It’s been two years since the stroke.  The last time on the 4th of July, the cannon on its rampart in front of our house has remained silent, until yesterday.  My wife, in a valiant and thankless effort, got me to succumb to invite a few dear friends over (which turned into about 30) to celebrate the fourth. More on my attempts to rehabilitate myself from depression a little later. We had a potluck (not like in the recent past BBQ for 250 plus, live band, kids fishing, paddle boats on the pond), just music softly playing from our very powerful sound system and some dear friends enjoying the day celebrating and reminiscing. Yes, it was the 4th of July; we said the pledge to the flag gently waving in the breeze. And yes, with a little help from a dear friend, loaded up the old rusty barrel of the cannon and low and behold an old patriot (that be me) pulled the lanyard, set off the shot that was heard around the neighborhood miles away.   A small band of stubborn patriots who still believe in this country and what it stands for one nation under God. We did, however, practice social distancing as much as possible in between the unrestricted embraces of real friends.    Since we were all outside, no masks unless you wanted to, the embraces were careful but real and so needed by us all. I donned my colonial militia jacket and hat. Once again, this crazy old bastard overrode the old communist bastard across the way with a defiant deafening blast spewing fire and glory to honor this imperfect but great nation.  With the 12-pound black powder cannon loaded with about 12 ounces of powder, we additionally expanded the 6-foot social distancing to 6 THOUSAND feet to repel all enemies foreign and domestic daring only the most foolhardy anarchists to make the trek up our driveway.

That gave my mental health a bit of exhilaration that at least I am capable of doing something without blowing myself up in the process. In my dark humor one day I had a thought to load up about a pound of black powder(which will allow a twelve-pound ball to travel nearly a mile) grab the lanyard walk to the front of the cannon put my head tightly in front of the barrel and pull it one last time.  Then I thought better of it.  For one thing, it might not kill me quickly and painlessly or for another, that as my head tumbles off my torso, I would live long enough to be rolling around on the ground and get dizzy and looking back at what was left of my once stunningly handsome body.  Obviously, this scenario is fraught with fantasies of the dark and absurd kind. Moving on from the silly, One of my last-minute guests who is a music and spiritual soulmate, who also for years has battled bipolar disorder, and I made an oath that we would faithfully lift each other up as life goes on. I felt his inner loneliness (you know my fellow depressants being in a crowd or surrounded by family and feeling utterly alone). This day these friends made me feel a healing salve that soothed my despair.

I have my faithful wife to thank for this. (she does all my editing, so I have to be nice to her. LOL – (not really -note from the editor 😉) We all lamented as to what is happening to our country, why all anger and hate that is imputed into what might be a simple disagreement to outright warfare.  As an example, out of our little group this day, we had a WWII vet, devote Catholics, Evangelicals, law enforcement, and every stripe of high tech low tech (that be me) liberal, conservative all in a small group bound by God and being patriots. The side conversations for me among friends catching up, was a conversation with my conservative high tech bipolar friend to continue to pray for each other and stand with each other in our common struggle to keep on a mental functional keel to an in-depth conversation with the wife of our dear couple friends about raising our kids and the perils of parenting and promote good values, independence, and accountability. She and I couldn’t be politically, farther apart, she is being the consummate liberal; I the stallworth conservative.  She used to enjoy watching Keith Oberton and I Bill O’Reilly.  She an “anybody but Trump,” and I put up with obnoxious but get the right things done.  I take Trump over what is the alternative.  We do not exactly have any Thomas Jefferson or John Adams’s to choose from now, do we? She’s a devout Catholic, and her husband is an irreverent version of the same thing. My wife and I are more of the Evangelical bent, her reverent, me not so much. The four of us are bound forever, by our good hearts her punch bowl upside-down cake, his kick-butt baby back ribs, my dry rub pulled pork, and my wife’s baked beans. 

How about we just keep it simple, surely good debate could not descend into angst when feasting on such homegrown delights with the intellectual jousting merely adding spice to the meal. While this day was a refreshing respite from the self-sequestration and drive by observation of the news cycle, I lament that the day didn’t have the ambiance of older people and parents sitting under the trees watching a pack of kids with their devices on lock-down and having paddle boat races, catching fish, playing volleyball and basketball shooting down the zip line and finding a quiet spot to talk about future plans. Young boys and girls having conversions under the trees, a prelude to in some cases, getting married on these very grounds. A soundtrack playing in the background all day long with music spanning from now to 75 years ago only to be interrupted every half hour by the roar of the cannon.

Today a single cannon shot by an old man in a special place with a repository of a lifetime of memories. Let us always remember that what makes our country great is memories and family, and times like this defended to the death by patriots and for patriots.

