legislation, yet she became a celebrity, manipulating that same media she stonewalled. She represents the anti-public service view.

Nowadays, we have people who would have you believe compromise and government are dirty words. Really? When you were 3-years-old and jostling for toys in the pre-school playroom, didn't you have to learn compromise? And government? Doesn't someone have to build the roads and make sure our schools and workplaces are safe and free of disease?

Is government not about meeting the needs of society? Didn't the generation that had to ration coffee, metal and sugar during World War II know something about that? Heck, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, Ike Eisenhower, came back to America, got elected President and built the interstate highways.

That's what government does: public service. It's only been that way since ancient freakin' Mesopotamia. I guess government-haters think holding office is about self-service or serving the rich.

But that's not the world our grandparents knew.

A few months back, my old newspaper pal Mike, now a city council member, commented on the flower bed at a local park. A local civic organization has maintained those brilliant-colored flowers for years, but most of the people in that group are in their 80s and above.

"They're gonna die off and this younger generation isn't into community activity," Mike said.

U.N. -- Think globally, act locally.

Okay, so things are different now. We have facebook. But doesn't facebook update me about volunteer clean-up dates for a group that's building a bike path/walking trail between my town and another in the county? Can I and others use modern life to activate good old fashioned community spirit?

Let's hope so. Going into this next week, I'm itching to fight the good fight.

Oh, and I think I'll tell my friend Allen that I'm available to volunteer at the World War II Museum.

Family values for everyone

It's a heart warming ad for a cereal noted by physicians as "heart healthy." Happy two-parent home and an adorable little girl who loves her mommy and daddy. That's family values personified. The American Dream.

We're all aware by now of the blowback from the Cheerios ad featuring an interracial couple and their daughter. I learned of it when my old newspaper friend Tod posted something about the controversy on facebook. Controversy? The word seems so misplaced in this context. How is it that the most innocuous things can become "controversial issues"?

Really? A mixed race couple controversial? In 2013? Jeez, it's only been a good 150 years since Lincoln released the Emancipation Proclamation. It's a fundamental right -- the idea that individuals of any race who connect with each other and fall in love can legally marry. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed this right in its landmark 1967 decision in the case, Loving v. Virginia.

Interesting. A human right that was affirmed by law in the year of the "summer of love" is a "controversial issue" in the age of YouTube. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/06/03/cheerios-general-mills-commercial-mixed-race-ad/2384587/ http://www.pri.org/stories/after-racist-backlash-cheerios-ad-draws-support-for-interracial-couples.html

This issue has been hanging around for the past week, and it's significant that I'm writing about it on Sunday, the day people in America and throughout the world go to houses of worship.

Fifty years ago -- in 1963 -- Martin Luther King, Jr. called Sunday at 11 a.m.  “the most segregated hour in this nation.” http://www.godandculture.com/blog/sunday-at-11-the-most-segregated-hour-in-this-nation http://thinkchristian.net/mlk-and-defying-the-most-segregated-hour  There is still, sadly, a measure of truth in that statement, but you know something? I've seen a few miracles in my lifetime.

Nothing like walking on water or turning water into wine, just people coming together. I've seen Hispanic, Asian-American and African-Americans in predominantly white churches. I was in a predominantly black church in downtown Wichita, conducting some business for my job when I started reading the bulletins on the wall because that's what a guy like me does -- reads stuff -- and this affable young lady engaged me in conversation.

"You're welcome to visit here anytime," she told me.

Something supernatural started happening around 50 years ago. A parting of the waters cleared way for a path where everyone was welcome. White Baptist ministers, Catholic priests and Jewish rabbis joined King and the Civil Rights marchers and those images are forever enshrined in evocative black and white photographs. King even became buddies with Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

Then there was another response to integration in which the good, white church goin' people pulled their children out of those evil public schools and placed them in good Christian private schools where they didn't allow no mixin' of the races and what God had ordained.

