I have the moral right to seek my own health care as much as seeking work, home, and food. Society doesn't have the right to make those decisions for me except in very limited ways and manners. I think a free market best suited towards my being able to do for myself, and others for themselves.
That is a very condensed (I'm using the word very a lot aren't I?) version of my basic philosophy. But it's the essence of how I vote.
I adored Ronald Reagan, become disappointed with him, and have come to adore him again. Voting for him, twice, and each time proudly, are my proudest ballots as an American voter. The next closest, hate me now progressive haters, was my vote for George W. Bush in 2004. I loathed Donald Trump yet have come to like him, somehow despite himself. Yin and Yang. I don't know what I want or expect.
Trump has been a better President than I imagined, his schoolyard bravado aside. This is a man who says what he thinks at the spur of the moment. Some people resent that. I do not. I would rather deal with those who speak from the hip than who wax palliative philosophy in measured tones. The latter strike me more as having forked tongues. What are they hiding?
I do not want to cheer the President without consideration. Yet I will also not jeer him with a jerked knee. Donald Trump is not the devil incarnate. Those who believe that, I fear, may be the real devils.
So what to think? Ask me again in about three hours. But this minute, well, I really don't fear all that much.
Chief Wahoo violates, in the eyes of many, one of the worst sins of the modern world: racism. I will not debate his origin. Being not naive, I would not be shocked if the image originated with a degree of racism. I also don't doubt that the charge is overblown, or at least ameliorated over time. Chief Wahoo in 2018 is a symbol of a baseball team. Nothing more.
Now I'm really going to stir the pot. As a white guy, a Catholic, and being of Irish descent, I'm sure that I cannot possibly understand such harm as Wahoo offers (I'm being smarmy here folks). Be all that as it may, I am in fact not offended in the least by the San Diego Padres and their sometimes-used goofy friar pathetically swinging a bat at a ball, nor by the enraged Irish caricature used by the Notre Dame Fighting Irish (and don't you dare tell me that the Irish weren't a genuinely offended group once), neither by the Wake Forest Demon Deacon. Why should I be? They are, to use the word again, mere caricatures and intended to be funny. I am not so overly sensitive, so thin-skinned that I cannot take a jibe. I wonder if we shall ever be equal until we can equally jibe one another.
Yes, the line can be crossed. Not to upset NFL fans, but the moniker Redskins does cross it. But the problem with Chief Wahoo is nothing more than he offends the PC police. And I intend to offend them all summer long with my Cleveland baseball cap. They've earned it.
You remember when we set the record for the most repaired cables in a single day? The old record was 55; we hit 59 one day just before quitting time. Yet that number didn't quite seem good enough to either one of us.
I picked a random cable up off the floor and looked it over. "I think that top pin is showing a bit of wear," I remarked, then showed it to you.
"Yep," you affirmed with a grin after your own inspection. "You oughta replace it." For those of you unfamiliar with the process, replacing a worn pin is about the easiest cable repair there is. Within ten seconds I had put a new pin in that cable fitting. We had a nice, round number of 60 repaired cables in one day. We both I think were happy at our little manipulation of the circumstances. But hey, it was legit. That pin was worn.
This morning I set another small thing right. While at the old barn yesterday repairing some cables it occurred to me that we had never before repaired at least one cable every day of the week. So this morning as I was ending my walk, I opened up the Shop long enough to repair one cable. We've now had one whole week in our company's history where we fixed at least one cable every day.
Happy 82nd birthday Pops.
By the way the single day record is still 60.
Until next time,
Marty
I'll keep paying taxes on my income, to be sure, because there's no practical alternative. Still, that doesn't mean the tax is morally right. It simply means the government is holding a figurative gun to my head.
Let me ask you this: does your neighbor have the moral right to know how much money you make? No? Then why does your neighbor named Uncle Sam or Lansing? Yet to tax our earnings they must be told that, again by compulsion. And even if you argue that an income tax is okay, what happened to innocent until proven guilty? Things such as W-9s presume guilt; now we see two reasons not to like the income tax. It allows the government to assume we will work against it. No matter how true that might be for many people, and I will readily concede that some try to circumvent it as they do many other laws, on a case by case basis it is still moral presumption and a violation of our rights as citizens.
But how else can the government get money, Marty, because even governments need cash you know. My answer is a system of sales taxes and user fees, all of which are factored against voluntary interactions. You want to drive? Pay gas taxes. You want to camp at a government park? Pay a user fee. We could easily make reasonable exemptions to this, but I think you get the point.
Yeah, nothing will come of this. I even expect many of you will disagree with me. But I felt like a rant this morning, so I give you one. There is little doubt in my mind that income taxes are immoral.
Back when he was still in high school, Pops and a friend (I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name) decided to go see a movie at the Globe. For whatever reason, when Dad got to where he had decided to sit, his Catholic training inexplicably kicked in and he genuflected before entering the row of seats. Cloyce, walking behind him, didn't see what he was doing and plowed straight into Dad. They both fell over, and the two of them then rolled down the length of the aisle, all arms and legs and trying desperately stop their free fall. It only ended when they hit against the wall at the bottom of the movie screen. Pops always told the story with a great laugh.