One of my fellow bloggers posted that the United States is not a Christian nation because the founders did not have that in mind.  He sounds very astute but, in my opinion, in error. 

Many of the founders, including Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, Were generally considered “Deists” as a product of the Age of Enlightenment.  Thomas Jefferson though a deist, wrote his own version of the bible. John Adams was a Christian through and through. 

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson vigorously debated virtually every topic, including religion, to the point of separation between the two until only in the twilight of their lives reconciled and ironically both died on July 4, 1826, within five hours of each other, in their own homes. 

Jefferson was a slave owner, but from all accounts was a compassionate master.  Let not the irony of this go unnoticed after all he did and accomplished, he died pennilessly and left his widow and family deeply in debt.  In the end, just another imperfect man trying to form a more perfect union of mankind in a nation that relies upon the freedom of all to use their God-given free will as they choose and take up the consequences of the right and wrong decisions with their maker.

Adams, a strong abolitionist, died a modest farmer.  Three things these men had in common.  They were both farmers, both loved this newborn country they fathered, and both believed that this nation in order to survive must be guided by the principles and will of our Creator, whether through Jesus Christ, like John Adams believed, or in an Almighty Creator God, like Thomas Jefferson believed.  Just my observation, the questioning mind of Thomas Jefferson probably had trouble with the concept of the Trinity.  Father, Son, Holy Spirit, like that’s easy for any of us to grasp, but Christians accept it as another thing we don’t understand in our pursuit to rationalize what we can only sense but cannot see. 

I was watching yet another episode of “How the Universe Works” on the Science Channel in the middle of the night while the TV gave me medication for my depression when the scientist was trying to explain the theories behind the creation of the universe or multi-verse and the concept of inflation of the small heavy mass that started the whole thing when the bloviating was finally at the end, he said possibly the most profound four words ever spoken.  He said the truth is, “WE DON’T KNOW.” At last, maybe a universal truth has been uttered, I would add, but God does.  Only this Creator God could keep all these celestial plates spinning, break a few as they collide and meticulously gather them up and make something new.  This same Creator has the same power to breathe love, not Chaos into our lives, and yes, our nation.  Maybe sometimes we just need to get out of the way and let Him do his work and as King David did at a young age be a man after his own heart and like his youngest son Solomon ask not for riches but discernment with wisdom and know the difference between right and wrong.  Come on, America, we can do this, we being God and us on the path Jesus laid out for us. 

 All these men collaborated on the idea that men should be free to worship as they choose. Still, the country should have religion and abide by its noble principles, particularly Judeo–Christian tenants and natural law.  Most of our law today is based upon Mosaic law (i.e., 7-year judgments,10 Commandments, etc.)  These tenants can’t be lost, or we don’t have the land of opportunity we have kept together for 154 years. I would recommend strongly to read the book by W Cleon Skousen,  The 5000-year Leap.   It really gets to the heart of how America gets its roots. 

My blogger friend is right in one very regrettable sense. We ARE not a Christian nation today mainly because we’ve lost our Christian core values, institutionalized the church, commercialized it, and made idols of our celebrities and sometimes made our religious leadership into celebrities, losing the whole point of the humble but infinitely powerful Jesus. True Christianity is freedom by its very nature truth, and free will brought together to allow everyone. I mean, everyone to determine their relationship to God with their own free will or at their peril, no relationship at all.  And America guarantees those rights under the constitution. 

Let’s go back a bit; the nation really had its roots in the Puritans and Pilgrims that were being persecuted as Christians by the religious corruption of the times, not specifically the state. However, the state was complicit in the institutional churches’ iron rule of its many times unwilling to be ruled, congregants. As in anything too big, be it government, corporations, or institutional church (does the inquisition ring any bells, the Holocaust to name a couple).  So, in a nutshell, it’s not the noble principles of Christianity or other religions that we should fear or despise or cut off. Its the same thing that the Puritan and Enlightenment founders boldly put forth, at the risk of their own lives, to protect from autocratic tyranny run by a few.

There are many flavors of “Christianity,” and they all exist in varying ways in America. We Christians many times, choose to pick doctrinal fights instead of preaching the Gospel. That is to say, spread the word if it is not accepted, that is where God takes over. If we live like Christians inside and out, then others will want what we have and not banish it from the town square. 

We don’t have that anymore, just social media platforms. It would be better for us all to go down by evil as Jesus did and summon the power to overcome than these petty snipes, especially when they come from within.  Be it a misguided movement or inter-church fighting.  It was 150 years from the Mayflower Compact to the US Constitution and 244 years until now, and we are dangerously close to being thrown back 5000 years and lose it all. 