I've heard such rumblings among my own people. Black people were invented when Noah put a curse on his son Shem. Or maybe it was earlier. When God put a mark on Cain's forehead after killing his brother Abel. There you go, the entire black race was descended from a murderer.

Interracial marriage? How sinful. How contradictory to nature. Even the birds of the air knew to only congregate among their own kind. And the harm to the children? Their skin would be a deformed zebra-like mixture of black and white.

But look at the little girl in that ad. She's a doll. Completely adorable. The kid appears confident and well adjusted as if she's the product of nurturing parents. She looks like the kind of girl who might play with my daughter. This child and her parents look like families within my -- and my wife's --- own extended family.

That's right. Younger people within our families didn't buy into that interracial phobia propagated by the older generations. But then the older people saw these cute, typical kids with their parents --- everyday couples feeling the joy and frustration of living with their children and each other. Not so bad, the old folks decided. I think they forgot about their previous views.

What's happened in our family is a microcosm of
what's happened in America. It's an accepted mainstream view that families may be a mixture of white, black, brown, yellow...whatever. I know conservative evangelicals who are of mixed race families.

Interracial family-phobia is a long discredited notion. Who buys into that ancient horse and buggy manure anymore? I hadn't heard anyone dissing interracial marriage in 20 years.

Until recently.

You see, while the majority of Americans have moved on, a loud minority of constipated, christo-facist neanderthals are blocking up America. Some of these philistines even hold keys to power. These days, they're busy beating up safe targets like gays, Muslims, Hispanics...You don't see them bringing out the ol' Jim Crow dogs and crosses until something happens so big that they can't keep it in the closet anymore.

Something like the election of a bi-racial president or the depiction of a bi-racial family in a cereal ad.

By the way, dissent is a beautiful thing in America -- when expressed in a healthy fashion. Criticizing the President does not make one a racist. Bringing up his race in the process of criticizing him is racist. For example, the sign shown below is offensive and racist.

"I'm not racist, I hate his white half too."



There they go again. That's the kind of mentality that blows a gasket over a harmless Cheerios commercial.

This -- I don't know -- pseudo-religious, pseudo-scientific, pseudo-political mindset is an imposition laid down by people who preach Family Values. They're all about family values until that family includes, say -- a Catholic mother and Muslim father or  two mothers. They place no value in such "non-traditional" families. You don't want those people coaching their daughter's soccer team or serving with PTO at their son's school.

The Hate Crowd will always be around. They were around in the days of segregation and they'll be here in 2030 when we're no longer a predominantly white nation. Racists will not be able to curb the inexorable wave of diverse people coming together for the better, yet my hat's off to the hate mongers. If not for them, I would never have never been aware of this beautiful ad.

I predict this Cheerios ad will become a classic like the Mean Joe Greene Coke ad and Mikey with Life cereal. Pretty ingenious stuff, like something Don Draper and his team would create.

Laying the smackdown on sexism

 

I'm late in writing about this, later than a missed period. Who cares? As I gather my thoughts, there are people way late in finding their way to the 21st century. (It's like their theme music could be that hippie Blind Faith song about looking through the grass and mud of Woodstock for a place to pee -- "and I am wasted and I can't find my way home.")

 

No, these dinosaurs are late and they're totally on a male period meltdown that the world no longer fits their fetishized fantasy world. You know that world? The place where it's 1950s White Male America all day, every day.

 

Who would have ever guessed that a couple of cock-a-hoop Fox "News" heads would get the clocks cleaned and have their balls handed to them by a woman?

 

It's not what I was expecting when I heard the promo on faux. I don't usually watch that network and neither it, nor CNN or MSNBC, are accessible or allowed on my home TV. But there I was at Firestone for a routine oil change (a female friend of mine changes her own oil) and the TV was on Fox. Hey, it's all you can get at the garage, the dentist's office lobby, the YMCA big screens...

