Towery Along the Way

Jody is a Great-grandmother

2011-12-28T07:06:00.004-06:00

This little bundle is Emerson. Holding him his his grandmother, Linda Holder. He is brand new to the family so does not know a lot about us YET. He should be finishing Baylor University in the year 2030 when his grandparents reach the century mark as far as birthdays go. Plan on making that graduation ceremony since I missed Emerson's grandmother's graduation time at Hong Kong International School.

Wish them well as they take on the new century with all we taught them in the old century. Or tried.

Mean and meaningless campaigns

2011-12-28T06:54:00.002-06:00

Presidential campaigns mean and meaningless (668 words)

The German magazine Der Spiegel writes that the GOP candidates are ruining the reputation of the United States.

There is even an extremist movement, the New Apostolic Reformation involved now. NAR has built their program from the Old Testament book of Joel. To them Joel describes how God is coming back to set up a “kingdom on Earth” with a church that will be “organized more as a military force with an army, navy and air force,” to hand out justice on all nonbelievers just in time for the second coming of Jesus.

H does this relate to the GOP nominees for office. The leaders of NAR, Doris and C. Peter Wagner, are considered apostles and prophets. They have this role because God Himself gave it to them. Several NAR apostles (Alice Patterson for one) helped organize or spoke at Governor Rick Perry’s August, 2011, Prayer Rally in Houston.

Thomas Muthee, the Kenyan pastor who anointed Sarah Palin at the Wasilla Assembly of God in 2005, is also a part of this movement according to independent researcher Rachel Tabachnick on National Public Radio.

Tabachnick writes on her blog: NARwatch: "The major topics at these [NAR] events [are] anti-abortion, anti-gay rights and the conversion of Jews in order to advance the end times. And this was very visible at Perry's events as these apostles led all of these different prayers and repentance ceremonies at [his rally]."

The religious community Gov. Perry associates with are not the folks who attend mainline Christian denominational churches. These people are not representative of conservative evangelicalism. They truthfully should be labeled a cult.

I do have a tad of pity for the television networks and any newspaper or magazine writers who have to cover these election “debates” or follow these candidates around like something important might be said or done.

How, I humbly ask, are these reporters expected to keep their sanity as day after day they hear the same old jingles? As one acquaintance of mine (and I do have a few who are of sound mind) said the other day: how can reporters and TV anchors write and talk about this rogue’s gallery with a straight face?

What was once thought to be marginal and bizarre has become mainstream. There was a time when truth was self-evident and easy to spot and accept. Now, just about anything goes.

Almost any avant-garde word from the airwaves goes unquestioned as gospel truth, no matter how unconventional. A politician can say all sorts of half-truths and outright lies and no one questions them. Evidently not many people are really listening to what is being flung to us from the political world.

Possibly I am being bias on this point of not fully appreciating all the good things that politicians do. Bias maybe but without prejudice or partiality and certainly with no preconceived notions or foregone conclusions. I am impartially predisposed to thinking independently, especially when it comes to things religious or political.

The family values of the ultra conservatives gets a pass when a public servant happens to have, one at a time, three wives. I must admit that our Texas governor was right when he said that anyone who cheats on his wife will cheat on his business or affairs of life.

We have had presidents who owned slaves (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Polk and Zachary Taylor). We’ve had presidents with alcohol problems (Pierce, Grant and G.W. Bush).

As far as is known seven had extramarital affairs (Jefferson, Garfield, Hardin, FDR, JFK, LBJ and B. Clinton). We do know that before the GOP hero Ronald Reagan became president he made B pictures for Warner Bros. I think Jane Wyman left him because he was such a bad actor. He was our only divorced president.

But back to the present GOP race for the White House that the Germans think is ruining our image, I quote Bob Scheffer, of CBS News. He said it best:, the presidential campaigns are “as meaningless as they are mean.”

✍Jody & Britt Towery
☞124 Northstar Dr.
San Angelo, Texas 76903
bet@suddenlink.net
陶普義先生

Runnin' fer president? Here's some advice

2011-12-28T06:49:00.003-06:00

Bits of Wisdom from those who would be president

I read somewhere that sometime mistakes are too much fun to only make once. That is what makes the political campaigning speeches so much fun. This year- round profession of running for office offers all forms of missteps, bloopers and slip-ups.

A little advice for these candidates from the dictator Napoleon Bonaparte, who said: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

There are several things that Texas Governor Rick Perry has said that show his insight and wisdom on the most recent history of our country.

For example last year he said: “George W. Bush did a incredible job in the presidency, defending us from freedom.”

And last February Gov. Perry spoke about the border town in Mexico: “Juarez is reported to be the most dangerous city in America.”

We are well aware that times are bad in America, mostly among the jobless and homeless. Gov. Perry last June had a solution. He said: “[Get] back to those biblical principles of you know, you don’t spend all the money. You work hard for those six years and you put up that seventh year in the warehouse to take you through the hard times. And not spending all of our money. Not asking for Pharaoh to give everything to everybody and to take care of folks because at the end of the day, it’s slavery. We become slaves to government.”

But our Texas governor is not the only politician with brains and “know-how.” Michelle Bachmann, Congresswoman from Minnesota says when she becomes president there will be no embassy in Iran. Amazing insight! The USA has not had an embassy in Tehran since 1979, when they stormed our embassy and took hostages.

Mrs. Bachmann is also good at science. In April, 2009, she said: "Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas."

The lady from Minnesota really outshines the other Republican presidential candidates. She and her husband run a clinic and she knows business needs. In January, 2005, she solved the jobless mess: "If we took away the minimum wage -- if conceivably it was gone -- we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level."

Even in the history of our Constitution, Congresswoman Bachmann has enlightened us on the freeing of the slaves during the American Revolution. She has said: "But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States. ... I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly -- men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country."

I always thought slavery ended with a Civil War some 85 years later. Live and learn.

It would be a mistake to overlook the former businessman who claims he is no politician, Herman Cain. Mr. Cain sees China as a threat if they get the nuclear bomb. Some less knowledgeable people have been saying that China has had such capabilities since the 1960s. Mr. Cain, a favorite of the Christian Right, also seems to enjoy not knowing how to pronounce some of the world’s countries or dictators.

It is one thing to make a mistake, but it is another thing to keep making it.

Christmas Makes A Statement For Peace

2011-12-09T14:57:00.002-06:00

The road from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the expectant Mary and her husband Joseph was anything but a paved highway. It was one rough, yet ancient trail, and pilgrims of all faiths have traveled the dusty path for centuries.

Bethlehem was an ordinary market town in the hill country of Judah. It was about five miles from Jerusalem. The Hebrew Bible identifies Bethlehem, as the hometown of King David. He was crowned King of Israel some centuries before the couple from Nazareth got there.

It was just east of Bethlehem where the foreigner Ruth of Moab gleaned the fields along with her mother-in-law Naomi. The Jews of Judah were good to the immigrant work force. Live and let live was a good policy. It was in Bethlehem the Old Testament prophet Micah predicted the birth of the Messiah.

There are two accounts in the Bible describing the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Luke, an associate of the Apostle Paul and Matthew who was not liked or appreciated “for he was a tax collector.”

Two other Gospel accounts of Jesus life and ministry make no mention of Bethlehem. The Gospel According to Mark is thought to be the earliest of the four Gospels and John the final one written some 90 or 100 years after Jesus’ birth.

Other than these two birth announcements, early historians have made little note of it, even after the death and resurrection of Jesus.

You would have thought after the trial and murder of Jesus some enterprising reporter would have used some shoe leather to investigated this unusual and amazing prophet.

After Jesus’ miraculous resurrection from the dead still no headlines. A Jerusalem earthquake loosed many from their graves as the newspaper reporters slept. How interesting it would have been had someone interviewed “the no longer dead” as they held reunions with their “still living” loved ones.

A slow day in the newspaper offices is a day with little news of note. The birth, trial, death and resurrection of Jesus is not the only time when unusual events took place to little reaction.

One such event took place on the Western Front during the First World War. This happening took place in the cold rain and senseless killing in the filthy trenches of that war.

Stanley Weintraub, a military historian, retells the story in his book, “Silent Night.” A story thought by many to be a myth. It is one of history’s most powerful – yet forgotten – Christmas stories.

It was Christmas, 1914, when the war was just beginning. Soldiers on both sides threw down their arms and came together across the warring lines. They sang carols, exchanged gifts, ate and drank together naively hoping the war would come to an end.

It began when German soldiers lit candles on small Christmas trees and British, French, Belgian and German troops serenaded each other on Christmas Eve. Soon they were gathering and burying their dead, in the age-old custom of truces.

The Generals were angry at what was happening. Generals have little to live for but war – and they don’t like to lose. Instead of the soldier’s hopes to end the fighting the war sloshed on for four more years of carnage.

But a statement was made for peace that Christmas of 1914 just as the Bethlehem event of the coming of the Prince of Peace did. Like a dream, the impossible happened – and was promptly forgotten – as men got on with the grim business of war. War makes more news than peace.

Christian Cultural Wars heat up again...

2011-11-30T20:43:00.002-06:00

America’s Cultural War heats up as Christmas nears

“Have you ever wanted to be baptized in the Jordan River?” That is the question Reverend Tim Wildmon asks as he introduces his next tour of Christian sites in Israel. I have only heard this tourist promotion on American Family Radio.

The tour commercial reminded me of what a fellow student said to me regarding visiting the Holy Land. I came upon J.E. “Hoppy” Hopkins studying in the Howard Payne College (this was back before it became a “university”) in the Old Main library. I remember this encounter as it was one of the few times I was ever in that library. (I am not proud of avoiding the library. It shows on my college transcript; somewhat near our current governor’s level.)

I ask Hoppy if he ever thought of visiting the land where Jesus walked. He replied with evangelistic fervor: “I don’t want to go where Jesus was, I want to be where he is.”

I do have a distant relative through marriage that was baptized in the Jordan River once. Apparently Tim Widmon is not the only tour guide pushing Jordan River baptisms.

The Reverend Tim Wildmon is now running the organization his father Don Wildmon founded in 1977. Don Wildom was then pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Southave, Mississippi.

In the beginning the elder Reverend Wildom called the organization The National Federation for Decency. After a decade or so of promoting his idea of decency the name was changed to American Family Association.

Mississippi was recently in the news when voters defeated a ballot initiative that would have declared life to begin at fertilization. The Personhood Law was in reality a step to prompt a legal challenge to abortion rights nationwide. A person is a person at conception; not when a baby heartbeat is heard, not when the baby arrives and breathes its first breath, but when a sperm and egg have an encounter.

Leaving such a decision to voters is like voting on how many angels can kneel on a tiny sewing needle. The American Family Association went to the mat on this vote and were rejected by more than 55 percent of voters.

The AFA has been in the forefront to replace American secular democracy with Reverend Wildom’s version of fundamentalist Protestant Christianity “democracy.”

According to the AFA’s radio stations they are on what they like to call the frontlines of “America’s Cultural War.”

AFA believes that God has communicated absolute truth to mankind, and that all people be subject to the complete authority of the Bible at all times. A culture based on AFA’s biblical version of truth is a stretch at best.

Most of this war they have created is negative rather than positive. “Preservation of Marriage and the Family” is code for their homophobia. “Decency and Morality” is good for the soul, home and country. Once again, AFA, like Orwell’s Big Brother decides what is decent and moral.

“Sanctity of Human Life” is their phrase for killing the Roe V. Wade law that permits legal abortions.

One particular program on AFR signs off by reminding hearers to NOT shop at Home Depot. Seems Home Depot treats gay employees like anyone else on the payroll. This week on a program titled “Nothing but Truth” the host was upset with Walgreens pharmacies for not mentioning Christmas in their ads. The ads only said “Happy Holidays.” For these guys the war on Christmas is but another battleground of the “War on Christianity.”

Thanks Rev. Tim, but one baptism experience is enough for me.

WOULD the world be better off without religion?

2011-11-30T20:37:00.003-06:00

AS APPEARED IN WEST TEXAS DAILIES, Dec. 2, 2011

Would the world be better off without religion?
In the opening decade of the 21st century, there is still debate on the question: “Would the world be better off without religion?” This archaic debate appears to be alive and flourishing, with a multitude of pros and cons, what-ifs and why-nots.

John Donvan of ABC News was the moderator for this most recent debate on Nov. 15. The Oxford-style debate was held in New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. An excellent place for such a debate: a play-acting, make believe venue.

The debate unfolded with Matthew Chapman and A.C. Grayling speaking for the motion that the world would be better off without religion. They contended that religious strife has been at the center of many wars; that a person can be good and moral without being religious; that blind religious faith denies the reality of the sciences.

Both men, renowned non-religious writers, none more famous than Matthew Chapman, the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. With such a lineage he was a natural for denying the good of religion in world history. He is the author of “Trials Of The Monkey: An Accidental Memoir.”

Likewise A. C. Grayling, a British philosopher and professor, has written more than 20 books on philosophy, religion and reason. One book is aptly and humorously titled: “Against All Gods.”
On the side of religion were Rabbi David Wolpe and Dinesh D'Souza. They were against the motion that religion was not good for the world. They contended that religion not only was, but is a vital instrument in the stability of society; provides a moral compass; and provides many “why” answers – why things happen and what life is for.

David Wolpe, the rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, was voted the best pulpit Rabbi by Newsweek. He is the author of seven books, including “Why Faith Matters.”

Dinesh D'Souza, author of “What's So Great About Christianity,” argued against the motion, believing that the world would not be better off without religion.

Following the debate the audience voted and 59 percent of them agreed the world would be better off without religion, while 31 percent disagreed. Ten percent of the audience remained undecided.
Nothing was resolved just as in the faux debates our politicians engage in these days. The age old questions remain: Does religion breed intolerance, violence, and the promotion of medieval ideas? Or should we concede that overall, it has been a source for good, giving followers purpose, while encouraging morality and ethical behavior?

Back in my Hong Kong days a neighbor friend was a television personality. He had a television talk and variety show on HK-TVB. On a whim he came up with a segment he called: “Is there a God?” The program aired live (this was before video tape) at five-thirty in the afternoon. It was only on the English language channel. If anyone was watching the program it was accidental.

It was really just a time filler and a lark for the Aussie moderator. I wish I could remember his name for he was a most likeable chap. Actually, I never met an Australian I didn’t like. My first cousin Joe Frank Johnson after flying for Air America during the Vietnam War liked Australia so much he and his wife and daughter settled there. Now he even talks like them. Australians are just good people who happened to grow up clinging to the bottom rim of the world.

The viewer’s vote came in 4 to 4 on there being a God. I suggested to the show’s producer that a more interesting debate might be along different lines, such as comparing the warrior-God of the Old Testament with the loving-God of the New Testament; or how does evil evolve from a religious conviction?

The debate will always be with us as long as religious and their non-religious neighbors continue to know so little about the subject.

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A MODERN BLESSING --Fewer TV Commercials

2011-11-30T20:33:00.003-06:00

Will TV commercials forever hound us?

Can the curse of TV commercials ever be broken?

THANK THE GODS FOR THE INVENTION OF THE CLICKER -- THE REMOTE CONTROL!!!

All you couch potatoes will soon be able to enjoy television dramas and soap operas without commercial interruption. This is something kin to having a little bit of heaven in our TV-watching. The new regulations go into effect Jan.1, 2012.

There is just one hitch in this great television “happening.” It is in the People’s Republic of China, not the United States of America.

According to a story by Wang Yan in last week’s CHINA DAILY, the new television regulations were passed “in accordance with the people’s interests and demands.”

No longer will TV ads interrupt the viewers dramas. No longer will films made for television be chopped up in ten minute segments by tomato soup or exercise bikes. Or, the worst: car dealership promotions.

American TV dramas and skits are written in eight minute segments. The last moment of the segment must have something that will cause you to endure the commercials and return to the story.

This is why watching a Hollywood movie on television is so appalling. These films were not written to be chopped into little pieces by the networks.

Over the course of ten hours, American viewers will see approximately three hours of advertisements. This is twice the number of commercials that we had to endure during the 1960s. Not a good omen for the future of TV viewing.

When the remote control device came on the market it was as if the Lone Ranger had come riding into our living rooms to deliver us from the barrage of commercials. Just like he saved the rancher’s daughter’s homestead, so the remote saved our sanity.

The remote control inventor should be awarded the Nobel Prize and receive a handsome check for every clicker sold. No one has invented a more stress-relieving gadget than the ingenious TV remote thingamajig.

While American television continues its advertising bombardment with no end in sight, we can find solace with our remote by our side.

The first television advertisement was broadcast in the United States on July 1, 1941. The watchmaker Bulova paid $9 for a placement on New York station WNBT before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. The 20-second spot displayed a picture of a clock superimposed on a map of the United States, accompanied by the voice-over "America runs on Bulova time.”

In the UK, the British Broadcasting Corporation is funded by a license fee and does not screen adverts apart from the promotion of its own future programming. On the commercial channels, the amount of airtime allowed for advertising is an overall average of 7 minutes per hour.

Television networks and local stations thrive on political campaigns. They are considered indispensable but are seldom held to “truth in message” creed of potato chips or salsa.

Political advertising in France is heavily restricted, and some, like Norway, completely ban it. Hooray for the Norwegians.

The Chinese government said the move to cut commercials from the middle of dramas would "improve the level of public cultural services, protect people's basic cultural rights and leave the people satisfied."

This is probably as happy a government edict as the Chinese have ever had. There were cheers from Hainan Island in the south to the banks of the Ice Festivals in Harbin.

Hold on to that remote and have an extra as backup in case of breakdown, for I do not see our government passing any regulations “in accordance with the people’s interests and demands.”

Remember, life is more fun when the commercials are muted. If the government and industry learn how much we love our clickers, they may ban them!

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Thanksgiving More Than Just A Day

2011-11-10T09:40:00.005-06:00

Thanksgiving is a godly time

One of the most profound thinkers and nicest ‘down to earth’ guy I ever met was the Right Revd. Browning Ware (A title he never used. Nothing reverential about Browning.) He had a way of getting to the heart of a matter in a most common sense way. He could make the most noble and lofty ideas come alive for us commoners in the pews. And you knew it came from a heart that understood suffering and knew inner pain, yet without being judgmental.

Browning Ware died almost a decade ago. Former Governor Ann Richards said of Browning, “Texas has lost a tall timber of wit and wisdom with the death of my friend, Browning Ware.”

Darrell Royal, former University of Texas football coach, said, “Browning was a remarkable articulate, dry-humored, an deeply spiritual man. I am grateful our paths crossed in friendship.”

He lived his life as an example to others. He saw every human being as a person of value to him. He often wrote his newspaper columns in an out-of-the-way café or filling station. He began one piece with “Down where I drink coffee there is a man who talks to himself. I have known several people who talk to themselves. But this fellow is different. He seemed to enjoy it.”

After his death his daughter compiled many of his brief commentaries from daily life. She published many of his words in “Diary of a Modern Pilgrim.” The following are Browning’s random thoughts of one Thanksgiving Day.

“Symbols tend to assume greater importance than the realities they represent. The result is the creation of minor idolatries by which we value appearance more than substance. By this willing self-deception, we wrench life from its roots and pull it toward the surface. Our lives become a garden of values in shallow soil. ‘What you see is what you get.’