Our country now has over 300 million people and my guess nearly that many opinions.  But we all can be heard RESPECTFULLY, and the more discerning amongst us can sort out the drivel and lead.  We can voice our opinions and be heard (after letters to congress and other peaceful measures go unheard). Allow me to give two examples of how peaceful protests work instead of this evil mess of noble causes being hijacked and usurped by the same forces that our founders tried to protect us from.  First is one I didn’t participate in the second I did. The first is the Million Man March in Washington DC on  October 16, 1995. One of the primary motivating factors for the march was to place black issues back on the nation’s political agenda.  An event that The second I attended in 2010 at the Lincoln Memorial called Restoring Honor. (a large tea party like event sponsored by Glenn Beck) hundreds of thousands of people of all stripes showed up to honor America, but also protest the tearing down of America and demand incorruptible leadership of our republic. 

As a sidebar here is this is unlike the disgusting display of hate, looting, and vandalism, overpowering the news today.  In a proper setting,  a message of equal import, when the rally was done, everyone nearly without exception picked up their blankets and trash and patrolled the whole Lincoln Memorial site and cleaned up better than when they arrived drawing amazement from the park police and staff. 

My wife usually gets skittish in large crowds, but not here. It was like one huge picnic and family reunion of the American family.  Myself, my wife, and my youngest 7-year-old son never feared for anything and spent the rest of the weekend touring the sites, museums, and monuments of DC, that thugs and paid anarchists desecrate today.  What changed from a mere ten years ago, Where is the leadership that responds to the people’s voice, where is the leadership of law and protection of the innocent? As you may know, I grew up in the ’60s, and 70’s I didn’t get into the drug or protest thing I was part of a fledgling “Silent Majority”. This was Richard Nixon’s battle cry and it took him into the White house. Don’t get me wrong, he was flawed and he was what he was but the great silent, hardworking, raise families, coach little league, hospital candy stripper.  America didn’t want Vietnam, Free love, or thugs burning their businesses and communities cloaking the thuggery under a banner of justice and taking out “the man”.

History repeats itself. Sadly, only having been through the sixties I wonder if this time we can recover. Have we gone so far from those original founding principles of freedom with accountability that we have forever lost our way?  This is a helluva time to try and recover from my depression, stroke, and business struggles, and of course this panic-driven virus mentality.  I have my wife, my kids, and a roof over my head.  Daily provision, my local church, and my bible.  While that doesn’t sound like much its enough for me for now and maybe God will yet again let me run one more race, do one more unnoticed good deed, and if need be see my kids surpass my dreams and aspirations for your Glory oh Lord.

As I write today, after weeks and months of viewing the world in its most horrendous state, I am compelled to write about this topic. As I sit safely imprisoned in my little paradise and even more sequestered in my crowded home office while just above my head is my 17-year-old son playing X-box with his friend who stayed over last night after a grueling day of BMX riding. 

 I’m recalling a complex, but yet in many ways, a simpler time.  I grew up in the ’60s; we moved to Florida in 1962 from a farm in Wisconsin.  My dad had had enough of the snow and shoveling cow manure and milking cows.  Because of our mining background on the limestone quarry we ran on the farm property, he bought a little sand mine in Melbourne. Everyone in Wisconsin thought dad was out of his mind buying a sand mine in Florida where it is nothing but sand except for deep down coral rock. He was always shrewd and made it work selling sand in Florida. 

My first dose of culture shock was in southern Illinois just before crossing into “the South.” We stopped for gas and a much needed potty break. I encountered at the restrooms a delineation clearly on the doors beyond the” men’s and “women’s (this was way before we had to worry about gender equality, how far we have come, lol)  “colored’s only” and “whites only.”  I was confused as a 9-year-old why this was. We didn’t have any black people in rural Wisconsin. We only saw them from the highway when we would visit Uncle Virgil and my cousins in Beloit, which was a bit more cosmopolitan if you could call a town of 5000 more cosmopolitan.  Now, if I remember right, Illinois was in the Union, not the Confederacy. Still, I guess the lines get blurred in southern Illinois because evidently, segregation was not limited to the bigots in the south as generally thought and taught. Even in rural white Wisconsin, we had labels for everyone.  Blacks were matter-of-factly referred to as Negros or a slang version of that. Swedes and Pollacks usually had “big dumb” as an adjective added to their cultural origin. And of course, the Wops, chinks, Japs and Heebs, Swiss cheese heads (that be our family), and Krauts pretty much rounded it out.  In today’s sensitive political correctness, rounded out the nicknames for heritages mostly used in an All in The Family-Archie Bunker sort of way. There were also religious divides, mainly of Protestants and Catholics. We didn’t have any Muslims around and didn’t even know that religion existed and a few Jews that mostly ran the shops in Monroe the nearby “city” of 3000.