 

The Fox broadcaster -- I would later learn her name to be Megyn Kelly -- appeared incensed over the Obama Justice Dept.'s secret seizure of AP reporter phone records. Since she was on Fox, however, I was skeptical over whether her umbrage stemmed from her role as a journalist or that the transgressions occurred under Obama's watch.

 

When I heard what the next story was going to be, it illicited the same kind of eye rolling from me as Ricky Martin's "announcement" that he was gay. (Really? You don't say?) A recent Pew study shows that women are the sole or primary bread winners in 40 percent of American households. You can guess how the good ol' fetishizing Fox boys took that. Like a song from REM's 1987 Document album. (Singing) "It's the end of the world as we know it."

 

 

"Watch society dissolve around us." "It can undermine our social order." It's "anti-science." "It undermines our social order."

 

That's what the men said.

 

I had no reason not to believe the female anchor would follow these misogynists lock, stock and barrel. Yeah, she was going to parrot the Fox party line. Doesn't everybody there hate feminists, gays and lesbians, liberals, immigrants, Muslims, evolutionists...I took it for granted that none of those talking heads had the gonads to upset the Fox applecart.

 

Sure I knew what was going to happen. My car was ready. I swiped my card, the cashier handed me my keys and I was on my way.

 

Much later I found out.

"Who died and appointed you scientist in chief?" Those were anchor Megyn Kelly's first words for commentator Erick Erickson. 

 

A conservative blogger, Erickson had recently written a piece, suggesting that unless children will be harmed if they are not raised by heterosexual couples with the man as the primary breadwinner and woman as the primary nurturer. http://www.redstate.com/2013/05/30/the-truth-may-hurt-but-is-not-mean/

 

"I didn't like what you wrote one bit and I do think you are judging people," Kelly told him.

 

She called Erickson on his crackpot scientific ideas about how a female breadwinner was antiethical to biology and how children were in for harm if raised by anyone but male and female parents in traditional gender roles. She cited a 50-year study by the American Psychological Association refuting his antiquated ideas. But she went further and this is the where I was totally floored.

 

Kelly defended happily married same-sex couples, suggesting that their children are just as well off -- or no worse off -- than children of opposite sex parents. She went futher.

 

According to Erickson's psuedo-science, children of working mothers or homosexual parents are looking at harm. Kelly equated such outmoded ideas with long-repudiated, but once conventional American notions that children of mixed-race couples would be inferior.

 

"Tell that to Barack Obama."

 

What?

 

This was the intelligent, objective voice of someone who may or may not personally agree with Obama's policies, yet, nonetheless recognizes that he is a professional who has met with success in life. And he's the product of a black father and white mother. 

 

How often do you come upon such impartiality on Fox? 

 

Kelly's other guest was Lou Dobbs.  The previous night, Erickson had been a guest on Dobbs's show and they had spewed their nonsense around like two ol' boys with their cocks in the wind. But after the spanking Erickson got from Kelly, Dobbs started distancing himself from his old buddy.

 

Oh he still held to his misogynist beliefs. He just did a round dance around it with circumlocution. But Kelly kept hammering into him and wouldn't let him get away with changing the subject.

 

It was a thrill to watch. I've learned this isn't the first time Kelly has called bullshit on her Fox colleagues. When Karl Rove disputed the figures of Fox's own number crunchers, showing Obama won re-election, Kelly asked him, "Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better? Or is this real?"

   

 

 



My wife, Maria, is tough like that. Marrying her was
by far the luckiest break of my life. She's smarter than me, much more organized and professional, and I'm not threatened. It's a good legacy she's leaving for our daughter, as well as our son.

And I've been around strong, smart women all my life -- my mother, grandmothers, step-mother, colleagues, mother-in-law, various mentors.

As a white straight male, I'm not threatened by blacks, browns, gays, lesbians, Muslims, Jews, atheists or whatever. Good luck to everybody. I believe in what the late author Stephen Covey called the "abundance mentality." There's enough for all of us. We can all be successful.