“Reflections on holiday celebrations provoked this modest philosophical outburst. I am thinking of the contrast between Thanksgiving as a day and as a continuing attitude of life. The day, a symbol, was created as an expression of reality -- a grateful relationship to God and the world. Thanksgiving Day is excellent as a means but inadequate as the end of gratitude.

“Deep gratitude is not the by-product of material comfort and possessions. If this were true, Americans would be the most grateful people in the world and also the happiest. We are neither; certainly, not both. Gratitude has little to do with the presence or absence of things. Rather, it reflects confidence in God and trusts his good intentions toward us. Gratitude serves God happily with full or empty hands.

“So Thanksgiving is a day and more. To be both symbol and substance, it must be a way of life.”

Browning was not always that serious and often drove home vital truths with his dry wit. One would never take him to be the long-time pastor of the First Baptist Church of Austin, Texas. I understand the “Diary of a Modern Pilgrim, Life Notes From One Man’s Journey” is out of print, but if you ever come across a copy, it is a real treasure, and I recommend it as a most encouraging and fruitful read.

May next Thursday be more than just another holiday. May it be more than traditional football games. May it be a time when the greater human family is remembered and enriched. For those who celebrate the thanksgiving season alone, out of necessity or desire, may it be a time that will enrich what time is left on this good earth that God has so graciously shared with us.

--30—

Britt Towery’s columns appear every Friday in the West Texas newspapers: The Brownwood Bulletin and the San Antonio Standard-Times. His e-mail is: bet@suddenlink.net

My One Per-center View

2011-11-10T09:27:00.004-06:00

I must admit to being a part of the ninety-nine percent of the population who would love to see a little sunlight in these fogged-in darkening days. The one percenters are not entirely at fault for the foreboding clouds of displeasure. There is plenty of blame to go around for our winter of our discontent.
First, we are to blame for not electing better representatives. Second, for not demanding more integrity from them. Third, Demand our two major political parties develop and present us voters with competent and responsible leadership choices. Fourth, learn from these mistakes and pray forgiveness for not being better informed on the candidates.

Jack Abramoff, former king of the lobbyist and great colleague of Tom DeLay, appeared on last Sunday’s 60 Minutes program. Abramoff said nothing has changed in Washington since he was convicted of mail fraud and conspiracy in 2006. The lobbyists keep handing out the goodies and the politicians keep taking them. (Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it. – H. L. Mencken.)

We never seem to learn just how crooked the human heart can be. Stand up and speak out against the huge banks and corporations. They deserve a profit for their work, but not such outlandish ever-increasing profits. No longer is a simple profit enough.

Mantras of the establishment are many: Don’t rock the boat. Don’t upset the apple cart. Do not disrupt the status quo (Latin for “the things that were before”). Leave well enough alone. Innovation we don’t need.

The right to speak out in the public square is seldom appreciated by the authorities. In the 1830s to speak out against slavery was right and proper, but not at the best parties. Women took to the streets to gain the right to vote even when it was not ladylike. While they had the right to voice their opinion there were those who sat on the curb shaking their heads in disbelief of this audacity of freedom of speech.

The spontaneous rise of citizens, who formed "tea parties," or joined the "occupy" movement, have the right to speak, to give voice to their beliefs. Like it or not, it is the law.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has struck a cord with those who see the USA becoming the USC (the United States of Corporations). The Supreme Court has said corporations are persons, giving them rights to vote and pay for political candidates who will keep them in power.

As the Occupy movement has spread so has the resistance. A second Iraq war veteran has suffered serious injuries at the hands of the police in Oakland, California. Kayvan Sabehgi is in intensive care with a lacerated spleen. What a way to spend Veteran’s Day!

Sabehgi was walking away from the main area of trouble when he was clubbed and arrested. He spent 18 hours in jail before finally being sent to a hospital.

The Occupy movement is on the side of the police, as well as firefighters, teachers, nurses and countless other professions that continue to feel being short-changed.

These Occupiers don’t fit any mold except the freedom to sound off. It is an effort to save America’s middle class from becoming only a footnote in world history books.

It took Martin Luther King Jr. and hundreds of disenfranchised blacks years of demonstrations to wake up the Kennedy and Johnson administrations of the blatant injustices to fellow citizens.

How long will it take to wake us up to the corruption in high places and the increasing greed all around?

2011-10-28T15:30:00.003-05:00

BAPTISTS IGNORANT OF THEIR CHINA MISSION HERITAGE

“STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND,
Maudie and Wilson Fielder in China
1912-1950”

TELL A FRIEND ABOUT STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND. Milton Cunningham, one-time missionary to Africa and former President of the Baptist General Convention of Texas writes about the book “Strangers in a Strange Land” - “Wilson and Maudie Fieder lived to serve … The author’s love for China and his empathy for the Fielders can be seen in these pages. These pages will enrich and bless your life.”

The years the Fielders were in Interior China 1912 to 1950 were volatile years around the world.

This is the story of a Comanche county cowboy, Wilson Fielder, and Maudie Albritton his West Texas sweetheart from Miles. Two pioneers in China’s Henan province from 1912 to 1950.

When Wilson settled in Kaifeng, an ancient capital of China on the Yellow River, he realized he could not continue without his young sweetheart Maudie. She wondered why he had not proposed before going to the ends of the earth.

Included are dozens of photos, maps and insights on China. In addition to the Fielder family are many Baptist missionary colleagues, heretofore unknown. There is an update on Christianity since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

This book is an attempt to make SBC missions more personal. Through inspiration and information remind Baptists and others why the Great Commission is as important as ever.

Check out the Towery Tales website for more information:
wwwtowerytales.blogspot.com
and
www.strangersinastrangerland.blogspot.com

While there read more on missions

Tell a friend about “Strangers in a Strange Land”

Purchase by mail: $20. -- Purchase in stores: $15.
Britt Towery E-mail: bet@suddenlink.net
124 Northstar Drive, San Angelo, Texas 76903

20th Century Missions in China

2011-10-26T07:14:00.004-05:00

INTRODUCING A NEW BOOK ON CHINA MISSIONS HISTORY.

“STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND,
Maudie and Wilson Fielder in China 1912-1950”

Milton Cunningham, one-time missionary to Africa and former President of the Baptist General Convention of Texas writes about the book “Strangers in a Strange Land” - “Wilson and Maudie Fielder lived to serve … The author’s love for China and his empathy for the Fielders can be seen in these pages. These pages will enrich and bless your life.”

The years the Fielders were in Interior China 1912 to 1950 were volatile years around the world.

This is the story of a Comanche county cowboy, Wilson Fielder, and Maudie Albritton his West Texas sweetheart from Miles. Two pioneers in China’s Henan province from 1912 to 1950.

When Wilson settled in Kaifeng, an ancient capital of China on the Yellow River, he realized he could not continue without his young sweetheart Maude. She wondered why he had not proposed before going to the ends of the earth.

Included are dozens of photos, maps and insights on China. In addition to the Fielder family are many Baptist missionary colleagues, heretofore unknown. There is an update on Christianity since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

This book is an attempt to make SBC missions more personal. Through inspiration and information remind Baptists and others why the Great Commission is as important as ever.

Tell a friend about “Strangers in a Strange Land”

Purchase by mail: $20. -- Purchase in stores: $15.
Britt Towery E-mail: bet@suddenlink.net
124 Northstar Drive, San Angelo, Texas 76903

New book on China Missions History

2011-10-20T07:56:00.007-05:00

INTRODUCING A NEW BOOK ON CHINA MISSIONS HISTORY.

Beloved pastor Milton Cunningham, one-time missionary to Africa and former President of the Baptist General Convention of Texas writes about the book “Strangers in a Strange Land” - - -

“Wilson and Maudie Fieder lived to serve … The author’s love for China and his empathy for the Fielders can be seen in these pages. These pages will enrich and bless your life.”

“STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND,
Maudie and Wilson Fielder in China
1912-1950”

The years1912 to 1950 were volatile years as China struggled to become a republic. The new 20th century began with 4,000 Protestant missionaries in China. They were laying a foundation along side Chinese pastors and laity to meet the challenge when their churches would be limited (1950-60) and finally closed (1966-77). Thankfully, now reopened and growing as never before (1979-2011).

STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND is the story of a Comanche (TX) county cowboy, Wilson Fielder, and Maudie Albritton his West Texas sweetheart from Miles. Two pioneers in China’s Henan province from 1912 to 1950.

When Wilson settled in Kaifeng, an ancient capital of China on the Yellow River, where once a huge Jewish community resided, he realized he could not continue without his young sweetheart Maude. She wondered why he had not proposed before going to the ends of the earth. She joined him in 1914 and they were married in Shanghai.

How they dealt with the language, customs, Japanese air raids, warlords, bandits, young communists and two years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, is an amazing story. A time when everything seemed strange until Maude learned she was as strange looking to the Chinese as they were to her.

Included are dozens of photos, maps and insights on China. An introduction to the Fielder family and many Baptist missionary colleagues, heretofore unknown. An update on Christianity since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

Lack of understanding Baptist missionary history and heritage is rampant in most Baptist churches. This book attempts to be part of the remedy for the lack of such knowledge.

Check out the rest of this “Along the Way” website for more information. While there see new and old photos of Jody, the China we knew from 1982-92, our girls and my most recent West Texas newspaper columns. Purchase by mail is $20 including packing and postage. In stores $15. Click and send address to: Britt Towery

Britt Towery
124 Northstar Drive
San Angelo, Texas 76903
Cell phone: 325-262-5378
弟克陶普義牧師敬上

NEW BOOK:

2011-10-04T11:09:00.011-05:00

“STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND,
Maudie and Wilson Fielder in China 1912-1950”

The publication of my new book introduces the reader to pioneer Southern Baptist missionaries and their 40 years in China. That volatile first half of the 20th century as China struggles to become a republic.

STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND is the story of a Comanche county cowboy, Wilson Fielder, and Maudie Albritton his West Texas sweetheart from Miles. Two pioneers in China’s Henan province from 1912 to 1950.

When Wilson settled in Kaifeng, an ancient capital of China on the Yellow River, where once a huge Jewish community resided, he realized he could not continue without his young sweetheart Maude. She wondered why he had not proposed before going to the ends of the earth. She joined him in 1914 and they were married in Shanghai.

How they dealt with the language, customs, Japanese air raids, warlords, bandits, young communists and two years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, is an amazing story. A time when everything seemed strange until Maude learned she was as strange looking to the Chinese as they were to her.

Dozens of photos, maps and insights on China, the Fielder family and colleagues. Plus an update on China churches since 1950.

A fitting book gift for Christmas, church and school libraries, and that hard-to-please relative. A must for Baptist churches WMU or study groups. Purchases now accepted for $20.00 including postage. Special price for ten or more copies.

Bookstore signings in West Texas towns and hamlets in the planning stages.

Send an E-mail request with address to: bet@suddenlink.net
Or write and send $20. check to:
Britt Towery
124 Northstar Drive
San Angelo, Texas 76903
弟克陶普義牧師敬上

The Fielders of China, 1912-1950

2011-09-23T10:53:00.008-05:00

China Missionary Days of the Wilson Fielders
Looking back can help us see the future more clearly.

Jody Towery standing in doorway of last house where an ill Lottie Moon lived. This photo was taken in 1985 so it is hoped someone has done some housecleaning by now. Lottie did not starve herself because the Chinese were hungry and starving. She was sick and died in a Japanese port city on her way to retirement in the USA.

This new book takes up the story of Baptists in China about the time Lottie died.

STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND
A new approach to telling the story of pioneer missionaries. This is the story of Maudie and Wilson Fielder, Texans who went to China 100 years ago to share the Gospel. It is their story and China's story of the 20th century.

Lots of Southern Baptists know of Lottie Moon, but little else of what Baptist work has been like in China (or rest of the world for that matter) from 1835 to 1950. This but a part, but an important part. To know where we have been helps us know where to go! (ancient Chinese proverb)

Britt Towery with Wilson Fielder March 8, 1953, Stag Creek Baptist Church, Comanche County Texas. Fielder went to China from Comanche County in 1912. Spent over two years in Japanese internment camp in Shanghai. The book Stangers in a Strange Land relates the story of Maudie Albritton Fielder and Wilson in China. Purchase through e-mail or regular mail: Britt Towery Or The Tao Foundation, 124 Northstar Drive, San Angelo, Texas 76903. $20. postage and handling.

Christian growth in China exceeds the national GDP

Pray for the new leaders of the churches and seminaries.

STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND -- From West Texas to Central China, new book on Maudie and Wilson Fielder

2011-09-17T11:25:00.008-05:00

A Miles, Texas Sweetheart and a Comanche County Cowboy

The first time I stopped in Miles there was an excellent homemade pie store in what was once a gasoline filling station. For those new to West Texas, Miles, Texas, is a pleasant little town halfway between Ballinger and San Angelo on Hwy 67.

My purpose this visit was not for pie. I wanted to search out some local history. I wanted to see the area of town where Maudie Ethel Albritton lived.

The historical marker in front of the First United Methodist Church on Fourth and Broadway had just the facts I needed. The original 1901 wood frame Methodist Church was where Maudie attended Sunday school and church as a teenager.

Maudie was born in Navarro County in East Texas. Due to her mother’s poor health the family doctor recommended they move to a drier climate. They moved to Miles. Why Miles? The historical marker helped here too. The founder of the Miles Methodist Church was a Methodist circuit rider from Navarro County. It is quite possible that Maudie’s parents Tennessee and William Albritton knew him before he came west. Miles had a dry climate and good preaching.

Miles was home to Maudie until her 22nd birthday. The love of her life, Wilson Fielder, a cowboy from Comanche County, Texas, left the Concho River for China’s Yellow River. The fledging Republic of China was just emerging from the ruins of the Qing Dynasty.

The mail service from Central China to West Texas and back was slower than the Pony Express. With the patience of Job, Maudie accepted Wilson’s “far flung” proposal. So, in the summer of 1914, Maudie waved goodbye to friends and family at the Miles Santa Fe Railroad Depot and began the journey of her life.

A few months later Maudie married her teenage sweetheart, Wilson Fielder, in Shanghai, China. A honeymoon on the Yangzi River was but a beginning. Maudie and Wilson spent the next forty years sharing their faith in Central China, the birthplace of the Chinese people. They lived through some of the most hectic, action-packed years of China’s modern history.

The story of Maudie and Wilson Fielder has been in the works for twenty years. This columnist knew them well. The two youngest children of Maudie and Wilson made the book possible: Florence Ann McKinney and he late L. Gerald Fielder.

The title of the new publication of The Tao Foundation is “Strangers in a Strange Land.” Available in bookstores from October 10 –- Double Ten –- which is the one hundred year anniversary of the revolution that brirthed the Republic of China. (Based on the island of Taiwan since 1948.)

When Maudie’s train left Miles the town had a population of 1,500 and was served by two railroads. There were five churches, a beautiful brick school, two lumber yards and one of the strongest banks in Texas. (According to the Miles Messenger and Enterprize newspaper account.)

The Star Barber Shop advertised sharp razors, clean towels, hot and cold baths for a reasonable price. Tennis shoes (white) were selling for seventy-five cents a pair. The Central Hotel and Café offered a Sunday Chicken Dinner for thirty-five cents.

Maudie became a Baptist before going to join her Comanche County cowboy Baptist missionary Wilson Fielder. She was baptized in our very own Concho River the Summer of 1914 by Pastor Isaac Newton. The book is filled with such nuggets and items of inspiration; dozens of photos; a China map; an update on China Christianity after the Fielder’s retirement in 1950.

--30--

MORE INFORMATION ON PUBLICATION DATE AND PRICE OF THE BOOK COMING SOON - - - - - -

Three who made a difference: John Stott, Eugene Nida, Dick Baker

2011-09-17T11:21:00.003-05:00

Three who made a difference

Renown Christian pastor Rick Warren observed what church goers really want in a pastor. He saw a church sign that said: "Come hear our pastor! He's not very good but he's brief"

The national magazine Christianity Today recently interviewed Billy Graham who will turn 93 on November 7. The interviewer asked Graham: “If you could, would you go back and do anything differently?”
Graham’s reply: “I would have steered clear of politics. I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to the people in high places. People in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to. But looking back I know I sometimes crossed the line, and I wouldn’t do that now.”

Last month I happened on a tiny news item that said Eugene A. Nida, a native of Oklahoma died in Spain August 25 at age 96. This Baptist minister was a linguist and was widely considered the father of modern Bible translations, recruiting and training native speakers to translate the Bible into a great number of languages.

To Nida “no two languages are identical, it stands to reason that there can be no absolute correspondence between languages. Hence, there can be no fully exact translations.” While the impact of a translation may be close to the original, there can be no identity in detail.

Two of his books that were helpful in my ministry were “Message and Mission” (1960) and “Customs, Culture and Christianity” (1963). They remain important to the person seeking to make his faith and different cultures and languages more relevant.

Another loss to the Christian faith was the passing of John Stott this summer. It left a huge hollow space in the evangelical cause of the Christian faith. New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote in 1985, “If evangelicals chose a pope, they would likely select John Stott.”

This British Anglican, who went on to minister to all brands of Christianity, was the author of over 50 books. His most popular book, “Basic Christianity,” could be compared to a textbook guide for Christians of all stripes. A book that has helped many relate to the fundamental truth and principal importance of the Christian faith.

His many sayings have become a trademark of the evangelical world. Such as: “I want to shift conviction from a book [Bible], if you like, to a person [Jesus]. As Jesus himself said, the Scriptures bear witness to me. Their main function is to witness to Christ.”

John Stott has been the compassionate strain of evangelicalism. In recent years, this form of evangelicalism has been over shadowed, and too often displaced by the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and
John Stott has made a far greater impact on the Christian movement than all the television preachers – who, as New York Times columnist Kris Kristof wrote --- Stott’s primary “concern was that Christians emulate the life of Jesus --–“ especially Jesus’ concern for the poor, oppressed, demoralized, exploited and powerless.

Unfortunately, in recent years, Americans have come to accept that a preacher can explain the Bible on television without much historic knowledge of Bible times; showing little or no interest in the nuances of the original texts. American evangelical church members have a history of been skeptical of an educated clergy. A college or seminary education was not conducive to “well-grounded spiritual preaching.”

And last, but no less important, was the death of Richard D. Baker September 5, 2011. For more than forty years Dick and his brother Bo were the finest evangelistic team Southern Baptist ever produced. Dick wrote the Baylor University Fight Song along with hundred of gospel songs like: “His Way Mine” and “Longing for Jesus.”

Men like Eugene Nida, John Stott and Dick Baker made our world a great deal better for having walked among us.

Wherefore Art Thou MIDDLE CLASS?

2011-09-17T11:18:00.002-05:00

The squeeze on the middle class escalates

I remember seeing my barber dad sitting on the edge of the bed at night, going through the coins and bills of that day’s labor.

Barbers are basic middle class America. That is how it was and is with small local, independent one or two chair barbershops.

Why else would cartoonist Charles Schultz have given Charlie Brown a barber for a father? Because the loveable little Charlie Brown was “everykid” (I made the word up. It means Charlie Brown was a typical example of every ordinary American kid). He probably never won a baseball game but he never gave up. He probably gave Lucy fits with his humility and persistence. He was “everykid.”

And barber Brown (adults never appear in the strip) is “everyman,” the ordinary person. The world of the ordinary person, the middle class, they are the hub around which the wheels of a nation turns. Call him “your average Joe Blow,” or John Doe; the ordinary guy or gal that makes up the American middle class is hurting – soon to be missing.