My mom and dad (although my dad was sort of the Archie Bunker type) had as best friends a Catholic couple( we were not), a couple of farms over who would love to go to the local hot spot on Monroe called “Turner Hall” where they would dance away the night together to swing music, Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis and endless Polkas and Shotishe’s.   As I said in earlier posts, music is a great equalizer.  One episode in my early days in Florida might serve as a lesson for the looting race-baiting bigotry of this day.  My dad was hauling in dirt to fill in a house slab in a new public housing project (another failed attempt to lift people with stuff. What they needed was a chance. They already had a good strong family based on going to church every Sunday, even if it meant Momma was gripping you by the ears and dragging you there), and he brought me along. I was playing amongst the dump truck loads of sand when a little black kid my age came up by himself, and we began to play together. Before we knew it, he and I became “commandos,” found some big roots in the dirt that we quickly fashioned into machine guns and proceeded to “attack” the tank (the bulldozer my dad was running) from behind the mounds of sand. We played for hours and had a ball. My dad even joined in the fun and feinted a successful hit from the marauding commandos and slow the machine to a grinding halt only to move on and start the game all over again.

After some time, the young boy’s mother came over and told him, “you aren’t supposed to be playing with white boys” and marched him home. Looking back on that episode, I have come to one conclusion that If we let the 10-year old’s run this country, I’ll bet we would get along a whole lot better. Then the “adults” that have to step in with everything from the “Great Society” to a misguided sense of entitlement formed by the “entitled” for things that happened way before our time just like my newly minted little black kid friend and me. Neither of us had a clue about the past injustices until our “adult” elders reminded us of it and split us from the human race into separate herds like farm animals.

Another experience I had later in life was in the Jaycees.  Our chapter had had a public service project called “Tot land,” a playground to be constructed in the “projects.” Our chapter could never get a project chairman to take the project mainly because we were a 99% white chapter, and NO ONE wanted to go in there.  Now the Jaycees worldwide built parks and ball fields and were even instrumental in upgrading the postal system and started what was later to become the Orlando International Airport, among many other things.   I was new, I had a bunch of construction equipment and recruited an army of volunteers (an army of me and three other guys) and donated playground equipment from the city with a cheery “good luck boys ain’t nobody been able to build anything in there that didn’t get tore up by the teenage bullies.”  So off we went. We started clearing out the old abandoned junk, and the dump trucks started to roll. At first, the parents and other adults just looked out from their windows and sometimes sneered and sometimes just watched. Pretty soon, the little kids came out and started helping, and then parents came out with shovels and rakes, and the gals brought out some food and drinks, and a miracle happened. A bunch of ragtag white guys and a small group of black people started putting aside all the b.s. and started working together. One moment I’ll never forget was when we had a frontend loader on-site, and after spreading the sand, we told all the little kids that if they help us spread the sand, we would give them all a ride in the 5-yard bucket of the loader. There were about a dozen of them that suddenly appeared and began moving sand with their hands. Tonka Toys and plastic shovels and the job was done before we knew it. They were now ready for their hard-fought reward (of course nowadays there have to be insurance waivers, OSHA inspections and some city bureaucrat telling us what to do).  We let them hop in the bucket and proceeded to give them a ride around the neighborhood like a small parade with their parents cheering as we drove down the street, The bucket looked like a bowl of Cocoa Puffs with all these little kids riding in there, but boy was that fun for all big and small!

Unfortunately, this story doesn’t have a lasting happy ending.  Late in the afternoon, one of my fellow Jaycees and I was putting the last of the playground equipment together, bolting little spring-mounted animals to the in-ground bases, and the little kids were helping us.  A few older teenage bullies showed up and started to harass the little kids, and they ran away. Mike  (who by the way was a bit of an old school Ohio farm boy redneck) and I were putting on the final touches with a large crescent wrench and a pipe wrench. After they ran the kids off, they came over to us and belligerently basically said, “what are you whiteys think you’re doing in our territory” and started to knock over one of the toys.  We held back and just kept on working, thinking that maybe these assholes would just move on.  They came closer to us and made gestures like they were going to kick over the piece that we were working on and have a good laugh and said: “hey whitey watchu think you’re doing.” Mike and I looked at each other, and I blurted out, “I got your whitey right here why don’t you just leave this place and these kids alone.” Mike and I  raised our wrenches and made them think we meant business, even though we didn’t know if we could take a quartet of thug teenagers. They blinked and went away. We finished up and came back a couple of days later to finish the rest of the park and were welcomed to a site totally destroyed.  We gave up as others had and went on to another project. 