But going back to that interview, man, it totally rocked seeing such a show of balls  --- no, ovaries laying the smackdown on a couple of dicks.

Okay, what the hell. One last thing. I want to show this video. This song became an anthem of the early '70s womens' movement, but it really has a human ethos that bridges gender.

Here she is, the original pop diva -- Dusty Springfield.

Friendships made

Sunday morning at church. First service and I was alone with my coffee, trying to stay awake when Pastor Laurie, sprightly as ever, gave her cell number and invited anyone who wanted to help with tornado clean-up in Oklahoma City to call her.

My wife, Maria, and son, Max, had gone with Laurie, her son, Nate, and others to deliver supplies to a church in Oklahoma two days earlier, and I felt I should go as well.

I attended both first and second service Sunday because I'd been there since 7:30 a.m., helping in the kitchen. I'd offered to volunteer there because I figured it would give me easy access to the biscuits and gravy and donuts. Also, it would give me a chance to know people better and make new friends.

Debbie, a fiftyish woman runs the kitchen, for example. She helped cook for people in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She also volunteered in Greensburg, Kan. after that town was hit by a tornado two years later.

Her husband, Dave, was also helping in the kitchen. A blunt, tough guy with a husky build and thick Okie accent, Dave did whatever Debbie told him was needed in the kitchen. He was a pretty cool guy.

Making friendships

A little after 6:30 a.m. Monday, Memorial Day, I drove by Brenda's house. (Maria had sent me a text with the address.) She hopped in my car, carrying a backpack with a change of clothes if needed, a first aid kit and steel-toed boots. Oklahoma City wouldn't be Brenda's first disaster. She talked at length about her volunteer work and training with the county emergency preparedness department -- helping to direct traffic and learning how to spot guns and other weapons; classes in storm spotting, ham radio, hazmat and a slough of others.

"Sounds like the whole thing could be a career for you," I said.

"No, just a hobby," she replied.

We were the first ones to pull in to the church parking lot, arriving at roughly 10 minutes 'til 7 a.m. Next Paul arrived with his son Nate. Laurie stayed home to watch the two pre-school aged foster children she and Paul are caring for.

Dave drove up, followed by a woman and her look-alike teenage daughter. I had seen them around church, but didn't really know them. The woman introduced herself as Phyllis. The girl's name was Makena. She was 15-year-old gearing up for her sophomore year of high school -- and driving.

Our group of nine split into two vehicles. I rode in the SUV,
driven by Phyllis's boyfriend, Rory. Makena and I sat in back.

"What 'ya readin'?" she asked me after we'd gone a few miles past the toll booth. I pulled the front flap over to reveal the cover portrait of a fat Henry VIII. I told her it was a book about the Tudor Dynasty.

"Sounds like something I'd have to read for school," she said.

"It may sound boring and academic, but it's really pretty interesting," I said. "They had a lot of the same political manipulations and backstabbing we have today."

Her bold eyes got bigger, lips taking an intent form as her face revealed new interest.

"But The Church was really involved in government back then," I continued. "So you had a lot of corruption in both religion and politics. It wasn't uncommon for people to get burned at the stake."

Later I asked Makena what she was reading on her Kindle.

"Some vampire romance," she said, adding that she'd watched the Twilight movies. "They were dumb. I didn't really like them, but I watched anyway."

This girl would fly through my book on the Tudor Dynasty. She'll fly through high school with her consistent spot on the honor roll and receive scholarships, possibly for dance. She's on the Jett High School Dance Team, goes for private lessons at some studio in Wichita and her future is brighter than a row of halogen lights. I'm happy for her.

'I feel like a milionaire'

The neighborhood was destroyed. Not a house was left standing. Trees were cut off at the branches and trunks. Cars were twisted. Bricks and boards that once held houses in place were now lost in the rubble strewn about the ground.