This term, middle class, is primarily an American democratic creation; another “only in America” thing. African and Asian countries, Europeans and Latin Americans have a tiny if any middle class population. They have the rich and they have the poor.

The richer the rich get, the poorer the poor get. The more the privileged obtain and gain, the more the poor are deprived and left at the end of the bread line. Nothing we can argue with there. (But I’m sure some will.)

It’s a world of winners and losers; the upper crust and the crumbs. That is the way it has been since the days of Plato and Ezekiel. Evidently it will always be thus till we all get to heaven – where there is a classless society from all I have read. According to the Good Book, everybody in heaven is rich.

Meanwhile, back on the U.S.A. bit of earth, the middle class continues to be squeezed harassed and oppressed by a growing oligarchy. Oligarchy is a new word for some of us. It began back when the Greeks were giving democracy a try out. Those against democracy were from the Oligarchy Party --- rule of the few over the many. In Texas we call that “rule by a few fat rich guys.”

This take-over by the few is a work in progress. Recently, this year, the American Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same rights as an individual. Corporate personhood leads to oligarchy. This is not a new debate. It goes way back, but what scares us middle class folks is the role of corporate money in politics. Elections are won by those who have the most money to spend. My friends say this makes for an uneven playing field.

Some middle of the road middle class politically-afflicted individuals want to level the playing field, This, they claim, by introducing and supporting a brand new amendment to the Bill of Rights. It would be the 28th Amendment and says corporations are not individuals.

The New World Order, a conspiracy about who rules the world in the future, may not be a huge Socialist Government takeover. It may turn out to be a mere Corporate Oligarchy.

Either way it is difficult to think this is good for the likes of Charlie Brown’s middle class barber father.

Tea Party Not Just For Tea Drinkers

2011-09-17T11:15:00.002-05:00

A Big Tea Party For Everyone

The announcement was shouted from the rooftops, loud and clear: It’s party Time! Everybody is invited! Refreshments will be provided! There will be free drinks for all! There is but one minor inconvenience: there will be no beer, hard liquor or cider, not even coffee on the table.

The drink of choice will be tea. Tea, with or without sugar, ice cold, hot or tepid, black or red, tea made to make your taste buds rejoice as if you were in an old time brush arbor spiritual revival.

Feel free to bring along any good fruit flavors to add to the mix and savor the moment. Nothing like having a party where everyone’s particular tastes are met.

Since the party is for everyone’s tea-liking taste, why not just call it a Tea Party? Make it ‘The Place Where Everybody Is Somebody.”

Tea -- Oolong, light or dark, black or red, green or white, Hibiscus or Rooibos, even chai and wellness teas -- will be on the serving table. All the blends are sure to quince your thirst at this great American Tea Party.

It should be noted this Tea Party does not have any relationship with The Republic of Tea Company that claims to be the leading purveyor of premium teas. A tea has to be of the greatest quality to have the approval of those who gather around the exalted Tea Party table. Few are elevated to such a status.

Tea leaves are prepared and cured using various methods. Sometimes they are run through hot and boiling water. There will be no boiling water at this Tea Party. The tea is to be ready to consume just like good old Jim Jones Kool Aid. A drink preferred by a variety of less cultivated parties.

The Tea Party we envision is a breed apart. It cares for all kinds of people – even those who do not drink tea. But be sure of one thing: these folks are occasionally opposed to fear-mongering. At an earlier, sparsely attended Tea Party, major time was given to informing Americans there is much to fear from the Muslim’s Sharia law.

In America today, a scary anti-Muslim sentiment is boiling over in a most ridiculous way. Someone needs to turn down the heat. Ultra-conservatives (who invented the Tea Parties with their heaps of corporate money) are now publicly promoting the notion that Sharia law is going to displace our Supreme Court and do away with our Magna Carter freedoms. It is all a big secret as to how the clandestine Muslims are going to do this. But do it, they are, say the elders and high priests of the Tea Party. (No names, so as to protect the guilty.)

Islamic law has for centuries kept Muslim government and religion tied together with their own version of Sharia law. It is a guide for devout Muslims. America is not at risk of falling under the sway of Sharia law. We have enough problems keeping the laws we have.

Get over it! No Sharia edicts for America. It will not happen even if Oklahoma’s legislative gurus keep making laws to ban something we don’t even have, and are not in danger of getting.

When I was young there was supposed to be a communist under every bed and around every corner. Never found one. Senator Joe McCarthy was the chief nut job then.

Don’t be afraid of Sharia law, the Tea Party will be on the front lines defending the laws the Founding Fathers who gave their blood, fortunes and estates for democratic law. The Tea Party, after this next big meeting, will have all the facts to show there is no cause for alarm – except for some ancient Islamic edict. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? (For the younger readers: that is the opening line of the radio drama, “The Shadow.”)

If you are going to the Tea Party, remember to bring a brown paper bag lunch. Because nothing nourishing will be served, just the Tea Party’s own mixed-up-tea.

Roses and all the best to Dick Baker

2011-09-02T07:27:00.009-05:00

This little note, in part, was sent through snail mail to friend Dick Baker in Plano, Texas.

Roses are for the living: Personal word to Dick Baker

Nobody ever sang "I may never pass this way again" like this blessed musician and friend. Just dropping this note to let him know what he means to us. As his late Bro. BO said so often in jest but from the heart, "Dick's always 'longing for Jesus.'

September 2, 2011
Dear Dick,

You are constantly in our thoughts. Jody and I would love to travel up to see you, but not in a position to do so.

But the many songs and words of encouragement to us through the years continue to be a blessing.

Like the time we went down into the Arizona San Manuel Copper Corporation underground mine with one of the church deacons. What a time it was. At lunchtime when they set off the explosives, you remarked that noise and shaking was same as the powerful blast of salvation that God gives. Changes everything. Always the poet. But more than a poet, your smile, songs and spirit brought up the light of any room you entered. You were great the week you spent with our growing church in the desert north of Tucson.

And that monkey in our backyard in Kaohsiung, Taiwan when you and Bo took time to stop after meetings in Singapore. The monkey seemed to like you. How could it be otherwise.

And, the lunch with us for our daughter Linda’s birthday in the revolving restaurant in Kowloon in 1970. Your son Paul sure liked the oysters on a half shell in that supper-club basement of the Grand Hotel.

I’m looking at a BSU newsletter you and Jody wrote when she was finishing Farmersville High School, Texas, and you were beginning Baylor University. --- And the joy of introducing her best college friend, Margaret Ann Self to you. A meeting planned in heaven long before any of us were born.

We wish you and all your families and friends some of your joy and faith as the shades begin coming down and the light of real life begins to form out there in front of you.

God bless, dear friend, and thanks for coming our way.

Love,

弟克陶普義牧師敬上
Britt Towery
124 Northstar Dr.
San Angelo, Texas 76903

E-mail: bet@suddenlink.net
Blog: www.britt-towery.blogspot.com

"In the cross of Christ I glory" Hymn from Macau

2011-08-31T17:08:00.004-05:00

Macau, China, where "In the cross of Christ I glory" hymn was born.

Macau, China: A Hymn of the Cross

In this pre-casino days when the Portuguese Province of Macau was the first European settlement in East Asia, it looked like this but not as big.

St. Paul's Cathedral (built from 1582-1602) can be seen upper left, after the 19th century typhoon and fire. An old Fort is upper right. The Southern Baptist mission house is in the neighborhood just below the Portuguese fort. The distant hills are not so far away. They are in the Guangdong province of southern China. Macau is less than an hour away by jet-foil.

Sir John Bowring, when he was governor of Hong Kong, visited Macau after the great typhoon and fire that destroyed the Cathedral. He was inspired with the mangled cross high up on the Cathedral. He went on to write the hymn "In the cross of Christ I glory, tow'ring o'er the wrecks of time..."

Wish we had more governors like Brother Bowring.

The name CHRISTIAN has been hi-jacked

2011-08-29T11:19:00.003-05:00

Time to “take back” the Christian name and influence

Back a few years when we lived in Fort Worth, still one my favorite towns, Jody and I visited the Birchman Avenue Baptist Church to hear the famous Lester Roloff preach.

Hearing Lester on his daily radio program made me curious to see and hear him in person. He was apt to break out in song right in the middle of his sermon.

He would sashay into song at the end of every 15-minute broadcast with, “One sat alone / beside the highway begging / then Jesus came / and washed his sins away.”

Lester was a real spellbinder; he was ahead of his time and missed out on the riches to be made in televangelistic preaching. He died when his private plane crashed in East Texas in 1982. He was not so much flamboyant as he was common, which really attracted South Texas farmers and peasants.

Lester Roloff got into trouble in 1967 with his unorthodox, yet Christian fundamentalist, management practices of his Rebekah Home for Girls in Corpus Christi became public. For one thing, Lester went all out in promoting and using the Bible verse: “spare the rod, spoil the child.”

In 1973 the Texas Attorney General finally had enough complaints to take him to court. Brother Lester (that’s what everyone called him) was prosecuted for his excessive corporal punishment of the girls. Lester said on the stand: “Better a pink bottom than a black soul.” The attorney said he was more concerned with bottoms “that are blue, black and bloody.”

(It is not important to the story, but Lester Roloff was a graduate of Baylor University. The school is not likely to build a statue for him anytime soon. Actually, old BU would rather forget Bro. Lester. While on the subject, BU also hates to admit Willie Nelson once went to the world’s largest Baptist university. They ought to name a music building after him.)

Weird as it was, Roloff got a lot of support as Kathryn Joyce, author of “Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement,” wrote recently in an expose of abusive teen homes. Roloff passed off the scene but his co-workers moved on to cause even greater misery for young girls and more shame on the name of Christ in Missouri. Wiley Cameron, who worked for 35 years with Roloff opened “New Beginnings” home for girls.

In 1998 Cameron’s group returned to Texas after then-Gov. George W. Bush deregulated the activities of faith-based groups in Texas. Later Wiley Cameron was chosen to serve on Bush’s peer-review board for Christian children’s agencies in Texas.

Abuse charges emerge all the time in Texas, Missouri, George and Florida. State legislatures consistently look the other way. “We the People” can’t get a hearing on this immoral practice of consecration camps for teens.

The situation is made even more tragic when “faith,” and particular “Christian” terms are tied to the shameful practice. These modern day pirates go about their nefarious ways, hiding behind that very thick, dark and misleading “faith-based” curtain.

These groups are powerful. They are also good at stirring up fear when they are exposed. Nothing like a little fear to rouse the troops. (Typical tactic of the G. O. P. and their appendage “tea parties.” But, I digress.)

Anytime someone suggest more oversight on faith-based programs, especially those “reforming” teens, they whip out several myths: Christians are being persecuted; regulations are bad; government want to control the churches, etc.

When bills come up in State legislatures that would curb such abusive projects as those begun by Lester Roloff clones the National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs will oppose it.

Martin Luther King, Jr is not the only one with “a dream.” I hope to see the name “Christian” vindicated and restored to its proper status, and no longer abused by these shysters.

Tea Party Worries About Sharia law

2011-08-22T10:50:00.005-05:00

A Big Tea Party For Everyone

The announcement was shouted from the rooftops, loud and clear: It’s party Time! Everybody is invited! Refreshments will be provided! There will be free drinks for all! There is but one minor inconvenience, there will be no beer, hard liquor or cider, not even coffee on the table.

The drink of choice will be tea. Tea, with or without sugar, ice cold, hot or tepid, black or red, tea made to make your taste buds rejoice as if you were in an old time brush arbor spiritual revival.

Feel free to bring along any good fruit flavors to add to the mix and savor the moment. Nothing like having a party where everyone’s special tastes are met.

The promoters next announced, nay, proclaimed to all West Texans: A significant event was appearing in their very city, right down the street, in your neighborhood, where every girl is like the one next door, and all the boys are great football stars just like their dads, and mothers who volunteer for every worthy cause.

Since the party is for everyone’s tea-liking taste why not just call it a Tea Party? Make it ‘The Place Where Everybody Is Somebody.”

Tea -- Oolong, light or dark, black or red, green or white, Hibiscus or Rooibos, even chai and wellness teas -- will be on the serving table. All the blends are sure to quince your thirst at this great American Tea Party.

It should be noted this Tea Party does not have any relationship with The Republic of Tea Company that claims to be the leading purveyor of premium teas. A tea has to be of the greatest quality to have the approval of those who gather around the exalted Tea Party table. Few are elevated to that status.

Tea leaves are prepared and cured using various methods. Sometimes they are run through hot and boiling water. There will be no boiling water at the Tea Party. The tea to be ready to consume just like good old Kool Aid. A drink preferred by a variety of less cultivated parties.

The Tea Party we envision is a breed apart. It cares for all kinds of people – even those who do not drink tea. Also they are occasionally opposed to fear-mongering. At an earlier, sparsely attended Tea Party, major time was given to informing Americans there is much to fear from the Muslim’s Sharia law.

In America today, an anti-Muslim sentiment is boiling over in a most ridiculous way. Ultra-conservatives are now publicly promoting the notion that Sharia law is going to displace our Supreme Court and do away with our Magna Carter freedoms. It is all a big secret as to how the clandestine Muslims are going to do this. But do it, they are, says the elders of the Tea Party.

Islamic law has for centuries kept Muslim government and religion tied together with Sharia law. It is a guide for devout Muslims. America is not at risk of falling under the sway of Sharia law. Get over it! It will not happen even if Oklahoma’s legislative gurus keep making laws to ban something we don’t even have, and are not getting.

When I was young there was supposed to be a communist under every bed and around every corner. Never found one. Senator Joe McCarthy was the chief nut job then.

Don’t be afraid of Sharia law, the Tea Party will be on the front lines defending the laws the Founding Fathers who gave their blood, fortunes and estates for democratic law. The Tea Party, after this next big meeting, will have all the facts to show there is no cause for alarm. Or is this writer merely naïve? Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? (For the younger readers: that is the opening line of the radio drama, “The Shadow.”)

If you are going to the Tea Party, remember to bring a brown paper bag lunch. Nothing nourishing will be served, just the Tea Party’s own home-made-up-tea.

Prince Flowing Mane from Paint Creek

2011-08-20T12:47:00.006-05:00

Another Texican running for President

“Heavens to Betsy,” Aunt Mae might have said had she heard the flowing mane-blessed present governor of Texas announce his intention of running for the office of the President of the United States of America.

To us nephews and nieces, Aunt Mae, along with her older sister, Aunt Martha, were viewed as powerful women. They had opinions and could care less if they were ignored. They knew what they knew and were proud of it. Only the stupid would disagree with Aunt Martha --- at least until out of sight.

Aunt Martha smoked. I don’t mean politically, I mean literally she smoked. She loved her Chesterfields. During the war she smoked Wings. The Wings brand had a war plane card in each pack. Once she knew that I knew she smoked, she saved the airplane cards for me.

Back in those days most ladies did not smoke – at least not in public. Aunt Mae took a dim view of her older sister smoking. But it never became an issue with them. It wouldn’t have made any difference “no how,” they’d say.

Uncle Louis and Aunt Martha got married after World War I. He grew up in Borger, Texas, and then went off to drive an ambulance in that “war to end all wars.” Ernest Hemingway described Uncle Louis well in one of his war stories. I can’t prove that, but am pretty sure he would have made a stirring character in a Hemingway book.

So much time has passed in Texas since these two aunts and Uncle Louis graced the scene. These were the depression 30s and war 40s. Compared to today it was like living on a distant planet.

They were probably Democratic Party believers. Then again, everybody was in Texas in those days. No self-respecting man, woman, boy or girl would be anything else. Republicans, in those days, were just a generation away from the Yankee carpet-baggers that did more harm to the south than any cotton-pickin’ boil weevil.

They knew first-hand what happens when a Republican president sets up business in the oval office. Ask those who have been there: What do you get? Whadeyeget? You get a full-scale, one hundred percent depression, complete with anxiety, misery, hardship, and utter hopelessness, that eventually led to another war.

When the carpet-bagger Republicans finally left, Texas could say the Civil War was over and Texas was safe in the hands of the Democratic Party.

It would stay that way for over 100 years. A veritable heaven on earth. Then in the late 1950s when justice prevailed and black kids could begin to get a better education, both Republican and Democratic whites fled to the suburbs. Avoiding the trauma of “mixed schooling.”

Democrats-in-name only also fled the party and became Republicans. And the Republican Party and its new “tea party” image has put a pall over Texas and much of the country.

“Heavenly days,” puts it too mildly as we think of another good-old-boy with Republican hues being in the White House. Having never been prone to the use of curses, gutter, low-life language, I can express it no better than exclaim, “Holy Moses, what’s next?”

According to right-wing Protestant radio stations, like the American Family Radio, Prince Flowing Mane from Paint Creek is already assured to bring Christianity back to the White House and free it of the not-really-an American, Muslim-loving, pretend president.

Heavenly Days. Saints preserve us. Whadeyeget? Another day older and deeper in (censored).

[Set to be published in Aug 26 edition of Brownwood (TX) Bulletin and San Angelo (TX) Standard-Times dailies]

Ross Coggins, 1927-2011

2011-08-04T13:49:00.004-05:00

For some years now I have had the pleasure of corresponding with a friend from out of the past. But recently my e-mails to Ross Coggins were not acknowledged.

Today word came from friends in Singapore of his passing. I knew his health was failing, but his notes and phone conversations were never about his condition. His insight into our devolving government changes and to the plight of the Christian community were great food for thought. He shared a poem he had written for a loved one in his family of friends that I was able to share when my dear friend Joe Swan died in 2008. Now the poet is gone.

I first met Ross and his lovely wife, Annette, in Hong Kong. They were appointed Southern Baptist missionaries to Indonesia in 1955. At state affairs, mostly social affairs, he met Sukarno, the first Indonesian president. His stories of the old dictator were interesting, but this is not the place for such sidelights.

Ross was looking to buy a camera in our favorite camera-hole-of-a-shop just across from the Grand Hotel in Tsimshatsui district of Kowloon.

A native of Wichita Falls, Texas, Ross attended the University of Texas and received his B.A. at Baylor University, Waco, Texas and a B.D. degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas. He was the Associate Director of Student Work for the Baptist General Convention of Texas, before going to Indonesia.
After language study the Coggins worked in Surabaya and Bandung, before taking a new challenge with the United States Federal Government Aid Agencies. He was stationed in Rome and the islands of the Caribbean, among other places.

He should be well-know to Southern Baptists for his hymn “Send me, O Lord, send me.” In 1976 his poem “The Development Set” was published and can be found on several web sights even now. It speaks of his burden to help sick and dying peoples through their governments all over the globe.

He did not travel around the world telling poor countries what they should do and how they should change. He tried to persuade rich countries to change the policies and behaviors that hinder the poorest of nations to prosper.
Here are excerpts from “The Development Set” by Ross Coggins showing through satire how little we really care:

Our thoughts are deep and our vision global;
 Although we move with the better classes
Our thoughts are always with the masses.

We discuss malnutrition over steaks  
And plan hunger talks during coffee breaks.  
Whether Asian floods or African drought,  
We face each issue with open mouth.

We bring in consultants whose circumlocution  
Raises difficulties for every solution --  
Thus guaranteeing continued good eating
 By showing the need for another meeting.

Or say, "That's fine in practice, but don't you see:
 It doesn't work out in theory!"  
A few may find this incomprehensible,  
But most will admire you as deep and sensible.