Fast forward to about 1974. Dad was very active in the Church and at that time was President of the parish council. He had become close friends with then Pastor Thomas Smith. One evening after a council meeting he and Fr. Smith were talking over a coffee and Dad decided to tell him the tale. He ended it with the usual hearty laugh, but then saw that Father was sitting quietly, staring daggers at him. Come on, Padre, Pops thought, that's a pretty good story that deserves a laugh.
But after a minute or so of awkward silence Father Smith finally asked, "Bill, what in God's name were you doing in that place anyway?" He only knew it as the X-rated movie house and was, properly so far as he misunderstood the circumstances, appalled that Dad had went there.
But once Pops explained that this had happened twenty years earlier, Father did agree that it was a funny story. And at that point it gave Dad's tale a whole new, and also funny in its own way, dimension.
On Belle Isle, in 1963, my earliest memory. My brother Patrick was maybe two months old. I see me Mother on the beach holding him in blankets though it was July, and warm. Susan was somewhere I'm sure. Me Pops was showing me older brother and me how to skip stones, flinging them with a turn of the wrist into the south channel of the Detroit River. He was in his work clothes, and I don't recall why. We were skipping stones towards my beloved Canada, being on the south side of the island. It was like yesterday, as cloying as that is.
I remember.
Talking to my brother Donald from my bottom bunk in the bedroom I shared with my brother Ferlin, in the dark night while watching Night Gallery, and feeling that everything was okay.
Seeing my wife for the first time.
Watching my sons together serve Mass at St. Dominic. Listening to my daughter sign a solo as an angel on the stage at St. Alphonsus.
I felt it the last time I was alone with my father. Alone on that early Saturday morning, about 4:30. I stood in the dark, looking at you, the nurses having giving us a moment.
And I stood there. And you were there too. And we were all right with each other.
I know it. The numinous.
I know.
I needed a certain toggle switch for a snake today, which I thought I had in stock. I didn't. A voice in my head (no jokes please) told me, 'go to Mondry.' Mondry is small hardware on Michigan Avenue in southwest Detroit. It's a nice neighborhood hardware. I've went there many times for this or that. But there's no way, I thought, they'd have the switch I wanted. It's too specialized of a part. I went somewhere else.
They didn't have the switch. 'Go to Mondry," I was gently told as I left that place.
I went somewhere else yet. They didn't have it either. Again I was told, plainly, simply, even deferentially, 'Go to Mondry.'
Well, it was on my way home, and even though though I knew it was a lost cause I went to Mondry. And of course, they had the switch. They even ordered me four more, where the other stores never offered me any help except sorry, we don't have it.
So what did I learn? Well, don't be afraid to go to Mondry Hardware. In fact, I encourage it. Secondly, listen when you are being spoken to from on high.
5.
You know how many of them most anybody else gets to take off?
5.
You know what this tells us?
That we taxpayers have to work extra days so that government employees can get five more days off than we do. They get to work a week less each year than taxpayers do. And that after the vacation, sick, and personal days they, uh, earn.
Just another reason I'm a conservative folks.
As I drove there awhile back from Detroit, in the wee hours of the day, I was nearing a little town called North Baltimore. There is a truck stop at the exit for the town, and I often stop in for a respite, a coffee, or a snack. I was planning to do that this day but as I approached a little voice said, "Why don't you just go on?", and I thought, yeah, why not, might as well make some time. So I drove by.
Urbana, Ohio is about 30 miles from Springfield. I thought I might get a coffee that time around, and hit my left turn signal to run into a Tim Horton's. But that same voice said, "You're so close. Just get to the factory." So I thought again, I might ought to, and I am quite close. I went on.
I parked at the plant, took a few things into the front offices, and went back out to take my van to the loading dock to pick up my order. I turned the key, and was greeted by a simple little click which I recognized immediately. My starter had went out. But rather than being upset, even though I knew the repair would be costly and that my day would be seriously delayed, I right away thought that I was glad I was there and not in North Baltimore or Urbana.
In part I knew this was fortunate because the people at Eel, good folks all, would help me, and they did. We tried a jump start and a few other things which unfortunately didn't work, and then the shop foreman called their mechanic, who took me in right away. He had me fixed up and I was back at the plant by 11 O'clock, loading and getting ready to get back to Detroit much earlier than I had feared a few hours before.
I had told several friends earlier in the day about my almost stopping but not. I related this story to another fellow right before I left. John said simply, "It was the Holy Spirit." The instant he said that I agreed, "You're right. It was."
Now we might look at this in different ways. It could be objected that if it was God trying to help me, "You still needed an expensive van repair. Why would you be thankful to Him for that?" But we all know the obvious response, don't we? My situation would have been much worse in the earlier part of the day in more isolated places.
Still, this doesn't prove that it was the Holy Spirit. It is a matter of faith, mine and John's and surely several other folks at Electric Eel and among readers, that it was. And this leads to the key trouble which people not of faith have with such an insistence. They will themselves insist that such faith is irrational.