We grabbed shovels and wheelbarrows and collected the debris into piles by the street, from where large dump trucks will haul them off later. My contribution to this enterprise seemed minimal.

Here I was, only there for a few hours of the day. Didn't know if I'd be back. Meanwhile the clean-up and rebuilding was going to take months, maybe over a year to complete. I felt guilty about checking my watch and wondering when we were going to leave. Working alongside us, shoveling out the remnants of their fallen house, there was a family that would be here for the long haul.

Ramon and Lara had lived in the house for around 20 years. Their three daughters -- who looked to be between late high school and early college age -- had grown up in the home. All of them were outside working. This was a family -- a close-knit group, held together by grace and dignity.

Not that they weren't sad about their house. "It was pretty awesome," one of the girls said, while clearing trash from what used to be her bedroom.

"It reminded me of the Foreman house from That '70s Show," one of the other girls said.

They were Hispanic, and while the parents struggled some with their English, their daughters were obviously Americanized. Wet, discolored prom pictures and college course syllabuses on the ground revealed the active, American, growing up lives these young women were living.

After three to four hours of work, we stood in a circle, holding hands while Paul said a prayer.

Lord, we thank you for this family and the way they have inspired us.

They must be Catholic. One of the girls, I noticed, made the sign of the cross after the prayer. I love that. Paul was raised Catholic back in New York where he grew up. He knows that culture well.

We all connected with one other. It feels like friendships were made.

I feel like a millionaire, Ramon said.

Pastor Laurie, Maria, Max and others before leaving for OKC.

A vote for equality

My son attends scout meetings in the basement of the Methodist Church, a stately 85-year-old building at the corner of 4th and Main streets in the bright little town of Rushing Waters, Kan. (pop. 900). Next week, he'll "cross over" from cub to Boy Scout.

I love watching my boy, Max, grow and have fun as he works on projects like building a tool box, carving his initials into a leather wallet, and of course, designing his Pinewood Derby car. I'm especially proud that my son belongs to an association that instills values in young boys.

Here is the Scout Law, quoted from Max's Cub Scout/Webelo handbook: "A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent."

I try to impress upon Max that those aren't just empty words. They mean something. For me, they especially ring true in light of the resolution recently voted in by Boy Scouts of America:

No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.

I expected the BSA would lift its ban on gay youth someday. I didn't expect it to come this soon, however. But with the Supreme Court deliberating over gay marriage, gay couples increasingly adopting children and news reports of gay teens being bullied and commiting suicide, the issue's time has come.

For the most part, I was confident that the council in Grapevine, Texas (a suburb of Dallas) would do the right thing in its voting. Still, I had some trepidation. How much sway did the conservative element have over BSA? I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard on my car radio that the BSA voted to end this antiquated 103-year-old ban. http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/23/us/boy-scouts-sexual-orientation http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/23/18447459-boy-scouts-vote-to-lift-ban-on-gay-youth?lite

It gives me better peace of mind, knowing that my son's personal enrichment and character are being shaped by an organization that's come out against discrimination and lives up to the values it espouses.

A friend from work is gay. I asked this man if he would buy some popcorn my son was selling for a cub scout fundraiser. This guy could've went on some bitter diatribe about how scouts are a prejudiced organization and all. Instead, he ordered popcorn and said, "Oh yeah, you get to go hiking, learn to tie knots and do a lot of neat things in scouts."

For years, this guy has been ordering boy scout stuff and girl scout cookies from people in the office. How could I ever look this guy in the face again and ask him to support an organization if it discriminates against people like him?

To some degree it still does. The BSA only voted on whether to admit gay youth, not on lifting its ban on gay scout leaders. But that's coming. Jennifer Tyrrell, an Ohio mother who was dismissed as a den leader in 2012 because she's lesbian, has expressed confidence that the ban on LGBT adults in leadership positions will be discontinued.