Development set homes are extremely chic,
Full of carvings, curios, and draped with batik.
Eye-level photographs subtly assure
That your host is at home with the great and the poor.
Enough of these verses - on with the mission!  
Our task is as broad as the human condition!
 Just pray god the biblical promise is true:
 The poor ye shall always have with you.

Ross, may your spirit continue to help those of us still here to make a difference rather than just take up space.

Poets are naive on Mexico drug war

2011-08-01T11:13:00.003-05:00

Javier Sicilia, poet essayist from Cuernavaca, Mexico, held a peace rally in El Paso this summer. His criticisms of the Mexican government has grown stronger since the death of his son. He said, “I have begun to learn the names of the 40,000 dead, who died crying out for justice.”

Sicilla also placed some of the blame on the United States. The drug consumption of the States is the basic problem. The desire for drugs here is at the heart of this tragic situation.

Add to the mix, the United States provides weapons, meant to help, but only make the situation worse. Gun shows abound along the border. These gun sellers and their gaudy shows are legal, but deadly.

The rival gangs in Mexico are creeps who see only dollar signs. These “scum of the earth” Mexicans bandit-armies have proven that human life of their own people mean nothing to them. It is now an undeclared war. There is little prospect of it ending until the United States makes some sensible changes in the drug laws.

To have such a war right in our own back yard is not acceptable. But it goes on, just as it has for years. When it becomes personal, in the case of Javier Sicilla, we stand up and complain.

Add to the mix, the United States provides weapons, meant to help, but only make the situation worse. Gun shows abound along the border. These gun sellers and their gaudy shows are legal, but deadly.

Oscar Menendez, filmmaker and friend of Sicllia, says: “he is very hurt by the death of is son.” Mexico. Like the States have had many protests and marches , but they soon fade away. Menendez, however is on record as saying, “I think this one will be different. We’re in it for the long fight. Javier is not going to drop this.”

A poet has a way of touching the hearts of the people. He can put the problem in a context for thinking people, on both sides of the border, to get serious about this war.

To bring us up to date, last March Sicilia’s 24-year-old son, Juan Francisco, and six of his friends were killed by drug cartel criminal goons in Cuernavaca.

The local police have little power in this war. The Army has come and only made things worse. The evident corruption of government institutions makes it difficult for anyone trying to live a normal life.

Sicllia, in his letter to the government, trys to get the point across that the obsnece number of deaths has become an epidemic in the countryside.

In Mexico City’s main square over 90,000 people gathered to protest the inaction of government to the crisis. Mexico President Felipe Calderon has a lot to answer for. It is said that Ciudad Juarez alone has had 9,000 killed since 2007.

In Juarez, just across the little stream known as the Rio Grande, El Paso slumbers in peace. The Texas city is safe from the slaughter because it makes a good transfer point and does not upset the local government. Washington, DC. Is a long ways away.

To be so close to a war should be unnerving, but it does not seem to strike a cord of care. To just blame El Paso is wrong, for San Angelo is not all that far from the Rio Grande. The Texas-Mexico border is long and what hurts on one side affects the other side.

Austin is closer than the politicians realize. They need to wake up to the realities of war next door. When we “Remember the Alamo,” be good to recall who won the battle in that little mission in San Antonio.

Poets are naïve.

Enjoy Life "in the now," It has an expiration date!

2011-08-01T09:43:00.002-05:00

Enjoy life now... It has an expiration date!
Living in the “now” is what living is all about. What has gone before is gone forever, unless we choose to keep on re-living it in our faulty memories. What is yet to come, always hinges on “possibilities.” We can’t live today on what is past, good, bad or questionable. We can’t live today on what may or may not happen in the coming days or our possible future predicaments.

I am writing today’s opinion piece to myself. I am writing this for myself. So, if anyone takes the time to read it, know it is a simple statement of what I need to tell myself today (and truthfully, every day).
It is definitely true that the “now,” this day, this hour, this moment is all I have. I try to remind myself that it should be lived to the fullest, enjoyed with every breath.

All the experts keep telling me, “Don’t clutter up your life with what could have been.” “Don’t lose your only ‘today’ worrying about what might be around the corner.”

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” So said Pulitzer Prize recipient Annie Dillard. Everyday there are ‘moments’ that make the day a joy, or at least pleasurable. The ‘now’ moments are undoubtedly our most valuable commodity.

Wise old gurus stress ‘time’ as the greatest of our possessions. Many of the Bible’s parables and stories urge the wise use of time. Recognizing that the time-now-in-our-hands is all we have --- and it can be a liberating force evolving into a “life lived at its fullest.”

Time is like studying a foreign language – no matter how hard I study, if I do use the language, I lose it. Time is a gift to be appreciated, even treasured or cherished, otherwise I lose it. “Cherish the moment” may sound too sentimental or preachy, but it sure beats just “spending” time or even worse, “killing” time. Today is too valuable for me to let slip away on whims, grudges, resentments, or slights encountered along life’s way.

Al Capp, the creator of one of my all-time favorite comic strips, Li’l Abner, lost his left leg at the age of nine. He wrote a memoir with the up-beat, positive title: “My Well Balanced Life On A Wooden Leg.” He didn’t let the loss of a leg ruin the rest of his days. His cheerful autobiographical essays attest to his living in the “now.”

So, I am saying to myself, enjoy life “now”... right here and now! For life has an expiration date!

JESSE AND WILMA KIDD

2011-07-17T07:05:00.003-05:00

As far back as I can remember I have had a fascination for the country of Burma. Reading Courtney Anderson’s “To the Golden Shore,” the life of Adoniram Judson had a lot to do with this interest.

The year 1812 is famous not only for a second war with Britain and Tchaikovsky’s famous overture, but it was also the year Adoniram Judson began his missionary work in Burma.

When I met Jesse Kidd, a retired missionary to Brazil, my interest in him grew more when I learned he was a World War II veteran in the fight to keep the Burma Road open for our allies in China.

Weeks after Japan’s attack on Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, they stuck at Hong Kong, the Philippines and Burma in their attempt to rule Asia and eventually the world.

Down in the Burma jungles, on the southwest border with China, Jesse Kidd remembered: “January 19, 1945 at 5:30 a.m. we were approaching the Burma Road. We had been working our way on foot through the trackless jungle for 36 sleepless hours to reach our target.

“We were just getting into position when the enemy opened fire on us. The trooper next to me took a direct hit, and I was splashed with his blood. Why the sniper stopped shooting, I do not know.”

Jesse still asks the question of why his buddy was killed and he was spared. The gruesomeness of war stays locked in his mind, causing countless nightmares. “In my mind I am still holding my position, but I am running out of ammunition.”

Jesse asks, “how does one write about something he has tried to forget from sixty years ago?” He was on the burial detail. “Trooper was the first one buried that day. One by one we wrapped our fallen comrades in their GI blankets and buried them just a few hundred yards from the Burma Road.”

He continues, “Those young men were just out of high school. I have tried to find out if their remains were ever brought home, and I got no satisfactory answer.

The long countless nights, hunger and total exhaustion were part of the price for victory. “God alone has been my Rock.” Jesse said.

The Americans, under General Vinegar Bend Stillwell, fought their way from Indian territory (now Bangladesh) through swamps, mountains, monsoons and typhoons to clear the road and Burma of the Japanese.

Until the road was cleared Air Transport Command planes flew from Allied bases in Assam, India to Kunming, China, to supply Chiang’s army and the American Flying Tigers outfit.

The flight over the Hump took them over the Himalayan Mountains. The five-hour, 700-mile trip was considered one of the most dangerous in the war. Not counting the freak winds and unpredictable turbulence, C-47s were not designed to fly at 20,000 feet. Later, larger planes made the run. Supplies were also dropped for the troops in Burma. By the end of the war, the Hump pilots had flown 777,000 tons of supplies to keep China fighting, with the loss of 910 men.

Down in the Burma jungles, Jesse Kidd writes “January 19, 1945 at 5:30 a.m. we were approaching the Burma Road. We had been working our way on foot through the trackless jungle for 36 sleepless hours to reach our target.

“We were just getting into position when the enemy opened fire on us. The trooper next to me took a direct hit, and I was splashed with his blood. Why the sniper stopped shooting, I do not know.”

Jesse still asks the question of why his buddy was killed and he was spared. The gruesomeness of war stays locked in his mind, causing countless nightmares. “In my mind I am still holding my position, but I am running out of ammunition.”

Jesse asks, “how does one write about something he has tried to forget from sixty years ago?” He was on the burial detail. “Trooper was the first one buried that day. One by one we wrapped our fallen comrades in their GI blankets and buried them just a few hundred yards from the Burma Road.”

He continues, “Those young men were just out of high school. I have tried to find out if their remains were ever brought home, and I got no satisfactory answer.

The long countless nights, hunger and total exhaustion were part of the price for victory. “God alone has been my Rock.” Jesse said.

After the war the American soldiers moved into Kunming, Yunnan province, China. From there to Shanghai where, when each soldier had enough points, they returned home by ship. While in Shanghai Jesse attended Christmas services in the Moore Memorial Methodist Church on Tibet Road. (Now the Mu En Church, first in Shanghai to be re-opened in 1979 following the tragic Cultural Revolution.)

The Arkansas youngster, Jesse Lee Kidd, was a 22-year old war veteran by the time he got home. After graduation from Ouachita Baptist University he pastored the Ebenezer Baptist Church in El Dorado, Ark., while in seminary. The church saw him through seminary and supported him as a single missionary in Brazil. He became pastor of the Central Baptist Church of Volta Redonda, in Brazil’s interior.

In Brazil, Jesse met Nebraska farm girl, Wilma Alice Gemmell. She was a former Assistant Dean of Women and graduate of Howard Payne University, later became secretary to Juliet Mather, writing, editing and overseeing Southern Baptists’ Women’s Missionary Union publications. Her first foreign missions experience was in the financial offices of the SBC Brazil Mission in Rio de Janeiro.

Their courtship was somewhat long distance at first. She lived in Rio and he was a long bus ride away in the interior. Jesse and Wilma Alice were married later in the States. They then served as Southern Baptist missionaries in Brazil until retirement in 1989.

Their autobiography, “The Kidds of Brazil,” Morris Publishing (1999), Kearney, Nebraska, is presently out of print. They now live at Baptist Memorials, San Angelo, Texas. They are still in good health and active in the First Baptist Church, San Angelo, Texas. Their e-mail address: jessewilmakidd@suddenlink.com.

The Curse of Annual Family Form Letters

2011-07-15T09:55:00.001-05:00

OPEN LETTER TO FRIENDS WHO SEND FORM LETTERS:

I began today’s column as a personal “form letter” to all those people who send annual letters at Christmas. You know, those that share all the great things happening in their lives during the past year. I decided to write my own. I began it this way:

This is one of those “who in the world cares” letters that usually flood our mailboxes at Christmastime. The kind that is filled with the exploits of kids, grandkids and great-grandkids with whom we have never met; have never corresponded with and have no plans to meet.

Who doesn't love to go to the mailbox and find a newsy letter? The disappointment comes when it is a self-congratulatory opus of someone’s second cousin being promoted at Taco Bell? --- Merry Christmas!

Or to get a long detailed account from this voice out of the dark and distant past detailing that year’s medical record of having survived mind-boggling bouts with gout and hammer toes. – Merry Christmas!

And those family photos included are a mystery. Who is this old couple and the thirty or forty newly acquired descendents standing around?

We are supposed to remember one-time colleagues, co-workers or church and school (even back to grade school) classmates and be enlightened with all the plaudits and fun times they have been blessed with over the previous twelve months.

These form letters do not bother the wife. But I am well into my eighth decade and I have my hands full emptying my mailbox that is stuffed full with fast-food circulars and “save you money” letters trying to con me into buying another credit card, or subscribe to Playboy or the Foreign Affairs Journal.

I have enough trouble remembering the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, much less reading an annual family newsletter about somebody’s remarkable progeny’s promethean feats and unusual accomplishments?

What I wanted to write has been written and published already by Michael Lent, a Hollywood screenwriter. His 2007 Simon and Schuster book “Christmas Letters from Hell: All the News We Hate to love,” says it all. Michael shares a collection of the best collection of do-gooders and go-getters of the past, present and future.

His tales are not so much of the personal nature and more of the weird realm, for example: “What if my Christmas tree were home to killer bees?” or “What if bin Laden had been a high-school exchange student in Minnesota?”

My favorite of his letters was “What if a child’s letter to Santa crossed paths with that of a Nigerian scam artist?”

Here is one more quote from Michael Lent’s book: "I kid you not" about an actual Christmas letter he received reporting "grandma's bladder problem and the family's Winnebago disaster, all within the first two sentences." Which is a great deal more than one wants to know.

Another factor is the cost of mailing a form letter. I would have to dip into my savings for the postage and envelopes if I mailed such a letter to all those who send me their annual form letters.

Although with some polishing of my prose and laying aside some postage money I still might be ready this Christmas to send this sincere review of my years of opening my mail box toward the end of each year.

Family Trees Now Thing of Past?

2011-07-15T09:52:00.003-05:00

TODAY’S COMPLICATED FAMILY TREE

The Towerys originated in Italy? So says some shakey research. The Turraine families in the Principality of Milan became so obnoxious the populace demolished their houses. This helped them decide to migrate to the British Isles.

It is still a matter of conjecture that the Turraines were the forebears of those who spell their name: Towery / Towry.

We do know that John Towery and his two brothers from Scotland, settled in the Carolina Colony. Sometime later John married Miss Betsy Cannon. (Unconfirmed item: Betsy said to be a niece of William Penn, the Quaker who founded Philadelphia.)

The newly weds, John and Betsy, had a son they named Mannering (1778), married Winnie, and they had a son named Wilborn (1805), whose wife Nancy Teague gave birth to my great grandfather, Argyle Campbell Towery (1844). By the middle of the 19th century the clan had spread across the south.

On October 18, 1861, Argyle enlisted in Capt. R. J. Armstrong’s Mississippi Volunteers as an 18 year old private. In his Confederate States of America files they show he was AWOL (absent without leave) more than once.
He was without leave all right, but not intentionally. He was not a deserter nor a disgrace to the CSA. On Nov.25, 1863, Pvt. Argyle Towery was captured by Union forces at Missionary Ridge, Tenn. As a prisoner of war he was first sent to Louisville, Ky., and later Rock Island, Ill. On March 10, 1864, he took the oath of allegiance to the United States and was exchanged two months later in New Orleans.

After the war, Argyle came to Texas. One of his sons was my grandfather, Roland and the other was grandfather of Kenneth Towery, the cousin who won the Pulitzer Prize in the 1950s.

By 1906 Argyle was living in Rockwall County, Texas, applied for his Civil War Pension. He never got it, possibly due to “joining” the Union before the war was over. He was almost blind by this time. He had no property, but he did have one pair of Mississippi mules and a wagon.

Genealogists have long had a blast with this kind of detail. Where they define familial relations according to bloodlines, marriage or war. Today, the composition of families is changing to such a degree that it is almost impossible to know who gets a branch on a family tree.

In the early 20th century some elementary school projects included making family trees according organized traditionally according to genetic information. Today there is hardly a school student or graduate who ever heard of such an exercise.

Such exercises in schools are gone from today’s schools. With at least half of today’s marriages ending up in divorce court and the children scattered back and forth, home to home. (For the last six years, according to United States census data, there have been more unmarried households than married ones. And more same-sex couples are having children using surrogates or sperm donors or by adoption.)

Add to that the use of surrogates, sperm donors and same-sex parents and making a family tree is next to impossible. It looks more like Uncle Remus’ brier patch – common name for a thicket formed by any of a number of unrelated thorny plants.

Learning about out heritage is more than just a hobby. There are medical and legal implications, particularly when it comes to death and inheritance.

For some children, having to explain their family tree can be alienating and discouraging.
The Stepfamily Foundation, a family counseling service based in New York City, gave up on the traditional family tree for a network of circles (females) and squares (males), with dotted and straight lines to connect married and blood relatives. Its complicated any way you look at it.

From Little Red School House to ????

2011-07-15T09:50:00.002-05:00

Education in America has a great heritage

Ah, the memory of that little red schoolhouse, sitting on a tiny hill with fields of ripening wheat waving in the background. A stately, tall and wide oak tree sits peacefully near the weathered building. Strung from its strong limb is a swing, made from an old tractor tire, waiting for recess.

Inside, a dozen or so small benches and tables await the arrival of the kids, ages 6 to 16, for another round of learning the basics: the three R’s; readin’, ritin’ and ‘rithmetic.

The teacher, nine times out of ten, would be a young lady not too removed from being one of those pupils. If she could afford it she had a year in a near-by teachers college. The occasional male teacher would come West for other work and teach some months of the year.

There would be as many grades as needed, from wide-eyed beginners, age anywhere from 6 to 10. Then a group that had completed the first year or so would be in another corner taking on more knowledge. Then the advanced ones, looking forward to completing their study and looking toward full-time farm work or seeking their fortunes far away.

The Little Red School House. A classic memory for folks living sort of west or a little east of the Mississippi River. It was not necessarily painted red. It may have only had a red door. It may have been whitewashed. Most had not paint at all. Just rough hewed frontier lumber, finished at a sawmill near the river.

With an increase in farms and ranches, development in a central location, communities took on a town-like appearance. Old timers or early arrivals in the region saw the need for some kind of book learning for the young. Families grew as the numbers of children increased at an amazing rate. The earth was being replenished with gusto with children as well as gardens, livestock and crops.

For most of the pupils the walk to school was a challenge in itself. In bad weather walking through plowed fields or rocky pastures, sometimes a road, assured them of being awake by the time the school bell was rung. Many schools began classes with the Pledge of Allegiance and sometimes a song. If there were any pictures they were usually of President George Washington.

Lunch they brought with them, most often a sandwich, a cookie or piece of cake and an apple. Biscuits, cornbread or even cold pancakes made their way into the lunch basket. Other student’s lunches always looked better, so much trading went on.

After lunch time was spent in recess. The well-fixed school might own a baseball and a bat and glove, or bags of marbles or corncob darts.

McGuffey’s Readers were the mainstay for all age groups. Presbyterian minister William McGuffey of Ohio compiled these readers in 1830. These books began with an introduction to the alphabet and advanced to excerpts from Shakespeare, the Bible and American and English poets.

In most schools the eighth-grade was the last grade. Passing the examination was not a snap even by today’s standards. An 1880 test had this problem: “How much will eight carpenters earn in 6 and 2/3 days at 9 percent.” Or: “Define orthoepy, vowel, dipthong, articulation, accent.” And: “Tell what you now of the following – Charles Dickens, Henry W. Longfellow, Washington Irving, and Benjamin Franklin.” One more: “What are the functions of nerves?”

The little one one-room school house got this country off to a good start in education. They made do with little more than common sense and the belief that “a learning” can make little boys and girls into great leaders in all fields for our future. Difficult to believe there are those today whose only goal apparently is to abolish public education. If they can’t kill it, they will load it with vouchers and loads of skewered text books with questionable ideologies.

--30—

Britt Towery, a free-lance writer who never attended a one room school house, appreciates comments: bet@suddenlink.net

Michele Bachmann admits to being "kook"

2011-07-15T09:44:00.004-05:00

Congress woman Bachmann desires to be more knowledgeable

The minimum wage law is a way to see that employees get at least bus money to work and back. Some one with two minimum wage jobs is still not making a living wage.