But is it rational, irrational, or in fact beyond reason? Being beyond reason doesn't mean that faith is wrong; it doesn't actually mean that faith is irrational either. I rather believe that faith, so long as it is not childish and thus genuinely irrational, is actually quite reasonable. Saying that you believe by faith that aardvarks speak English is obviously irrational, as any absurd assertion must be. As such, we can dismiss such a belief as not a true example of real faith. But the idea that an omnipotent, caring being might help us along the way is certainly not irrational. A faith in that sort of being most definitely cannot be called unreasonable.
Oh, you might argue that such a being doesn't exist. Yet that is a separate question, and we're already past that if we presume He does: if A, then B is logical on its own terms. It still fulfills any demand for rationality beyond simply holding the supposed blind faith which many of the seriously religious are accused of having.
I have faith that the Holy Spirit kept me going so that I could get easier help at my ultimate destination. I find the thought indeed eminently rational. You may not agree that that was the case. But I do think you're being unfair to say that my thoughts are therefore irrational. Even if you don't believe that was the case, at least don't think I childishly believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
If something of faith can pass or (at least not fail) the test of rationality then there is little reason to disregard it as merely a figment of the imagination. Don't dismiss it merely because it cannot be proven empirically. Faith simply is not belief without reason. It is belief beyond reason, perhaps, but it is not necessarily unreasonable.
You take last weekend. I was as many of you know playing in a bonspiel in Detroit. While on the ice (and it was actually warmer in the arena than it was outside then) I was wearing a pullover over a t-shirt. That was it. It wasn't even a fleece or insulated pullover either, just a nylon pullover. And I was fine on the ice. Off the ice I got so cold I put on my winter coat as we sat in the warm viewing area talking after the games.
It makes me think of those first warm spring days when it's about 63. I rush to put on shorts and a tee. But a similar 63 degree morning in July and I'm scrounging for a jacket and sweat pants before my walk. I find myself thinking about turning on the heat.
The psychology of temperature. It's weird.
I saw many friends whom I had not seem this curling season, both at the Detroit club where the bonspiel was held and from the Roseland Curling Club in Windsor, Ontario which I've curled out of for about 25 years now, and from several other area clubs. Many of then know I haven't curled much due to my vertigo or whatever the hell it actually is I'm dealing with, and their friendship and encouragement was profound and gratefully acknowledged. Walking up to accept the trophy, I heard several say 'Way to go, Marty' or offer other such encouragement. For a couple seconds there I thought I'd get emotional. We can't have that.
My team and I have great chemistry. We chatter and joke a lot when we're playing well. It either keeps us loose or is a symptom that we are loose, and when we're loose we're a very good local team. The only really bad end I played all weekend was the 8th end of our second Saturday game, when I let myself get knotted up over making my shots. I missed them as a result, so Sunday we made it a point to stay loose. I just hope it didn't bother the other teams. You want to win, but not like that.
Will I ever curl again? Probably. Will I curl again this year? I don't know, but I kind of doubt it. I'm still seeing doctors, and about every two or three weeks I have severe dizzy spells which come on so suddenly I can't seem to anticipate them, and are debilitating enough that I can't effectively function for four to six hours. It's scary and a major concern but the MDs can't find an explanation. I don't want to hurt me or anyone else while on the ice. I had issues several times rising up out of my delivery and while squatting down in the house to call the line on a shot. My third, Nick, was even nosing me out of the way so that he could sweep a stone rather than me, just to help avoid an attack. That sort of consideration shows me that my curling friends have my back. It was even shown through facebook and messenger as the weekend went on. It's why I love 'em.
I'm not ready to say I'm back. And I don't want to make a health decision too quickly based on euphoria. Yet for one weekend anyway, all was right with the world.
Today is high up in my stratosphere because it represents a return to normalcy. Such a 1920s term, normalcy. President Harding used it while running for President in 1920, in the years immediately after World War I. It was a catchphrase to make people comfortable, to assure them that the War was over and we could get back to the way things were.
For me that means a more normal routine. I'm truly sad to confess that Christmas, while important, doesn't mean to me what it seems to mean to so many others. I love it but I'm not always sure I like it. It has become too commercial; I stand in good company thinking so too, don't I, Mr. Schultz? I like watching the movies and listening to the carols. I like going to Midnight Mass, though I missed it this year for the first time in I don't know when (I made it to Christmas Mass, just not at Midnight). Beyond that I will even admit that part of the fault is strictly my own. I find that I'm increasingly less participatory about Christmas. I would rather sit and reflect than revel in it. There's simply a deeper meaning to the season than bright lights and warm cider.
I wonder if in celebrating Christmas so brashly that we tend to skirt that. If it's only about friends and family, well, we're really underselling the rest of the year aren't we? Shouldn't friends and family be an all year thing? And if it is only about getting and giving I would say emphatically the hell with it, though I know that is not true of the great majority of people. There's just got to be something in the middle which sees the Holiday more rightly.
But as of now, I welcome normalcy. I look forward to the trips I'll take to visit my sons and the time I'll spend with my daughter (and their respective spouses), to the golfing and gatherings with friends, more than I look forward to the pomp and pageantry of next Christmas. And I'm willing to argue that that's a good thing.
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