Of course what people like Tyrrell and myself consider to be a good thing, others view with sadness and great disappointment. They act like a funeral's taking place. Opposition groups have formed from within individual scout troops and disgruntled scout leaders and their children are talking about taking their money and support somewhere else and starting their own groups.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said he is "very disappointed" with the BSA's vote. Naturally, he is. Perry would like for Texas to seccede from the United States, wave confederate flags and live under Christian sharia.

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, has bemoaned this decision as the end of the scouts' "legacy of producing great leaders." You may have seen Perkins on Sunday morning news-talk shows, feigning some guise of legitimacy, but that ignores the charges that he launched his right-wing organization with help from former KKK grand wizard David Duke. Oh, and he's also spoken before the Louisiana Council of Concerned Citizens -- an organization that expresses in its mission statement, opposition to "all efforts to mix the races of mankind." http://cofcc.org/introduction/statement-of-principles/ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/picture-worth-thousand-memories http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2011/03/reminder-tony-perkins-is-racist.html

BSA has given in to "moral compromise," Perkins says. I guess the separatists could bury their heads in cotton and play to their antebellum fantasies. If their oppostion to homosexuality is so great that they'll morally compromise their souls and join hands with a KKK sympathizer, that's their deal.

That's their mindset. When the Supreme Court ruled segregation based on race to be unacceptable and the federal government enforced the Constitution, many public schools in the South suffered from white flight. Several private "christian schools" opened up as a way of circumventing racial integration laws. I'm sure they felt their values were under attack. There were public schools in the South that actually closed their doors and denied an education to all children so they wouldn't have to offer equal rights to African-Americans.

Remember a few years ago when a Mississippi high school chose to cancel prom and deny a fun time for all its students, rather than admit a young woman and her girlfriend to the dance? http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-10-noprom_N.htm?csp=34

The prejudice of these people outweighs any concern they purport to have for children. By contrast, the BSA council's winning vote was cast with the best interest of children in mind. Wayne Perry, BSA president, said as much in an op-ed piece for USA Today,  urging the council to adopt the resolution allowing gay youth in the organization.
  http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/05/22/boy-scouts-president-let-in-gay-boys/2351907/

"Our vision is to serve every kid and give them a place where they grow up and feel protected," Perry told a news conference. No matter what one may think of homosexuality "our view is that kids are better off in scouting.

 "It was never our intent to prevent young people from being part of this organization."

I'm proud of my boy and all he's accomplished and has yet to accomplish in scouting. I'm proud to be a scout parent, and I'm happy that the enriching, eddifying opportunities offered through the Boy Scouts will be open to all boys.

This decision is neither an endorsement nor a condemnation of homosexuality. It's about keeping the window of opportunity open for our youth. As for people who say they're worried about the next step, accepting gay scout leaders, I want to allay your fears.

First, being gay does not make one a pedophile. Second, Boy Scouts take great proactive steps to prevent even the appearance of impropriety. Take it from someone who has gone on scouting trips. No other child but my son is allowed to sleep in my tent, and I cannot allow another child inside my car unless the scout leaders have permission, written or verbal, from that child's parent.

Yes, scouting, like all other youth activities, has been hit by predators. Unfortunately, that's the world we live in. But the inclusion of gay scout leaders is no more a safety risk than having straight adults look after children. Gay is not synonymous with pedophile. But if you're a parent with concerns, I say volunteer and go with your child to scouting events.

I don't think the organization will suffer at all from this decision. It may even attract more recruits.  No, it's not caving in to "pop culture" as the right-wingers claim. Parents and youth within scouting largely promoted reform. The decision at the top level, favoring inclusion came from within the grassroots of the organization.

A world that respects people and diversity -- that's what I want for my kids. Some thirty years from now when they're around the age I am now, a person's sexuality will be a non-issue. I applaud the Boy Scouts of America for staying true to its values and preserving the ideal of equality that's been in the American bloodstream from the beginning.