Minimum wage is not an answer to all the problems of business and commerce. The basic idea was to get as fair a deal as could be for employees without looking like the old sweat-shop wages.

There are still people around who are opposed to minimum wage workers. Take for example what a U.S. Congressional Representative from the state of Minnesota said recently on national television:

''If we took away the minimum wage — if conceivably it was gone — we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.''

Michele Bachman, the lady who wants now to be president, shared those words of wisdom. Our country could solve the unemployment problem by doing away with minimum wages. Jobs, at every level, would appear as if by magic. If only she had suggested this to the rest of her congress comrades and made such a law, how wonderful it would be for all those without jobs.

But the lady-politician did not stop there with her problem solving. Back on television again she claimed that the former Fox News educator, Glenn Beck, could solve the national debt crisis. She told a South Carolina audience: “I think if we give Glenn Beck the numbers, he can solve this [the national debt].” Here again, why doesn’t she get the guys and gals in congress together and turn all these problem-solving statements into action.

I did not make this up. No one, to my knowledge, is putting words into her mouth. She is the one who confused her Concords -- the “shot heard round the world” was in Concord, Mass., not Concord, N.H. as she said in a speech in New Hampshire.

She is the one who said: “The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. It’s all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax. … There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design.''

All we ask of politicians is a little research, a little reading of the history books and newspapers before that share their wisdom. Bachmann has yet to name even one Nobel Prize winning scientist who believes in intelligent design.

Such talk is scary when coming from a U.S. Representative who wants to be president. What edition of history books has she been reading? What research scientist has she been relying upon? While amusing, it is still frightening anyone could take her seriously.

Intelligent design is held by some church-goers to be how the world came into being. In last week’s funnies Mr. Stiller, a high school biology teacher, helped his class understand the theory. “It goes like this,” he said, “5,700 years ago a male deity created the heavens and earth and all life on it in six days. Unfortunately, He didn’t like his own handiwork so God created genocide and drowned everyone on earth except the family of Noah, a 600-year-old man who was charged with saving animals.”

A student interrupts, but Mr. Stiller continues, “Almost done. So Noah took two of everything including microbes, but forgot the dinosaurs…” [Borrowed from the July 10 episode of Garry Trudeau’s Doonsbury strip. Used here with due respect, but lack of official permission to copy the words. Hope neither side will sue.]

To Bachmann’s credit, she is aware of saying strange things, she lamented once: “I have experienced that throughout my political career, being labeled a kook.”

Once Bachmann also said, I wish I was more knowledgeable…” to which a friend of mine said, “Lady, we all wish you were more knowledgeable.”

PUBLISHED IN SAN ANGELO STANDARD-TIMES, FRIDAY, JULY 15, 2011

Doonsbury explains intelligent design

2011-07-11T16:39:00.003-05:00

Britt Towery Books

2011-07-06T13:25:00.015-05:00

"Saints Alive: Saints Are Sinners Who Keep On Trying" Contains encounters with Mother Teresa in Calcutta; Corrie ten Boom in Keelung, Taiwan and Berlin; Gladys Aylward (the Small Woman) in Taipei, Taiwan; W.A. Criswell in Hong Kong and Macao; Gordon Wood in Brownwood, Texas; Estelle Newman in Brownwood and San Angelo, Texas; J. Alex Herring in Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Richard Morris in Taiwan; and Jody Towery in Texas, Arizona, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mainland China and Singapore, and others.

The moving story of two pioneer Southern Baptist missionaries from Texas to North China's Shandong province over 100 years ago. Carey Daniel, uncle of Texas Governor Price Daniel and Guam Governor Bill Daniel and his bride, Jewell Legett, whose uncle had lot to do with the founding of Hardin-Simmons College, Abilene, Texas. Preface by Governor Bill Daniel. PRESENTLY OUT OF PRINT, BUT IN THE PROCESS OF A NEW EDITION.

Fifth Edition of 1986 book written in Hong Kong and the China Mainland as the Protestant churches were beginning to re-open in major East Coast cities in China. This edition can be purchased from AUTHOR HOUSE c/o Author Solutions. (Formerly 1st Books Library)

"Along The Way" is an anthology of newspaper columns by Britt Towery. Life on the opinion page with this West Texas columnist. Owl in the Oak Tree Books, San Angelo, Texas. Subjects include Bum Phillips didn't wear his hat indoors; Life is like an arithmetic class; Horse Sense and Idioms; Being Stubborn as a mule is not all bad; Afghan hounds and Texas Donkeys; Cousin Ken Towery won a Pulitzer Prize; Cow Pasture football without cheerleaders; Being a celebrity is not all it is cracked up to be; The man who got his hair cut in the wrong barbershop; Finding Corporal Smith; The Day Jim Jerffrey introduced me to Oral Roberts' healing hands; It is time to bring Noah T. Byars' monument home, back to Howard Payne University campus; Easier to preach than practice; Conan the Barbarian is really from Cross Plains and many more.

Chinese around the world have acclaimed Lao She as the greatest of modern Chinese writers. He was born the last year of the 19th century and as a Manchu lived through the fall of the Qing dynasty and the war lord years and the war with Japan. The coming of the Communist was both a blessing and a tragedy. He was not a political writer and in his early years professed Christianity.

This book, at the time of publication, 1999, honoring Lao She's 100th birth anniversary, it was the only book on his life and much of his work. He has been translated into over seven languages and is read in public schools both in Taiwan, Singapore and mainland China. Words of preface for the book are by Lao She's son, Shu Yi, writer and Curator of the Chinese Literary Museum, Beijing and his daughter Shu Ji, writer and Curator of the Lao She Museum in downtown Beijing.

The Towery-Lao She Collection was also dedicated in 1999 at Southern Methodist University, Dallas Texas, and houses the largest selection of his work and Chinese artifacts other than in Beijing and Tokyo, where he was always honored by the Japanese.

The book is ideal for university courses in foreign language literature and is in many libraries around the world. It can be purchased from the author with special discounts for students in classes studying Chinese literature.

Try To Re-think Bible and Gays

2011-06-29T18:07:00.003-05:00

A corrective biblical word to Church and society.

Southern Baptists, America’s largest Protestant denomination, has announced through its Executive Committee of a “welcoming and affirming resolution on homosexuals.” In an extraordinary emergency committee session, the resolution concludes that “the sanctity of marriage for all unions joined in love under God’s grace is holy and should receive marriage rights by the Southern Baptist ministry regardless of sexual orientation.”

For all you startled, shocked and surprised readers this news report turned out to be a hoax. So there is no need to upset your blood pressure. Having a stroke over this is certainly not worth it.

Roger Oldham, a spokesman for the official SBC Executive Committee, said last week the report was a hoax and “… is clearly not an action of the Southern Baptist Convention or the Executive Committee.”

Gay rights activists did meet with SBC President Bryant Wright during the Southern Baptists’ recent annual convention in Phoenix. They reportedly had a civil 35-minute discussion but the two sides were running on separate tracks; evidently even going in opposite directions. Making it impossible for either side to be heard with any modicum of understanding. Dr. Wright maintained the Baptists’ stance that homosexuality is a sin.

Bruce Lowe, 96-year-old retired Southern Baptist pastor, wrote a thoughtful article in the Spring 2011 issue of Christian Ethics Today titled: Important Considerations Regarding Homosexuality: Why Churches Should Welcome and Affirm Gays-Lesbians.

In his article Pastor Lowe considers six important truths about homosexuality that have been generally overlooked. I would not recommend anyone swallowing his opinions whole, but neither am I able to digest what the SBC and many other churches proclaim about sex. Some of Pastor Lowe’s thoughts I feel deserve more attention:

• Sexual orientation is innate and is not a choice. In a Dec. 14,1998, American Psychological Association release concluded: “There is no scientific evidence that reparative or conversion therapy is effective in changing a person’s sexual orientation. … there is evidence such therapy can be destructive.”

• Homosexual people are often highly gifted. Theologian Helmut Thielicke found the homosexual “is frequently gifted with a remarkable heightened sense of empathy.” Think of the great music, books, poetry and works of art we lose if we exclude the contributions of gays and lesbians.

• Peter Gomes, the late Harvard professor and chaplain wrote: “The combination of ignorance and prejudice under the guise of morality makes the religious community, and its abuse of scripture in this regard, itself morally culpable.”

• No sex act has morality in itself. When the Bible speaks of “good” and “evil” acts it is speaking about the people behind the acts. God does not judge the sex act itself, but the hearts of the people involved. Any act involving sex is perverted if the heart is lustful, unloving. Lust in any sex act (adultery, fornication, same sex, etc.) degrades the participants. That is the sin the New Testament condemns.

The sin in Lot’s Sodom in Genesis, chapter 19, is explained in the words of the prophet Ezekiel (18:49). He compares the days in Israel as worse than those of ancient Sodom. You daughters, he calls them, live a privileged life of careless ease with abundant food, refusing to help the poor and needy. Their arrogance and lack of concern for those poor among them was the sin of Sodom, not homosexually. I find I can never truly grasp any message of the Bible in isolation.

It is time to stop making the homosexual the whipping boy. The Bible is concerned with the root problem – that is, the condition of our heart. There are occasions when we need to speak a corrective biblical word to the churches and our society.

JULY FOURTH: A Great Day, NOT A Holy Day

2011-06-24T13:09:00.003-05:00

Sidelights of celebrating Independence Day

On this particular weekend, which ends with the Fourth of July celebrations next Monday, there is much good to remember and to be thankful about.

But the original inhabitants of this land, the few that are left, may not necessarily look upon the occasion in a celebratory spirit.

As a general rule the Founding Fathers of our fair land had little respect for the earliest residents -- on good days they were obedient Indians and on bad days, red-savages. There were more bad days than good. (“The only good Indian being a dead one” was not said in jest.)

There were a few missionaries who went to the American wildernesses with the worthy motive of converting the Indians, while back home in Boston, Philadelphia, New York and later Washington, D.C., most laws and actions were to rid the land of the Indian tribes, one by one. Our “thanksgiving day” myths have twisted history’s story a tad.

Since the white population of the thirteen colonies were predominantly from the British Isles, their religious traditions, along with free church Germans, Swedes and Dutch had definite European roots. It was a time in which the radical Protestants of the Reformed tradition sought release from church-state clerical domination.

By the late 18th century and the forming of the United States government, many if not most, of the founders were found to be taking lightly the gospel message of Jesus Christ. Sunday, they might worship a loving God, but Monday through Saturday they were busy: (1) attempting to exterminate the Indians, and (2) blatantly ignoring the inhumane institution of slavery.

For every one of our early ancestors who saw the horror of treating Indians and slaves as “not really human,” there were hundreds who only wanted to be rid of them; work the slaves till they drop, drive the indigenous people from their villages.

So the Revolutionary War brought a new and free nation into being, it also brought death to the indigenous people. This phase of the events of those days was little stressed, if at all, in my school books from elementary to high school to college and even seminary. It simply did not fit the developing myths that made our ancestors “supermen.”

For all the good Daniel Boone did in founding the white settlement of Kentucky, there were thousands of innocents forced from their land, driven to resist and die. To expand meant getting rid of the inhabitants. The senators and representatives did what they usually do down to this day – ignore the problem, hope it will go away.

Even when laws were passed to treat the Indians with fairness and equality, they were ignored on the frontier. Reconstruction after the Civil War did not fulfill the promises made to the slaves. That took another 100 years and there is still much to do.

For those who want to believe America is a Christian country and special to God are hereby allowed to remain in their ignorance. But such stuff is not in the records of history nor in the United States Constitution. A document which wiser men than I have shown to be a flawed and non-divine document, created by flawed men like you and me. How they got so much right of it right is an amazing miracle.

To take the Hebrew Bible as the basis for our government is not a good alternative. Theocracies are anti-democratic and as unsuitable now as they have always been.

Celebrate the Fourth and rejoice we have the freedom to do so. Leave such celebrations out of Sunday’s worship. Worship is to the lord, not to the flag or nation. For those who have read this far and are still reading, I add one little bit of advice: Take those American flags out of the sanctuary and put them in a place of honor in the fellowship hall.

A Walk Across Taiwan, 1959

2011-06-20T19:12:00.010-05:00

This bunch of guys took it upon themselves to walk from the foothills east of Taichung, Taiwan, across the mountains to the east coast town of Hua Lien. It was Springtime in the rockies, 1959.

On the right is our patient and very helpful guide, a tribal man who knew the mountains. The two on his right were provincial officials and men involved in the building of a highway across the mountains. We stayed in camps like this one along the way. Men of President Chiang Kai-Shek's mostly retired mainland army did the building.

From left standing is Harlan Spuregon, Taiwan SBC missionary, later president of a college in Missouri. Next to him on his left is Oz Quick, World War II chaplain that was on the invasion of several islands, later missionary to mainland China, in the Guilin area (one of China's many beautiful scenic spots) and then Taiwan. Next to him, a laymen with the Conservative Baptist Missionary Society and working with the U.S. government. I regret my records do not have his name.

Kneeling in front, left, is Richard Morris and on the right is this humble writer, Britt E. Towery, Jr. missionary at that time in the northern port city of Keelung, Taiwan.

The trip gave us some idea of the beauty of the island. Orchards were plentiful along the trails. Some of the cliff side trails made us wonder if this was a good idea. At the end of the walk was the great marble country in the cliffs and valleys that open up to the Pacific Ocean. That area now a great tourist spot.

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Another Cry for National Day of Prayer

2011-06-14T14:57:00.005-05:00

Some might call him "Big Tex" or by some such catch phrase, but to most he is not big and does not represent Texas. Not the real Texas, even if he did come from Paint Rock in west Texas.

I refer to Texas Governor Rick Perry. The longest lasting governor ever for the Lone Star State is now turning to religion in his politics. He is calling for a Day of Prayer and Fasting for Our Nation, on Aug. 6. The date the bomb fell on Japan. Don't know if there is any connection with that 1945 event or not.

Bro. Perry, like numerous conservative Christians of the far-right, likes to quote the founding fathers and how they were such dedicated conservative Christian leaders. For example Perry uses a quote from Benjamin Franklin in which old Ben implored the framers to pray for guidance. The irreverent Old Ben did say lots of things, but his urging prayer at the Constitutional Convention to open with prayer never happened.

H.W. Brands, University of Texas historian, in his Pulitzer Prize finalist book ("The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin") says Franklin ask for prayer was a "psychological move more than anything else." According to Patricia Kilday Hart in the San Antonio Express-News, "It was mostly getting people like Alex Hamilton to admit there might be a higher intelligence than their own." If there were too many prayers going around it might frighten the public into believing they were desperate. "So the idea was quietly shelved," writes Isaacson.

Always get the context, not just the loose phrase that pleases you when you expound of the founding fathers. No one is missing the boat (on purpose) than self-proclaimed "historian" David Barton, the Aledo, TX, Republican activist and founder of WallBuilders, another of those pro-family groups who think America is going to the dogs.

For Perry to embrace Barton and his mis-guided views on history is to show once again that he is not the one to be caling for prayer. He is inviting all the governors of all America. Whose job is it to pray, anyway?

Hart also recounts how other presidents turned down appeals for national prayer. In the cholera epidemic in the 1830s, a group of Protestant ministers appealed to Andrew Jackson for a National Day of Prayer. Jackson did not see any reference to prayer in the Constitution so he told them to go back to their congregations and pray themselves. Why did he tell them that: It wasn't his job.

Integrity of messenger enhances the message

2011-06-10T09:12:00.004-05:00

NOT TO BE TAKEN LIGHTLY: God's message is enhanced and believable with messangers of integrity ! !

Family-founded church dynasties seldom last more than one generation. The latest evidence of that being the resignation and retirement of Rev. Robert H. Schuller, famous for his television “Hour of Power” and the beautiful Crystal Cathedral worship center.

Last October the Crystal Cathedral church filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. At the time of filing, the church owed $7.5 million to creditors. Not the best testimony for being good stewards of the Lord’s money. Not the best example of how to spread the Good News propounded by an unemployed carpenter (some say stone mason) from Nazareth.

According to the Religious News Service, The Crystal Cathedral has announced plans to sell its iconic glass-walled church in Southern California to pay back creditors and overcome bankruptcy.

The tall pastor Schuller built a mega church from a humble drive-in church service. I say “tall,” because at 6 feet 2 inches I had to look up to him when we met in Shanghai years ago. He was and probably remains one of the most positive and charming people you would ever want to meet.

Schuller’s Hour of Power television program is not only one of the longest-lasting, but one of the more respected family-owned Protestant religious gatherings.

When the founder Robert H. Schuller retired he did not bestow the preaching mantle on his son, Robert A. Schuller. This resulted in the son leaving the father’s church. Robert A.’s sister, Rev. Sheila Schuller Coleman, was made senior pastor and primary preacher. Neither of the siblings had the drawing power of the father. Crowds and offerings are not up to expectations.

The reorganization plan has Senior Pastor and Chief Executive Sheila Schuller Coleman receiving a salary of around $70,000 a year. The church also hired a chief financial officer for $300,000 a year. It cost a lot more to live in Southern California.
The Crystal Cathedral has been torn by controversy since the departure of Robert H. Schuller. Such is often the unfortunate situation with the demise of religious family dynasties.

The prominent ministry and organization of evangelist Billy Graham had a sixty year run. He and Ruth Graham’s children were normal kids and so are their grandkids; not involved in carrying the organization on. Graham’s example of a minister called for a special task during a special period of time is unique. He and his team still stand head and shoulders above any public ministry in the 20th century. Such is the great need for evangelism in the 21st century.

After Billy Graham’s son, evangelist Franklin Graham, recently questioned if Obama was a Christian, Dallas mega church pastor T.D. Jakes urged the young Graham to apologize.

Jakes said: "I wish [Franklin Graham] had the diplomacy of his father, who brought the gospel to people without being nuanced by politics because when you do those things you offend people that you are actually called to save and to serve, … and I would hope that he would see the rationale in apologizing for such statements – because if the president's faith is suspect, then all of our faiths are suspect, because the Bible is quite clear about what it takes to be saved and the president has been quite open about his accepting Christ and him openly confessing it before men."

Bishop Jakes knows whereof he speaks. In the history of American Christianity, no evangelistic team has had as long and as scandal-free a ministry as that of Billy Graham, Cliff Barrows and George Beverly Shea. These men were not setting up a dynasty. There was integrity in their method which advanced the integrity of the message. “I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore and be holy; for I am holy.” (Leviticus 11:45)
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Life Is A Comedy of Errors

2011-06-10T09:07:00.004-05:00

“What America Needs” in an era that proves life is a comedy of errors.

UPDATE: As a reader points out in the comment thread of Dana Milbank, a Washington Post columnist, swore off writing about Ms. Sarah Palin for at least a month. The pledge went something like this:
“I hereby pledge that, beginning on Feb 1, 2011, I will not mention Sarah Palin – in print, online or on television – for one month. Furthermore, I call on others in the news media to join me in this pledge of a Palin-free February. With enough support, I believe we may even be able to extend the moratorium beyond one month, but we are up against a powerful compulsion, and we must take this struggle day by day.”

FURTHER UPDATE: As astute readers know, February, 2011, has long passed us by and the drought-ridden hot summer awaits those of us on the plains. While the former half-term governor of Alaska is still the hottest item in every newscast and entertainment segment available on television or in magazines.