Well, goodwill was enjoyed for a brief moment in time, then the “adults” came in with prejudices of the past, destroying yet another chance of redemption.  I guess that’s why Jesus said bring me the little children and have the faith of a child. For God’s sake, let the ten-year old’s run the world.  Then again, maybe we have to start younger with social media and technology poisoning their innocent young minds. And as Forest Gump would say, “And That’s all I got say about that.”

FORGIVENESS:  A while back, a tragic news story told of the horrible murder of a young Amish kid by a ruthless killer.  Instead of anger and revenge, there was only grief and forgiveness. The killer went to jail.  

The Amish could teach us pious pundits and “religious” people a lot about forgiveness and prayer for redemption for the sinners; that one cop murdering this man and the other cops who were on the job for only for three days and acted out of cowardice and fear of the senior cop causing the undeserved death of a fellow brother of God’s creation.  May we, for just one moment, get off our pious soapbox and find the last time we directly intervened for justice.  Instead of staying in our cozy homes, yelling at the TV while people die.  This should be less about the deification of a simple, and yes flawed as we all are, man and more of redemption, repentance (that includes, cops,  looters and anarchists doing the evil ones work). You Christians, as I am, think this through and pray for the peace of Jesus and His love to pull us back from the brink. Satan has an opening here. Just yesterday morning, I read where Militias are rising in a little town in Idaho at first to exercise their second amendment and Godly right to defend their families and livelihood as implied threats of Antifa anarchists sneaking into this quiet little town, in white Mercedes vans. We all know what the next step is, and that’s more hatred fired like a scattergun killing innocent and evil alike. Prejudice has existed since Biblical times and before, with tribe against tribe, Gentile against Jew.

In a recent post from one of my followers from the Philippines, their post talks about farmers, and the tillers of the land were/are looked upon as “less than.”  I grew up on a farm if we had a little cow manure on our jeans because we didn’t have time to clean up thoroughly after the morning chores, all the city kids on the bus would make fun of us.  All you crybabies today, don’t tell me, I don’t understand prejudice and injustice just because I’m white.  All this is more about economics and prejudice against hard work than old battles that the adults want to re-fight from long ago.

Maybe, that way, all the intellectual trust fund babies look down upon someone in the trades who works with the technology AND their hands. I have a self-bought and paid for a degree from the University of Florida with a degree in accounting and sat for and passed the CPA exam, and I can run a dozer better than most.  Don’t tell me about how hard it is to get an education. I worked to get there and worked to get through there, learned from the professors that I respected and tolerated the “turd” classes of bloviators. I received A’s and B’s in the good classes and “C’s” in the turd classes.  I was there to learn what I needed to learn to be a productive part of the world, not to impress some accepted status quo. I passed the CPA exam and only had to go back one time to pass one part. My classmates were working for big 8 firms and still hadn’t passed it after I did. 

The lesson here is if you want to learn, be it through the school of hard knocks or the University of Florida; YOU WILL LEARN if you have an open mind and work hard and smart.  I guess this is turning into a rant, but with what I see in the pandemic farce and the stalking horse of racism, I have to get this off my chest.

I was a child of the ’60s, and 70’s I think I know a thing or two about the injustices of prejudice and wars fought to enrich the elite through nation-building with the blood of patriotic American men and women and can have little respect for “protestors” who manage to find time during working and school hours to carry their professionally made and distributed signs while the rest of us are working our ass off and VOTING to change things.

There I’m finally done, and maybe I pissed off many of my followers.  Through my depression, the country I love is going up in flames and cowardice. I can’t even worship in peace with others; leaves me in that all too familiar place these days of withdrawing to my albeit beautiful home (although she is starting to look pretty old and decrepit like me) to continually search for answers from God and thanking Him daily for my provision and Jesus for my protection as I am on the front lines of spiritual warfare and it scares me to the core. Am I having another seizure (thanks to I think proper meds I haven’t had one since October 2019), or is it another attack from the evil one? (I don’t think I’m in crazy town yet).

Evil is real. Just look at what’s happening on our streets. There is a song from the ’80s that I featured in a Christian Music show I produced in 1986 by Jakata that’s called “Hell is on the Run.”  I hope that is true now because it sure looks like Good Is On the Run, and it’s taking a beating If there was ever a time, Jesus, its time.