Manzarek

Goodbye, my friend. Hope you're in deep conversation now with Jim. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6353302

To my fellow blogger, friend & amateur rock historian, I say Jason it's past time, Man. We gotta go out and have that beer together. http://jasontheemperor.blogspot.com/ Communion, you might say.

Prayers for Oklahoma

In the 3 p.m. hour Sunday, I picked up Mom at her house and took her to McDonald's for a late lunch. The clouds were rolling up and close, thick and dark in the sky. Mom was a bit antsy.

"Let's just order something and I'll take it home," she said.

"We have time," I told her. "We can eat inside. Look at all these other people out here."

I'm relieved to see it's Brandy behind the register when we walk up to order.

"Hi Vickie," she says to Mom.

There's a familiarity because Mom knows Brandy's mother, Jacycee, an assistant manager at the McDonald's. Known her since she was born. Ginger, the matriarch of the family, lived next door to young Vickie McElroy and her family on 15th Street in Jett, Kan. She and her former husband knew Mom as a little girl, long before Jacycee and her older sister was born.

As we stand around the lobby, Jaycee walks in. She comes into Mickey D's a lot. I'm glad to see her because Mom is steadily becoming more high-strung and I'm thinking -- hoping -- Jaycee can bring her down. I figure I'll probably be giving Mom an Ativan when I take her home.

We sit at a two-seat length table, just off from the standing area. Mom babbles on, mostly ignoring her chicken sandwich, as Jaycee listens intently.

"I've been independent all my life," Mom says. "I've lived through floods."

I help myself to one, then another, then two or three of her fries, in between sipping a strawberry shake, the only menu item I ordered for myself. Storm talk travels thick through the room and I get into a conversation with the fellow at the next table. Pretty good guy, says his name is Nate.

He motions to the window and his 2011 GMC Sierra 1500 XFE Crew Cab Pickup parked next to the building. Not a hail dent on that baby. Nate, although he doesn't know me from Adam, talks with me as if we've hung out forever. Young, and a single guy -- I can tell -- Nate talks about barely missing a tornado one dark evening on his way home from a Bible study. Says he has a friend who's a professional storm chaser and how rocking that is. He plans on taking the highway south and bypassing the approaching storm on his way home.

"That wind can get out of here. Let it all go to Oklahoma," I say.

Words I'll later lament, having said.

Reaching the driveway to Mom's house, I see my brother, Jimmy, and his 10-year-old daughter, Tori. No doubt, Tori's softball games have been cancelled. Jimmy communicates some bit of information to me about watching Mom, unable to resist trying to run my life. He's one of the banes of my existence.

Driving home, I see the other one.

"Well look whose fat ass is on my porch," I say to myself as I park the car at the curb.

"Hi Jeff," my father-in-law calls out to me as I walk up to the house. He's sitting there with my daughter Gabby. No doubt, he and my mother-in-law have come over to take shelter at our house if need be. We have a sturdy basement.

My in-laws really are consummate professionals at this grandparent thing. Deep down, good people. I guess I could feel guilty about being standoffish toward the old man if I let myself be. But no, I've been burned too many times.

We get an inch of rain, but by and large, the worst of the storm misses us. My friend Al is in town and I invite him over to see me, the wife and kids before he heads back home to Texas the next day.

The next day I'm communicating with Al's sister-in-law Doxie up in Iowa. She said she texted Al because she was worried. He'd made his skin-of-the-teeth escape. Only 30 minutes earlier he'd driven through Moore, Okla. Now I-35 was littered with cars that had been picked up, hurtled through the air and smashed to the ground.

Doxie wouldn't be letting Al's 91-year-old mother in the nursing home know her son was that close to death and destruction. Just like they don't let on to her about all the fires he has to put out at the refinery where he's operations manager. It's best this way. There are things we do in life that we NEVER want our parents to know about.

'It looked like Hiroshima'

Late Monday afternoon. I sit at the dining room table where I always hang out after work, joking around with my daughter, while my son plays xbox in the living room with the kid from next door. My mother-in-law is there, faithfully watching the kids as she usually does when they get out of school. Her cell phone rings for the third time.