I know not how the pledge-maker of last February is doing. Seems not to matter if reports of the Star of the North (S.P.) continue fluffily and brazenly showing herself as being possibly as smart as a fifth grader. It also shows an over-the-top or up-the-wall shame-faced ignorance of those who picture her as what America needs.

At one time folks thought Mae West was what we needed and on and on.

At one time all America needed was a five-cent cigar.

Cigars have disappeared and Mae West is but a life preserver and some still think America needs something.

MORE RECENT UPDATE: I will vote for “What America Needs” to be led by men and women dedicated to integrity, especially if they are running for some political office.

My vote goes to the person who does a good job, if just flippin’ burgers or cleaning sewers, or trimming trees, and the good job, however unpleasant makes other folks life easier.

My vote goes to those who after doing a good job do not have to go on television and tell us how humbly grateful for what they did. They do it and sit down, not expecting a gold chain or medal.

One thing I find hard to do these days is to stop writing about S.P. for she is so full of stuff we never expect a person would express so openly. Like when she was blessed by her pastor to take out demons. All that talk about President Barack Obama’s former pastor and never a word about this Alaska preacher S.P. was spiritually guided by. (Like many fundamentalist Christians S.P. believes humans and dinosaurs were on earth at the same time.)

FINAL UPDATE: How Mark Twain and Will Rogers would have had a field day had they lived with the rest of us in this glorious 21st century. They would have us rollin’ in the aisles as they humored us along.

If only William Dean Howells, the unsurpassed master of urbane comedy were with us today. His characters’ mutual misunderstandings in “Indian Summer,” make for an unrivaled comedy of errors.

Apparently life is more fun when seen as a comedy of errors. What America may need most of all is a good rockling sense of humor --- while revealing to us once again there is a real world out there—somewhere.

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Shanghai China Baptist History

2011-05-31T15:02:00.011-05:00

This is the original Minutes of the Shanghai Baptist Church, November, 1847, when they organized. Also known by the name Old North Gate Church, since it sat on a corner across from the North Gate of the Chinese city of Shanghai. The British and French sections north of it were still in the formative stages of development.

Matthew Tyson and Eliza Yates were the first Southern Baptist missionaries to Shanghai, just two years after the SBC was organize in August, Georgia, USA. This first meeting was held in the house where J.L. Shuck lived. Shuck had already many years experience in Hong Kong and Canton (Guangzhou). The purpose was to organize into a church. The names of those present is recorded: Rev. J. Lewis Shuck, Elvia Gable Shuck (Shuck's first wife Henriette Hall Shuck died in Hong Kong and buried in Happy Valley Cemetary up above the Happy Valley Race Course.), Rev. Matthew Tyson Yates, Eliza Emmeline M. Yates, Rev. Thomas William Toby (earlier a Canton missionary), Isabella Hall Toby, Rev. Yang, Mr. Sun. ("Seen Sang" written after their names is the way the missionaries romanized the Shanghai dialect word for "Mr." or "teacher." (Pinyin: xin sheng)

Shuck was elected moderator and pastor and Yates was secretary (this could be written by him?). Rev. Toby and wife and Mr. Yang were elected deacons.

A January 1st, 1848 meeting minutes follow and it is signed by M.T.Y, clerk (Matthew T. Yates, so this is in his handwriting. During the American Civil War years it was difficult to get funds to China missionaries and Yates worked as a translator and sometime lawyer-judge for the British colonists.

The church, small in beginning, but grew to be a ministry of hope for the Chinese population. The only other church at the time was the colonial Anglican which ministered primarily to the British and foreigners.

My wife and I came upon the church in 1980s. That is, the brick building built in the 1920s. The church did not reopen after being closed by the new Communist government in late 1950s. In 1979 men like Bishop K. H. Ting (Ding Guangxun) and Shanghai pastors petitioned the government to allow their churches to be re-opened. Some 20 Shanghai churches regained their buildings and worshipped. The Grace Baptist Church was one of those allowed to re-open, but the Old North Gate Church had been changed to a school and the government felt the school at that location was more important than a church.

We were allowed to go inside the auditorium. There an eldery gentelemen shared with my wife that he had been baptized there. The baptism pool was on the platform under the pulpit. A common practice both in America and China. It was still there but not being used naturally.

It made us remember our visit to the old Baptist Hospital in Zhengzhou, Henan province and a chance to visit the Baptist church there. Building still there but used as auditorium rather than a church. The Baptist Hospital continues as a city hospital to this day. Our friends the Fielder (Maudie and Wilson Fielder) were missionaries there from 1912 to 1950. Below is a picture of Mrs. Fielder and the church youth group, 1940. The little girl on the left side of front row is Florence Ann Fielder, age 8, pigtails and all. She is now Mrs. L.G. McKinney, former missionary to Hong Kong and Macao.

More of the little-known stuff which we have had the pleasure of encountering in our years in Taiwan (1957 to 1966); Hong Kong (1966-77 and 1982-83); and as bridge builder (of understanding) with churches in China mainland, both house churches and the open churches, 1983-1992.

Two early documentaries produced with our help in China. The FMB-backed "Winter is Past" and the SBC Radio and TV joint production with ABC-Television, "Walls and Bridges," Emmy winner for documentary, 1988-1989.

Taiwan Baptist Missionaries (1)

2011-05-31T13:33:00.009-05:00

This 1958 group photo of all the male Southern Baptist missionaries stationed on the island of Taiwan, often referred to as The Republic of China, was rare chance to get them all at one time. Here is a little about each of them.

UPPER LEFT: Harland SPURGEON, Britt TOWERY, Bynum AKINS, Alex HERRING, Richard MORRIS, Glenn HIX
FRONG ROW: Harry RAILEY, Carl HUNKER, Charles Culpepper Jr., C.L. Culpepper Sr., Oz Quick

Harland was later a VP of the SBC Foreign Mission Board (now the International Mission Board); Britt and Jody were the third new couple to Taiwan; Bynum and wife were second couple; Alex was born in Henan province China and served there first; Richard and Tena were first couple to study Taiwanese language with SBC, others were all in mandarin Chinese; Glenn studied mandarin, pastored English-speaking Calvary Baptist Church in Taipei; Harry and wife were first missionaries appointed to Taiwan. Up to that point all the missionaries there had come from the China mainland; Charles born on Seminary Hill, Ft. Worth, grew up in Shandong province; C.L. (Charlie) went to China in the 1920s and was the treasurer of the Taiwan Mission; Oz was also in Guilin, China, after being appointed to Japan and being a chaplain in the invasion of Japanese islands during World War 2. Oz and his wife Mary taught university-level English to mainland Chinese students in Yan'tai (old Chefoo) after retiring.

The men are sitting on a small amphitheatre beside the auditorium for the summer conference grounds at Ling Tou, north of the city of Taipei. Bertha Smith and Martha Franks began and ran the summer conferences. Bertha was the first SBC missionary to Taiwan from China. She went there to see if work was possible soon after 1948 when it became apparent the Communist would be taking control of all of China.

The first missionaries for SBC to Taiwan were women from the Mainland: Pearl Johnson, Ola Lea, Josephine Ward, Katie Murray, Lola Marie Conners, Clifford Barrat, Lois Glass, Addie Cox, Mary Demarest, and Irene Jeffers. Later Gladys Hopewell (only SBC missionary murdered, Tainan); Mary Sampson; Lorene Tilford; Jennie Alderman; Inabelle Coleman, was The Commission Magizine editor before going to teach English at the Hu Jiang Baptist College, Shanghai, where she had tremendous influence on future preachers and leaders both in church and government.

Ivan V. and Edith Drotts Larson were the first couple also came over from the China mainland. Most of their ministry was in Shandong province. Ivan was interned by the Japanese and repatriated in 1942. They began churches in Chia Yi (Jia Yi) City, Taiwan, and were joined by the Akins in 1958.

The Mission was slow to get into Taiwanese language work as the Presbyterians had been there for over one hundred years and had churches in all major cities. Also, the Conservative Baptist out of Denver already had a Bible School with Taiwanese preachers and missionary preaching in Taiwanese. Jim Cummings was one of these who had a real good grasp of the language and people. Being single he had lived with a Taiwanese family for a while. On a furlough he found the perfect mate: Maggie, who at the time was a guide at DisneyLand.

Other SBC missionaries who were early into Taiwanese work were Hunter and Patsy Hammett, B.L. Lynch and wife, and others whose names have slipped from my memory at present.

What does America REALLY need?

2011-05-28T10:44:00.003-05:00

UPDATE: As a reader points out in the comment thread of Dana Milbank, a Washington Post columnist, swore off writing about Ms. Sarah Palin for at least a month. The pledge went something like this:

“I hereby pledge that, beginning on Feb 1, 2011, I will not mention Sarah Palin – in print, online or on television – for one month. Furthermore, I call on others in the news media to join me in this pledge of a Palin-free February. With enough support, I believe we may even be able to extend the moratorium beyond one month, but we are up against a powerful compulsion, and we must take this struggle day by day."

FURTHER UPDATE: As astute readers know, February, 2011, has long passed us by and the drought-ridden hot summer awaits those of us on the plains. While the former half-term governor of Alaska is still the hottest item in every newscast and entertainment segment available on television or in magazines.

I know not how the pledge-maker of last February is doing. Seems not to matter if reports of the Star of the North (S.P.) continue fluffily and brazenly showing her as being possibly as smart as a fifth grader. It also shows an over-the-wall or up-the-wall shame-faced ignorance of those who picture her as what America needs.

At one time folks thought Mae West was what we needed and on and on.

At one time all America needed was a five-cent cigar.

Cigars have disappeared and Mae West is but a life preserver and some think America needs something.

MOST RECENT UPDATE: I will vote for having men and women dedicated to integrity, even if they are not running for some office.

My vote goes to the person who does a good job, if just flippin’ burgers or cleaning sewers, or trimming trees, and the good job, however unpleasant makes other folks life easier.

My vote goes to those who after doing a good job do not have to go on television and tell us how humbly grateful for what they did. They do it and sit down, not expecting a gold chain or medal.

One thing I find hard to do these days is to stop writing about S.P. for she is so full of stuff we never expect a person to learn. Like when she was blessed by her pastor to take out demons. All that talk about President Barack Obama’s former pastor and never a word about this Alaska preacher S.P. spent time with.

How Mark Twain and Will Rogers would have had a field day had they lived with the rest of us in this glorious 21st century. They would have us rollin’ in the aisles as they humored us along. Revealing to us once again there is a real world out there—somewhere.

How Other Cultures Bless

2011-05-28T09:59:00.004-05:00

A recently passed Arizona House Bill 2281, which bans from the public schools ethnic studies that promote race consciousness or promote the overthrow of the United States government or promote resentment toward a trace or class of people.

So an Arizona state representative wants to cut out foreign study programs from universities. As a former Asian Studies Program director I disagree with his lack of curiosity and vision.

Americans need to learn more about the people of the world, not less. Our culture grew from the cultures of immigrants. We can’t stop learning about our ancestor’s heritage, then and now.

“The Way of Chuang Tzu” is Father Thomas Merton’s personal versions of the writings of Chuang Tzu, the most spiritual of the ancient Chinese philosophers.

Chuang Tzu, the greatest of the Taoist writers of the Way (“The Tao” misspelled with a “t” in the West, now spelled as it is pronounced, “Dao”). Chuang Tzu’s historical existence is verified. He lived during the Bible times of Ezra and Nehemiah, 5th century B.C..

The word “dao” is the same word used in the Chinese Bible where Jesus says, “I am the way (dao)…” Just as the Christian “dao” is vital to Christian thought, so the spirit of Chuang Tzu’s subtle, sophisticated, mystical “dao” has left its mark on all Chinese culture. Chuang Tzu’s dao should not be confused with Western interpretations (superstition, magic or health) with the philosopher and his philosophy.

Among other things Merton reminds us that Chuang Tzu brought humor to the Indian religion of Buddhism as it was introduced into Chinese culture. He did not hesitate to ridicule Confucianism and other Chinese schools of thought. He did not begin a religion, though it has become the largest religion in China, many more believers than Buddhists or Communists.

The secret of the Way was not the accumulation of things like virtue or merit, but wu-wei, the non-doing or non-action, which does not depend on results or chest-thumping. "Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness."

Daoist philosophy attempts to illuminate the interdependency of all things, including life, art, and language. Its simplicity is baffling to non-Chinese.

John C.H. Wu, in his book “A New Appraisal,” writes: “To Chuang Tzu the world must have looked like a terrible tragedy written by a great comedian. He saw scheming politicians fall into pits they had dug for others. He saw predatory states swallowing weaker states, only to be swallowed in their turn by stronger ones. Thus the much vaunted utility of the useful talents proved not only useless but self-destructive.”

When Chuang Tzu was about to die, his disciples began planning a splendid funeral. To them he said: “I shall have heaven and earth for my coffin; the sun and moon will be the jade symbols hanging by my side; planets and constellations will shine as jewels all around me. … What more is needed? Everything is cared for.”

Buy they said: “We fear the crows will eat our Master.”

“Well,” said Chuang Tzu, “above ground I shall be eaten by crows, below it by ants and worms. In either case I shall be eaten.” With a twinkle in his eye, he asked his disciples: “Why are you so partial to birds?”

What do we learn from foreign lands? Not just Asia, but Hungry, Spain, Scotland, and Bolivia all have ideas, views and ways thatπ could benefit us. Foreign cultural studies broaden perspectives; deepen insight; expand vision; increase understanding of others. There is little joy compared to learning new “stuff” from all corners of our blue marble.

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More on China's Master Storyteller

2011-05-20T12:11:00.005-05:00

The above graphic announces the Beijing Performing Arts Theater's presentation of Lao She's graphic novel of the years the people of Beijing, China, endured the Japanese invasion in the 1930s. The title of the novel in Chinese is "Four Generations" and the English translation by Ida Pruitt (Southern Baptist missionary's daughter, 1888-1987) is titled "Yellow Storm." It is being presented June,2011.

When I was last in Beijing, 1999, I enjoyed seeing Lao She's "Teahouse" as a musical. It was first class in every way. Nothing can compare to what the Chinese can do in the arts. I attended the presentation along with Lao She's widow Hu Jieqing, her son Shu Yi and daugher Shu Ji, both writers of renown in China. For more on Lao She, his museum and works go to my other web site: Lao She.

Marjorie King, Ph.D., an independent historian, who taught at the Beijing Foreign Affairs College, wrote the biography of Ida Pruitt titled: "China's American Daughter." Published by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. ISBN 962-996-221-7. Chinese University Press web site. E-mailcup@cuhk.edu.hk.

Dick Tracy Flash Gordon Buck Rogers

2011-05-20T10:10:00.006-05:00

Those who passionately read the daily newspaper’s funnies in the 1930s and 1940s are sure to remember that neat little phone wrist watch that crime fighter Dick Tracy used. Back then it was just whimsy from the mind of a cartoonist trying to be creative. Nobody took seriously that there could be such a thing as a radio-phone.

(Chester Gould’s long-running comic strip about a hard-hitting and intelligent police detective began in 1931. Gould wrote and drew the strip until 1977. Dick Tracy’s cool watch radio phone enabled him to communicate with headquarters.)

Now cell phones are putting the land line phones out of business. The colorful little corner phone booth is no more. (You only see them in old movies). Cars whiz past me with a cell phone plastered to the driver’s ear. In addition to regular cell and mobile phones, Dick Tracy’s phone wrist watch is selling like hotcakes on eBay. And surprise, a video watch phone will be out this fall selling for a mere $1,000.

After all, on those same pages Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers were sailing through the galaxies with all kinds of neat gadgets in wonderfully created space ships. No one on my block took such adventures to ever be in our future. Like Clark Kent’s Superman, it was just pure comic entertainment; flights of fancy meant only for the imagination of little kids. Now it is evident there are more worlds out there than Flash or Buck ever dreamed could be. We are just beginning to see the greatness of creation and the vastness of what God has made. Our world is not alone in this unbelievably huge and multi-universes. God has many more worlds, more sheep, some more advanced than we are and some less so. One day we can see better than this primitive darkened old mirror.

As an old local West Texas columnist closes his column each week, I will borrow the phrase: See You Out Yonder.

Coming Of Age in 1940s

2011-05-17T19:12:00.004-05:00

When soldier Joe B. Swan joined up with the U.S. Army he was assured he would work on military newspapers and continue the kind of work he had done at Howard Payne College (now University), Brownwood, Texas. So, rather than get drafted with no choices he joined up. Stateside and later in Japan he never saw a typewriter. He was just another dogface and cleaned latrines and peeled potatoes just like the infantry. This was before there was a Haliburton to contract for all that stuff.

He was not long in Tokyo when the North Koreans took it upon themselves (with Stalin"s encouragement) to invade and make South Korea as sad a place as the north was becoming. He shipped over and saw combat before the Army red tape finally caught up with him and he was made editor of a camp paper.

His commanding office did not take to Joe's satire and cartoons in the paper. Reamed him out and was going to have him shipped off to a worse place. Can you imagine anything worse than anywhere in war torn Korea? But the general heard of the trouble Joe was having and he let the commanding officer know he liked Joe's cartoons and to leave Joe alone. His writing and cartoons did more for moral than all the orders and rules the Army insisted on.

The photo was taken in Brownwood with me on the left. This was before he was sent overseas. We corresponded for over 55 years. After the war he married the love of his life, Laura Jones, art student at HPC. They had two good kids, a boy and a girl, both living around San Jose, California. Joe built the photography department of San Jose State University from nothing to one of the leading such schools anywhere. He had three students later gain Pulitzers in photography and another who won an Oscar for a film documentary.

In the early 1980s Joe wrote me in China that he had seen the future. He was on leave and in Hawaii where he saw the first of the new way of publishing photos and newspapers. He knew then that film cameras would one day soon be antiques. Color in newspapers was becoming the thing to do.

Back when we were teen-age Lyric Theater ushers Joe and I and Bob Graves would walk home after work. Often sitting under a street light planning how we would make a future for us. We once rented an office in the old Southern Building on Center Ave. so we could practice being big-time writers.

After Bob moved to California he continued to write as he was a foreman on a ranch. He finally sold a story to a magazine. What a thrill. Until he received a copy which turned out to be a rather adult magazine he could not brag about or let his kids see.

Bob's been gone a long time. Joe just a couple of years. And I have my memories of two of the best guys God ever put on this earth. Sometime when the time is right and I can still use this computer keyboard I want to write more of the visions of the youth of the 1940s. Half those year our land was at war and the other half trying to adjust to peace without rations.

To tell a true story you need to be talented in writing fiction. That is original with me. Thought it up myself. And when I finished the biography of Maude and Wilson Fielder and their 40 years in China, I'll work on my fiction.

Limited Freedoms in China Better Than None

2011-05-13T16:20:00.009-05:00

It was May 22, 1989, on the campus of the Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. With some seminary students and friends we rode bicycles to the gathering of students. This was happening all over China. Students leading the way for more freedoms and respect from the paramount leader, primarily Deng Xiaoping.

Nanjing Theological Seminary students were in evidence with a Christian witness. They were sharing water with the students. An opening for Jesus' water of life. There was no violence. That came later on June 4 in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in front of the Forbidden Palace and the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party and government. Chairman Deng had a difficult time finding army units that would disrupt the protesting students.

The students would march around that part of Beijing with signs and songs. The shoppers and shop keepers saw the brave young kids and cheered them on. Factory workers and others joined them at a distance. I saw a long red streamer several feet long hanging from a building proclaiming "Tong Xue Wan Sui" -- "Students Live Forever." Same as old streamers and slogans for Chairman Mao: "Mao Zhuxi Wan Sui"

I left Beijing the day martial law was installed. Week later Deng had found soldiers who would go into the square and attack the students and break up the peaceful demonstrations. Until then soldiers at the scene had not been swayed to be so cruel. Chinese of Hong Kong were sure that Chinese would not kill Chinese. They did.

Now, 22 years later, the students dreams have not been fully realized, but they made for better times. Today there is more freedom in job seeking, travel abroad, study and the churches are growing in numbers and strength as never before. Still there are problems and all freedoms are limited, but to my mind they are making more of their limited freedoms that most of we Americans are.

The last time I saw Beijing was in 1999 at a literary conference honoring Lao She on what would have been his 100th birthday. Writers, scholars and poets from around the world were there to honor a writer who helped bring Chinese fiction into the modern era. He had been a victim of the tragic Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. Now he is read and studied in China mainland and Taiwan and Singapore schools.

I gave my library of his works, art by his wife, Hu Jieqing, tributes by Dr. Chow Lien-Hwa, and related Chinese history books in Chinese and English to the library of Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, USA. It forms the Towery-Lao She Collection there. It was dedicated by Lao She's son and daughter, Shu Yi and Shu Ji. It is the largest such collection of his work outside China and Japan.

I have dedicated a blog to Lao She's memory. Have a look.

And in the meantime, be thankful for limited freedoms --- they are far better than none!!!

USS Indianapolis & Scapegoats

2011-05-13T16:00:00.005-05:00

Insecure people create scapegoats

San Angelo was treated recently by the visit of Loel Dean Cox, hero and survivor of World War II. This Texas farm boy from Comanche was on the bridge of the USS Indianapolis when a Japanese submarine accidently spotted them and fired six torpedoes.

His harrowing tale has been told in film and books, but to hear him tell it is special. Just past midnight, on July 30, 1945, midway between Guam and Leyte Gulf, his ship was hit by two torpedoes, just weeks before Japan surrendered.

The Navy scapegoating began and the ship’s captain, the late Charles Butler McVay, III, was court-martialed. Among other things, evidence that would have cleared McVay was withheld. The Navy Department only wanted a scapegoat. That was 1948. For years the surviving crew fought for justice for McVay without success.

Cox, in his San Angelo talk May 12, told of an eleven-year old boy who in 1998 recognized the miscarriage of justice (of all places from the film “Jaws”) and wrote a paper for his school: McVay should not have been court-martialed. The New York Times and a congressman took up the cause and in 2001 justice prevailed for McVay. With pressure from Congress the Navy at last conceded that he was innocent of any wrong-doing.

I was aware of the tragic loss of ship and lives (out of 1197 aboard only 317 survived) but until hearing Cox tell of his experiences, the story was just a story. (Cox grew up in Sidney, Texas, five miles from Stag Creek, where I was once a pastor.)

It brought to my mind how common the act of scapegoating has been in our young nation’s history. So where did this scapegoat tradition get started anyway?

Each year in ancient Israel on the Day of Atonement, the record of all the sins of the Israelites were, by ritual and blood sacrifice, transferred to a goat. This goat was then released into the desert, taking with it the sins of the people. The result being that the sinners got off scot free and the goat died in the wilderness.

The beginnings of the scapegoat ordeal was in the years following the escape of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt and on their way to the Promise Land. (See Leviticus 16.)
Since the goat is sent away to perish, the word "scapegoat" has come to mean a person who is blamed and punished for the sins, crimes or sufferings of others, generally as a way of distracting attention from the real causes (Encyclopedia Americana).

Scapegoats are used even today as a defense ploy to take the heat off the real culprit. It is terribly evident in both government and the military. And in the business world, scapegoating is all too common. Minor employees are blamed for the mismanagement or mistakes of senior executives.
René Girard, French historian and literary critic, writes that one person is singled out as the cause of the trouble and is expelled. This person is the scapegoat. Girard writes: “social order is restored as people are contented that they have solved the cause of their problems by removing the scapegoated individual.”

There are many ways that the powerful slough off, deflect or ignore their guilt. “Shoot the messenger” is one popular method. “Blame the victim” is a favorite of rapists and insecure men. The 1690s Salem witch-hunts and the 1950s “communist threat to America” paranoia of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Trying to deflect their own shortcomings and incompetence by blaming others.

Have we so soon forgotten what the Army brass did concerning the “friendly fire” death of Pat Tillman, Jr., the Arizona Cardinals football player who left a million dollar contract behind to fight for his country. He died in the mountains of Afghanistan and to this day the cover up and foul-ups of his death have never been satisfied.

Today’s scapegoat is Private First Class Bradley Manning, accused of leaking a trove of secret government documents later published by the Wikileaks website, sits in solitary confinement without trial, pending a court martial. Our government, like the Army and Navy hates to be caught with its pants down.

Texas state Talking Book Program

2011-05-09T20:07:00.003-05:00

As we move along in life and our birthdays come sooner and sooner and we begin to gradually walk with more care; even think in new ways; experience that life is not all wine and roses.

As we age we are fortunate to see maturity as anything but dull and meaningless years tacked onto the closing chapters of our time on earth. Anything but monotonous, boring and tedious. “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made.” (Robert Browning).

Long life is a time to build on what has been learned, review and revise our views on life, faith, and be a light for those who may be discouraged with the aging process. Never lose the old ‘get up and go.”

Medical science has a lot to do with “living into the best years of life.” Attitude is important, especially when ailments increase and we can’t jump rope or play hopscotch and other exciting “stuff” we came to enjoy.

There is help and it is from a place that seldom gets the credit it deserves. The state government of Texas may misuse or waste tax dollars -- but there is another side where wonderful programs use tax dollars wisely.

One of these government run entities has a history of helping the sight-impaired: the Texas Talking Book Program (TBP). Texas has a good record and long history of providing library services to people who are blind. In 1918, the Texas Legislature appropriated $1,000 to purchase raised-lettering books for the blind. Texas was one of the first states to join the National Library Service that was established by the Library of Congress in 1931.

The last 80 years much has changed for TBP. Books were on phonograph records in the early years. Phonograph players and records were furnished free to patrons. It took a lot of records to hold longer books. The 1930s best seller, Gone With The Wind, was on 20 long-playing records.

In the 1950s reel to reel tapes were used and in the 1970s books on cassette tapes were introduced. Spanish was added in 1978. The use of digital flash cartridges began in 2009.

Downloading book and magazines is the latest innovation. Instead of 20 records needed for “Gone with the Wind,” the entire book will fit onto one BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) cartridge.

The 82nd Texas State Legislature has one huge challenge: the proposed budgets. It is not news that most every state agency will be taking significant cuts to their budgets and staffing. A bright spot is that the Talking Book Program thus far has suffered very little in the way of direct cuts.

The bad news is that the State Library is facing a 71 percent reduction in its general revenue (the money given to it by the State Legislature). The TBP may be affected by large cuts to the State Library, meaning that TBP will need more donations from concern people, readers and citizens.

By law, the budget must be balanced and must be passed by the end of the legislative session May 30, 2011. Our representatives need to be aware we are watching and praying health and medical programs will not suffer. Dropping nurses like dropping school teachers is not in the best interests of Texans.

TBP now serves 18,000 patrons and sends out an average of 4,500 items every weekday. Cartridges and players are postage free.

For information on the program check with Texas Talking Book Program, P.O. Box 12927, Austin, Texas 78711-2927. A toll-free number, 1-800-252-9605, can be used for information about disabilities and health conditions.

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Critics for a better America

2011-05-07T11:44:00.002-05:00

A New York City newspaper editor wrote the president:

“Dear Sir: I do not intrude to tell you---for you must know already---that great proportion of those who triumphed in your election . . . are sorely disappointed and deeply pained by the policy you seem to be pursing . . . We require of you, as the first servant of the Republic, charged especially and preeminently with this duty, that you EXECUTE THE LAWS. We think you are strangely and disastrously remiss . . .”

Sound familiar? Reads like it came from a newspaper editorial page in this Year Of Our Lord 2011. The writer of the letter was Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, in August of 1862. The letter was addressed to Abraham Lincoln well into his second year as president of the United States.

No president is immune to opinions and letters like this in the 19th or 21st centuries. We forget Lincoln had his detractors and those who saw the lawyer from Illinois to be unfit for such a powerful position.

Today jingoism has replaced the serious criticisms that leaders deserve. Catchy phrases with little depth and less light are used by the likes of Letterman, Leno, and John Stewart, to point out the foibles of the politicians.

Emma Goldman, professed anarchist and feminist heaped sarcasm on American leaders responsible for the Spanish-American War. Following the war that made Cuba and the Philippines, Guam and Wake Island American colonies she spoke out: “When we sobered up from our patriotic spree --- it suddenly dawned on us that the cause of the Spanish-American War was the price of sugar. . . . that the lives, blood, and money of the American people were used to protect the interests of the American capitalists.”

Mark Twain was a famous and respected writer as the new year of 1900 began. He wrote in the New York Herald: “I bring you the stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chou, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pockets full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies.”

Granted, writers like Jack London, Upton Sinclair and Theodore Dreiser, whose books were read by millions, had their own agendas. But behind all their criticisms, deep in their own hearts was a love for America and a desire for wrongs to be corrected and America being all it professed to be.

In 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke from the pulpit of the Riverside Church in New York City:

“Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.”

Where are the critics in 2011 demanding an end to the series of wars our nation has let itself become involved in? With Osama bin Laden dead, the reason for war in Afghanistan is gone. Mission accomplished. The true patriot should stand with an unfurled stars and stripes and shout: “enough with the excuses for endless war and the continued death of innocents.”

Enough Faith to Hate, But Not To Love?

2011-04-30T21:09:00.003-05:00

Do we Christians enough religion to hate, but not enough to love?

Christian truth is revealed in strange, even weird ways. Take the entertainer and comedian Emo Philips. He has been on the world scene for over 25 years. I caught some of his early appearances on the David Letterman television talk show.

Then I read something from a church bulletin of a Emo Philips skit. It was a revised version of one of his stand-up comedy routines about a couple of hot-hearted religious believers.

I looked up the original on YouTube and began to tinker with his gig. I have shamelessly taken his work of humorous art and painful truth as a lesson for all of us religious folk. Here is my edited version, with the names changed, to help religious Texans of a particular persuasion, to better understand the moral of the tale. Here goes:

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "Stop! Don't do it! --- There's so much to live for!"

He said, "Like what?" I said, "Well, are you religious or atheist?" He said, "Religious." I said, "Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?" He said, "Christian." I said, "Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?" He said, "Baptist!"

I said, "Wow! Me too! Are you Southern Baptist or Northern Baptist?" He said, "Southern Baptist." I said, "Me too! Are you Moderate Southern Baptist, or a Fundamentalist Southern Baptist?”

He said, “Fundamentalist!” I said “Me too! Are you J. Frank Norris Fundamentalist or a moderate Cooperative Baptist?” He said, "J. Frank Norris Fundamentalist." Shaken by his reply, I said, "Die, heretic scum," and pushed him off the bridge.

We church-going folks don’t act like that, do we? We have more gracious ways of putting down those who disagree with us.

Long before Emo Phillips, Johathan Swift (remember him from “Gulliver’s Travels”) stung Christian believers with: "We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."

Charles Caleb Colton (English writer and cleric, 1780-1832) was as popular and insightful as Swift in his time. Colton wrote short essays on conduct. He published a cheap edition titled: “Many Things in Few Words, Addressed To Those Who Think.”

One of Colton’s maxims: "Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but live for it." (Such an attitude curtailed his church ministry somewhat.)

I’m convinced, except for the radical fringe, Christian people are God-fearing folks and lovers of the upward Way. They seldom beat up on those who disagree with them.

What Christ shared was backed up by a spotless, perfect life (of which we lack). My experience has been that we are still a work in progress. Splitting hairs with other believers is a poor use of our time, talents and doesn’t help the blood pressure. To my knowledge, the believers I have been blessed to know seldom intentionally push anyone off a bridge.
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Random Good Friday Thoughts

2011-04-19T19:23:00.004-05:00

Random Good Friday Thoughts

According to the lunar calendar today is designated as Good Friday. What was ‘good’ about the crucifixion death of Jesus of Nazareth? How could such an unjustified, cruel execution be considered in any way as ‘good.’

Roman Catholic historians explain the now obsolete Latin words ‘pious’ or ‘holy,’ not ‘good,’ was the original name of the commemoration. So, Good Friday was known in the beginning as Holy Friday or Great Friday. Something was lost for the common folk when the name of this observance was translated into 14th or 15th century English as Good Friday.

The ‘good’ in the event relates to those who believe Jesus’ sacrifice brought all of sinful humanity into fellowship and right relationship with God – that is, if they believed Jesus is who he said he was.

If it is so important to make a special day of the Son of God’s death, why is there nothing said of such an annual occasion for centuries? Why did not the ancient scriptures speak of such a time and why did the translations of those words into the languages of the world not comment on the need for such a ‘rememberance’?

Paul and other writers of the New Testament, focus on the significance of Jesus’ crucifixion, while saying almost nothing about the event itself. No need to do that. The first readers of the New Testament knew the horror of such a death. They knew what it was like for someone to be crucified. What little we do know of death by crucifixion was not a happy event.

The site of the crucifixion and the tomb were not considered by the peoples of Jerusalem for hundreds of years as anything special. There were no special services until the Byzantium rulers up in Constantinople saw it as a great pilgrim-tourist-spot.

Paul wrote the crucifixion of Jesus was a great “stumbling block to Jews” (First Corinthians 1:23). It was not something important to anyone but God and the new ‘Way of Christ’ people. To God, Jesus’ death made possible the ability to be right with God. Paul wrote in this connection, “let those of us who are mature be thus minded” (Philippians 3:15).

Early Orthodox Churches had elaborate festivities and services for the day, beginning the night before. In England the 1662 Anglican Book of Common Prayer did not specify a particular rite to be observed on Good Friday.

Lutheran tradition from the 16th to the 20th century, Good Friday was the most important holiday, and abstention from all worldly works was expected by the faithful.

In the United States, 11 states observe Good Friday as a state holiday. In many English-speaking countries, such as Singapore, most shops are closed for the day and television and radio advertising are limited. (That would make it a REAL Good Friday.)

In Hong Kong and Macau, all businesses and government offices are closed for a public holiday, even though both are now a part of the People’s Republic of China. Hot cross buns were a tasty treat in former British colonies.

For a different view, the Muslim Koran (Sura 4,157-158) mentions the crucifixion of Jesus in one verse which reads: “... and they (the Jews) have said, “Verily we have slain Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the apostle of God. But they slew him not, neither crucified him, but it seemed to them as if (or: he seemed to them to be crucified). They did not kill him with certainty. No, God took him up unto himself.” (Sura 4, 157-158. For Muslims, translations are not considered authoritative. Only the Arabic Koran is considered holy.)

Dr. Christine Schirrmacer’s 1997 article on the Muslim meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion, writes: “… the Koran does not even mention or hint at the meaning of the crucifixion of Jesus as the salvation of His people. It is very likely that Muhammad, who came into contact with heretical monophysites [believed Jesus had but one nature] and other Christian sects of his time, had never heard a true, biblical representation and explanation of the meaning of the crucifixion, which is therefore not to be found in the Koran.”

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THE LIE THAT WON'T DIE

2011-04-12T13:48:00.006-05:00

The lie that won’t die, just keeps being revived.......

Multi-billionaire Donald Trump took the opportunity to promote his NBC-TV show on the NBC program, Today, to revive the ‘birther’ tale about President Barack Obama’s birthplace.

The former half-term governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, jumped in immediately to praise Trump’s search for ‘birther truth.’ Here are her very own words on the subject:

"I appreciate that the Donald wants to spend his resources in getting to the bottom of something that so interests him and many Americans... He's not just throwing stones from the sidelines, he's digging in. He's paying for researchers to find out why President Obama would have spent $2 million not to show his birth certificate, so more power to him."

(It should be noted here: The ‘birther’s’ claim that Obama has spent "millions" of dollars defending all the ‘birther’ claims, when in reality Obama's personal attorneys have appeared only in a very, very few number of cases.)

The lie that refuses to die continues. The rumors that Barack Obama “refused to produce his birth records” began three years ago during his run for the presidency. The gossip really turned into weirdsville when it was hinted that Barack Obama was not only not born in the United States, but that he was a Muslim. (Apparently it is politically correct to call Barack Obama a “Muslim-lover” than the “N-word-lover” used against colorblind people such as former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and former President Jimmy Carter.)

In June of 2008 the Obama presidential campaign released his Certification of Live Birth. Honolulu, the capital city of Hawaii, where he was born, made this information available. On the form his father is listed as African and his mother as Caucasian.

To many of the shrewd conspiracy mavens, upset a black man was running for president, countered the truth by proclaiming that the Hawaii government released document was not a “real” certification of his birth.

To counter such ignorance, newspaper files were searched and both the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin archives show his birth announcement on the “Marriage Applications Births-Deaths” page, August 4, 1961 to read: “Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama, son, August 4.” It even had their residential address.

It wasn’t long until a Philadelphia lawyer, Philip Berg, challenged Barack Obama as not eligible to be president. A federal judge dismissed the complaint in a 34-page opinion that Berg’s claims “ventured into the unreasonable” and were “frivolous and not worthy of discussion.” All similar court cases have been dismissed.

But the lie would not die even after Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, wrote he had seen the original records and verified Barack Obama was a natural-born American citizen.

Donald Trump said he was sending his own investigators to Hawaii to find the truth. At least these Raymond Chandler-Elmore Leonard-like private-eyes have a pleasant holiday day spot in which to work. I would suggest they extend the investigation well into the summer.

They will find nothing more than what I found on dozens of web sites, books, documentaries and newspapers. Who would want to visit a dozen web sites when they can go to Hawaii.

According to one Internet site, thefogblow.com, a bunch of politicians and state legislators in eleven (11) states have attempted, so-far without success, to pass ‘birther’ legislation in one form or another. Why such politics? Why such “out of the blue” legislation? The only intention is to attempt to prevent President Obama from appearing on the ballot in the 2012 election.

This is radio talk show host Shawn Hannity’s greatest dream, as he says daily on his side show: prevent Barack Obama’s second term, any way you can.

Don't Mess With Mark Twain

2011-04-06T14:40:00.005-05:00

DON’T MESS WITH THE PAST

Being politically correct in the 21st century is well and good for those so inclined. But to push today’s credos onto the past is not only embarrassing, but wrong.

Auburn University professor Alan Gribben has taken it upon himself to make some changes in the first great American novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain. It is generally acclaimed as one of the supreme masterpieces of American literature.

Gribben’s version of "Huckleberry Finn" is well over due for some critics. He takes it upon himself to alter Twain’s classic with 21st century politically correct jargon. In the original Huck Finn the “N-word” appears 219 times. Gribben decides to clean up the story and substitutes the word “slave” for the “N-word.”

The word was common in Huck’s world and in mine when I was growing up in the 1940s. It was commonly what many baseball fans called Brooklyn’s third baseman, Jackie Robinson. Not meant as a compliment to the first black man to play in baseballs major leagues.