Her husband -- who gets more worked up, the older he gets -- has been watching CNN and MSNBC.

"That old man won't leave you alone, will he?" I say to "Mom."

The tornado is worse than we were expecting. He said there was rubble strewn all over. It looked like Europe and Japan during World War II.

"He said 'it looked like Hiroshima'" "Mom" said. He also said something about kids being trapped in a school. But they have tornado shelters in schools. This is what they have tornado drills for.

That evening, while sitting on the porch, we'd catch our friends Brent and Diane off on their nightly fitness walk.

I say something about the kids trapped inside two destroyed buildings, babies unaccounted for...and Diane, a fifth-grade teacher comes within an inch of crying. We look at my kids' school, Longfellow Elementary, across the street and literally -- not figuratively, literally -- thank God that the bond issue passed.

A debris-carrying wind one-to-two miles wide leveled the town of Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City. Over 240 people have been hospitalized, 51 people confirmed dead and that number is expected to rise, awaiting the medical examiners final reports.

I sit on the wicker love seat with my daughter Gabby. I'm thinking of those school children.

"I don't know what I'd do..." (long pause, suck it in J. Guy, keep composure)

"If that happened to me," my little girl finishes my sentence.

"Those kids are just like you," I say.

"But they're in a better place."

A few long seconds. I look in my girl's face. Her tongue's stuck out, mouth wound out.

I chuckle a little. "What are you doing, Goofy?" I ask her.

"The best way to stop someone from crying is to make them laugh."

Shameful stowin' away life

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Winning kid

I was in the staff lounge of the elementary school where I work, pouring myself a cup of coffee when I glanced at a fresh copy of the latest Longfellow Elementary newsletter. My eyes were stopped at the top left portion of the page and the picture of that young fellow.

"Student of the Month," the headline read.

This kid, let's call him Jack, isn't the brainest kid in the fifth grade -- or the school. You won't find his name on the honor roll, but he gives more than most kids born with so much more in their reserves. The text of the newsletter said it perfectly:

Jack has a heart of gold and a lot of integrity. He enjoys school and always arrives with a smile for everyone he sees. I love to hear him read because he brings such expression to the words. He perseveres through many frustrations and never complains -- a true inspiration to staff and students alike.

I worked with Jack so much last year, trying to help him focus and remember what he'd read only seconds ago. How I wished that things would come easier for him, that someday everything would click. The lights on and bright. But the times when he would arrive at an answer and I could slap him a high five in acknowledgment of his accomplishments -- that was everything.

My friend, Dawn, his teacher, nominated Jack for the honor, in part to boost his confidence. "I see naturally talented kids who squander what they have," I told her during lunch later that day. "Where would this kid be if he had more to start with?"

"He'd be on the honor roll," she said.

Usually, the "student of the month" is an honor roll student, a boy or girl who gets a lot of A's. That's good because those students work hard for what they get and they deserve the recognition they receive. But it's nice to see the Jacks of this world receive an accolade too once in awhile.

A slight salty drop descended, dampening the paper. The kind of the thing likely to happen if I read certain things for too long. I shifted gears to look as if I were strictly cleaning my glasses and I clasped that newsletter into my hand, removing all evidence, and taking it up as if it were any number of papers and books I can be seen carting around in the day.

As far as anyone in this institution is concerned, Mr. Guy is a tough taskmaster, the type who will cut to the quick any nonsense spotted from little sweathogs-in-training.

The truth, though, is that I've always harbored a soft spot for the Jacks of this world. When I saw he'd received that "student of the month" honor, I felt a happiness rush through like I hadn't experienced since my son Max received a citizenship award at his own school two years ago. For the kid out there who doesn't make it every time, yet keeps pressing forward, never losing that genuine goodness so much a part of his character -- well, I'm pulling for him. Or her.

For Jack.