The use of the “N-word” in the 19th century of Mark Twain was unfortunate slang for “negro.” (Gribben omitted the word “Injun” entirely, though it was but a brogue-drawl of Illiterates in the West.)
Suppose the Holy Bible in the King James Version or one of the early originals in Greek and Hebrew got a revision taking out what offends our enlightened souls. In places Hebrew vulgarity is not fully translated in English. There is little need for a cherry-picked politically correct Bible.

In my April Fools’ column my use of “Japs” for Japanese during World War II was “edited” by one newspaper’s proof reader to read “Japanese.” Thereby losing the point. No matter that it was degrading to call our enemy “Japs,” it was common eighty to a hundred years ago. Germans were “Krauts” or worse, Italians were “blanked-blank wops” and so on. Even our Chinese allies against Japan were called “chinks,” or “gooks.” It was ugly, but it was a part of the times.

Much in history is not pretty, and some literature we could do without, criticize it, love it or hate it, but don’t change it. Professor Gribben says he changed the word because some schools refuse to teach the book with the original word in the text.

A work of art like “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is meant to be an accurate reflection of life as it was lived in the 19th century. Twain reveals, through humor and realism, the corruption, moral decay and intellectual impoverishment of the time and place.” (Easton Press publisher’s preface to a “Huck Finn” edition.)

Randall Kennedy, a law professor at Harvard University, says that the Latin word for black is “niger.” He writes “that once the word became an insult, it found a home everywhere.”

Joseph Conrad published his novel “The Nigger of the Narcissus: A Tale of the Sea” in 1897 about a West Indian black sailor on the merchant ship sailing from Bombay to London.
In the United States, Conrad’s novel was first published with the title “The Children of the Sea: A Tale of the Forecastle,” because no one would buy or read a book with the “N-word” in its title.

One can only imagine what Twain or Conrad would think of those who read into their work, rather than seeing what they saw. Don’t mess with history or literature. Learn from it.

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Corporations Are Not Persons !!

2011-04-05T12:56:00.004-05:00

The USA Supreme Court has voted to make corporations people. This gives them rights of a voter and of the giving of funds to their choice for political office, all without anyone knowing where the money comes from.

"WE THE POPLE...." NOT "WE THE CORPORATIONS...."

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No tax payments for Exxon, G.E. WHY?

2011-04-04T11:38:00.004-05:00

Uncle Sams’ tax man cometh

It’s that time of year again. The deadline for mailing our duty-bound income tax forms to Uncle Sam is just a week away. Humorist Dave Barry titled an article “The tax man cometh, and he is saying things you will never understand.”

Uncle Sam’s nephews and nieces, especially those in the middle income bracket, who earn too much to avoid paying taxes and make too little to afford paying them. It is a time for prayer and dash of honesty. It is anything but a joke.
In the late 17th century there were few taxes on income or anything else during Uncle Sam’s youth. Taxes on tobacco and snuff, corporate bonds, and slaves were among the earliest taxes. In 1817 a historically wise Congress did away with these taxes. Uncle Sam then relied on tariffs on imported or exported goods to run the government.

But doomsday came in 1913 when the 16th Amendment to the Constitution made the income tax permanent. The last 98 years individuals and corporations taxes have led the way in keeping Uncle Sam alive.

For reasons I do not fully understand, our 235-year old uncle’s gait has become erratic. He is inconsistent in his complex tax laws and lopsided enforcement. Uncle Sam has staggered somewhat off the straight and narrow; the path of peace and prosperity.

Pat Oliphant, a powerfully influential politician cartoonist, last week drew a citizen reading a newspaper, saying: “What?? I can’t believe it!” The paper reads: “G.E. Pays NO taxes.” He shows the paper to the I.R.S. officials, exclaiming “Heads up, you jerks. As a taxpayer, I want some action on this – right away.” The I.R.S. goes into action and beats up the tax payer.

At the bottom of all Oliphant’s drawings are two tiny birds talking about the cartoon. One bird says, “In Libya they revolt against this sort of thing.” The other, dressed like a 17th century patriot, says, “We used to also.”
This is a stark example of the fundamental unfairness in the formation and enforcement of Uncle Sam’s tax laws. While the vast majority of the citizens struggle to make ends meet, huge corporations like General Electric and others ride the gravy train. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) compiled a list of the ten top corporations that avoid paying or pay almost nothing in federal income taxes.

(EXAMPLES: Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009, and it received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to SEC filings. Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billions in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion. Also Chevron, Boeing, Valero Energy and Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, ConocoPhillips, on and on…)
Two Fridays ago The New York Times printed a story under the headline: “G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether.”

Bob Herbert, in his last New York Times’ column before leaving (after 30 years), wrote: “Despite profits of $14.2 billion — $5.1 billion from its operations in the United States — General Electric did not have to pay any U.S. taxes last year.”

Some of Uncle Sam’s kids have “better” lawyers and “smarter” congressmen/women and “clever” connections with the powerful. They lack very little in money and power. What is lacking with these “patriots” is honesty, integrity, openness, and a frank “Me First” attitude. They are very sincere in their way of life – so is a diamondback rattlesnake coming out of the sagebrush.

As the saying goes, drive carefully. Uncle Sam needs every taxpayer he can get because the giant corporations, like G.E., Exxon and their cohorts, are helping turn us into a third-world country while they bask in their riches.

Corporate News Is News ?

2011-03-28T16:05:00.007-05:00

Recommended TV and Internet viewing for those wishing for news of what is happening other than Hollywood gossip.

Get yourself to television programs like "Democracy Now!" Grit TV and Thom Hartmann on channels like FREE SPEECH TV and LINK TV.

Corporate interests have not helped us learn much regarding what is going on in the world lIke they should: ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, MSNBC, etc. All these are short on what is happening. Their editing is not good for us common folk.

For good reporting the BBC-TV or BBC AMERICA are great. And generally PBS programs great, too. BBC-AMERICA is now on most PBS stations. An informed public can avoid wars and other odd things legislators come up with all the time.

All these are on the Internet also. Get informed.

Wisdom from the silver screen

2011-03-25T09:42:00.004-05:00

World knowledge gained from the silver screen

I was fortunate to get an early start on study of the history of the world. Every Saturday night mother took my sister and I to a double-feature at the one-aisled Queen Theater on Brownwood’s Center Avenue.

Out on the Brady highway Camp Bowie was in full swing and the town was full of young troopers, especially on Saturday night. While dad cut hair we enjoyed the movies. Then we all rode home together in our 1936 four-door Plymouth. Evidently the new military camp did not have good barbers, for dad’s shop never closed before nine-thirty on Saturdays.

I do not know if dad bought the Plymouth new or used. According to an old 1936 newspaper ad the new ones sold for $510. (In those days dad hardly cleared forty to fifty dollars a week – but then, a dollar was worth a dollar.)

Brownwood’s Center Avenue alone had six movie houses in those days. (For more on the subject see my book, “Along the Way.”) Also the Grenada, owned by movie starlet Jennifer Jones’ father, was a block off Center. All this and two drive-ins.

It is evident that I had plenty of places to do research in my early years. Research from the silver screen planted in my heart and soul what the world was all about.

Recently a friend took a holiday to Morocco. His trip may have been a good one, but for me he wasted his money. He did not see either Humphrey Bogart or Ingrid Bergman. In my ignorance I ask about the famous Casbah and learned it was in Algiers. But I really believe Hope and Crosby ran through the Casbah in their movie, “The Road to Morocco.”

My knowledge of the rest of Africa was reinforced with the Tarzan movies. I did additional research on Edger Rice Burroughs’ hero from his 1918 “Tarzan of the Apes.” (I still have six of the series, published in 1918 and the 1920s. They are insured.)

It took a while but I finally saw all 52 “official” films of the Tarzan legend. Johnny Weissmuller, won five Olympic gold medals and set 67 world records in the 1920's, was my favorite Tarzan. Among the many who played Tarzan were Herman Brix (later wisely changed his name to Bruce Bennett); Buster Crabbe (Clarence Linden Crabbe II, the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles he won a gold medal in the 400 meter freestyle setting a new world record); and handsome Lex Barker (Born Alexander Crichlow Barker, Jr).

The Queen double features also had a 15-minute serial every Saturday. When the serial was not about the Lone Ranger (where I learned much about Texas) or Flash Gordon (space knowledge), it was an episodic Tarzan serial. These always left the hero in a horrible fix facing death. But the hero always got out of it the following Saturday.

Since this is being published in Texas there is no need to relate all I learned about this great state and the West. Randolph Scott was born in Virginia, but, to me, he was a Texan. It was a long time before the Indians ever won a battle in cowboy pictures. They were depicted as less than human; rampaging savages and fiends as all of America’s enemies are depicted. See “Sands of Iwo Jima” or any John Wayne war film whuppin’ up on “Japs.”

The spaghetti western, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,” had a message, but my poor Italian kept me from knowing what it was. Good prevailed and the good guys with the white hats won out against the bad guys in the last reel. (Buck Jones; William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy; Bob Livingstone (one of the Three Musketeers) and Alabama’s Johnny Mack Brown, who was most valuable player in the 1926 Rose Bowl upset of the Washington Huskies.

Certainly I would be as dumb on world affairs as Michelle Bachmann, had it not been for the cinema. Happy April Fools Day.

Love of war root of all evil

2011-03-20T17:04:00.003-05:00

The events of recent weeks in North Africa and other Middle East countries show the inner desire of peoples everywhere is to be free and not dictated in everything they say and do. This is what could have happened in Iraq had some rather dim-witted folks in the United States government not gone to war. It was becoming a reality for the people of Iran back in 1953 when USA agents ousted a fully democratically-elected leader and brought the Shah back. The Shah killed more than the Mullahs have.

How many times does it have to be said? War solves nothing. War breeds more war. War is a hell far more frightening than that preached from the backwoods of East Texas. Or, for that matter anywhere hell is mentioned. It shows man's inability to learn from the past. It reveals how little men can be.

There is nothing heroic about war. Those who love war are not the kind of people any country needs in leadership. I could (and will) paraphrase the Bible verse: "THE LOVE OF WAR IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL."

SMU's Kaifeng China Torah

2011-03-20T16:56:00.005-05:00

The Jews in China

In the 1950s, on a train from Taipei, Taiwan, to Kaohsiung, SBC missionary Pearl Johnson of South Carolina, told me about the Jewish congregations in Kaifeng, China. In the 1930s, when she was a missionary in Shandong and Guangdong provinces, she said there were about seven or eight Jewish families still in the city of Kaifeng. That started me wanting to know more about the Jews in China.

In the early1980s I was able to go to Mainland China. I flew into the city of Zhengzhou and took a bus fifty miles to Kaifeng. After visiting with an old pastor who was ill, I walked the Jiao Jing Alley in Kaifeng, the center of Jewish activity, but saw no evidence of the ancient Israelites. Their stone monuments and Torahs had long ago been purchased or stolen mostly by Europeans.

(A Kaifeng Torah is in the Bridwell Library, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. Texas. It was a special treat to see it once. It is Scroll 12 and includes Genesis. The history of how it came to be in Texas is as interesting a tale as the story of Jews thriving in China.)

In Beijing I met Zhao Shaowei, wife of Wu Jian, a former manager of the Jinling Hotel of Nanjing, China. Ms. Zhao was tall for a Chinese and had distinctly western features. She knew she was a descendant of the ancient colony of Jews in the city of Kaifeng. Both her mother and grandmother told her about the Passover meal and of eating, at times, baked bread without salt.

The West learned of the Israelite’s existence in China in the early 17th century. Pioneer Catholic missionary, Mateo Ricci, while visiting with a Kaifeng Jew who had a Chinese name, learned of their presence. The Jew styled himself an Israelite. The term “Jew” meant nothing to him. He told Ricci of their Hebrew Torahs and what he could remember of their history, which turned out to be little more than stone-carved monuments dated 1489 and 1663. Later investigations revealed the largest synagogue ever built to have been in Kaifeng.

The synagogue was established in the year 1163. The structure was destroyed several times, but always rebuilt. A 1489 inscription says the Jews arrived in Kaifeng during the Song dynasty (960 to 1126 AD). There were two stone monuments erected in the synagogue courtyard in 1663. On the stele they recounted the decades it took to rebuild the synagogue and rewrite the scrolls. By the 1850s the Kaifeng Jews referred to themselves as “the eight clans” with Zhao Shaowei’s surname being among them.

Consider the possibility of “The Lost Tribe of Israel” ending up in China. Descendents of the vanquished Northern Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in 724 BC could have migrated farther east and ended up in a cosmopolitan China. Maybe they were not lost, but living in settlements in Persia, Afghanistan, India and China.

Later migrations could have begun with the destruction of Solomon’s Temple and Judean exile in Babylon. Another good time for leaving home was in 70 AD as the Romans destroyed the second Temple.

Then again, It is more than probable that during the years of the Crusades, when Muslims and European Crusaders were fighting over who should “protect the holy places” of the Holy Land, Jews left in droves. Generation after generation they kept moving.

By the time of Jesuit Father Ricci, the Jewish congregation was on the brink of extinction, partly from the lack of rabbis who could read the Hebrew Torah and lead the services. Centuries of intermarriage with the Chinese had a part in melding the two cultures.

In China, the Hebrew people found the only place on earth where they were accepted and not persecuted. Their search, and ours, for peace and a normal life continues, as does my love of history.

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Mike Royko, Patron Saint of Columnists

2011-03-20T16:39:00.002-05:00

Mike Royko: A straight talking columnist

The only way the late Chicago Tribune writer Mike Royko could ever be considered a saint is that he is the Patron Saint of columnists.

Mike Royko columns were syndicated in more than 600 newspapers across the country. He was a man of the common people and had a keen sense of justice. He was gritty, real and considered a plague on conniving or shady politicians or disreputable bureaucrats. His words were not always liked, but were always respected by most readers.

The conversation, if we can call it that, of today’s America, appears to be scrapping the bottom of the barrel of communication. Instead of self-restraining exchanges in politics, religion and social gatherings, there seems to be a spirit of one-up-man-ship. Calling each other names. Splitting hairs over inconsequential matters. Seeing the worst in anyone’s words or views (not our own), now rules the day.

In 1968, when the war in Vietnam was heating up, in the paddy fields there and the main streets here, the rhetoric could not be heard for its volume. Lots of heat but little light. Add to that the emerging civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson wanted out. His announcement said it all: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

Mike Royko wrote a column that year which is as up-to-date as if it were written this morning. Here is an excerpt of that column from Richard Ciccone’s book “Royko.” Ciccone is a veteran Chicago newsman. Three paragraphs of a Royko column still timely after 43 years is re-printed in Ciccone’s book:

“Unrestrained hate has become the dominant emotion in this splintered country. Races hate, age groups hate, political extremists hate. And when they aren’t hating each other, they have been turning it on LBJ. He more than anyone else has felt it . . .

“Maybe he wasn’t the best President we might have had.

“But we sure as hell aren’t the best people a President has ever had.”

Royko found universal truths in the lives of the people of his Chicago. He took up their causes with a spicy, sarcastic, sardonic but always with his own wit and humor. For those who missed out on his five columns a week for more than 30 years, many are reprinted in book form, such as “Early Royko: Up Against it in Chicago,” “For the Love of Mike: More of The Best of Mike Royko” and “One More Time: The Best of Royko.”

“His columns could make a person laugh or cry, sympathize or agonize, but they were always a joy to read” – Polish American Journal.

Some of Royko’s quotes that will live forever:

“Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie, unwed mothers, and cheating on your income tax.”

“I never went to a John Wayne movie to find a philosophy to live by or to absorb a profound message. I went for the simple pleasure of spending a couple of hours seeing the bad guys lose.”

“It's been my policy to view the Internet not as an 'information highway,' but as an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies.”

And now, 14 years after his death the ‘electronic asylum’ is filled with his babbling --- only of a much better quality – the quality of a saint who knew his way around.

LENT: A Renewal for Life

2011-03-08T19:12:00.004-06:00

Lent, a time for renewal of life

Last Wednesday Christians of all stripes, convictions, attitudes and degrees of faith began the 40 days of Lent that leads to Easter Sunday. The Resurrection of Jesus the Christ is the “reason for the season,” to use an overused Christmas festival phrase.

In the early churches of the Middle East, the celebration of the resurrection was far more important than the occasion of the Christ child’s birth.

Traditionally the time of Lent began as a time of prayer, meditation and personal desires for spiritual renewal. Gradually some believers gave up a favorite food (one is giving up Facebook) in order to “observe” the event and for some strange reason many still think giving up something up as a way to “prepare for Easter.” (Roman Catholics, Episcopalians and some Protestants encourage their flocks in this manner – make some kind of sacrifice during Lent, as Jesus did when he began his earthly ministry.) With the passage of the centuries superstitions easily got wrapped around Easter as well as Christmas.

"What did you give up for Lent?" Since I grew up as a Baptist, the question held no meaning for me. For the Bible does not mention a season of Lent. In the first century Lent was two or three days of seeking a closer walk with the Lord, preparing the heart for Resurrection Sunday. As the church grew in influence and material power the observance went for weeks, finally settling on a symbolic 40 days.

In my Christian walk it has taken too long to fully appreciate the season leading up to Easter. It is at the very center of the “everlasting life” promised of John the Beloved disciple.

The last few years I have read and appreciated Peter J. Gomes’ books. I was sadden to read of his death at 68 on Feb. 28. His death of stroke complications, at such an early age, is a great loss for Harvard University and all Christian communities. After serving at Tuskegee Institute, he went to Harvard in 1970 and from 1975 the minister of The Memorial Church of Harvard as well as professor of Christian morals.
The Los Angeles Times said Gomes “was never one to let circumstances or the opinions of others dictate his sense of himself. He was a black Republican, a Baptist preacher in a stronghold of secularism, a descendant of escaped slaves who rose to become president of the Pilgrim Society.”

In his book “Strength for the Journey,” Gomes said much that is fitting as we set out on our Lenten journey. He writes: “Our Lord is not indifferent to our anxieties and our needs … Do you think that God does not know you are worried about your grades? Of course not, God hopes you will do something about it.” There is depth in his humor that all good teachers have.

By giving God priority we will gain perspective and everything else will fall into place … one thing that will fall into place is that we realize how much we have been given, how blessed we are at this moment.” He added that Christians suffer from anxiety, but also from amnesia, “forgetting all his benefits.”

In Gomes’ book, “Sermons, Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living,” he called his sermon on Easter, “When Life Begins.” God knows how to get our attention. God does not begin Easter with a peaceful rising of the sun. He begins it with an earthquake! The gospel says, “Suddenly there was a violent earthquake, … the angel of the Lord came down and rolled away the stone and sat on it!

“Easter Christians should realize that we do not have to die to live. You can begin it right now, right here. Live life while you are still alive. Life began for the disciples when they stopped being afraid.” Begin to live for reality as Easter approaches and then nourish God’s presence all year long.

San Angelo Presbyterian Challenge

2011-03-07T12:25:00.004-06:00

First appeared in the San Angelo Standard-Times Texas, USA

The Challenge at First Presbyterian Church and an old Scottish Painter

Every now and again there comes into our lives an event that causes us to “study ‘bout” it, as my dear grandmother often said. And when the tale is grim and not to our liking, or interferes with our lives and routine, a great deal of humor is desperately needed at such a time. A sense of humor helps offset an appalling, heartbreaking catastrophe.

I am not sure how many Tom Green County citizens are aware of the local church that almost fell in on itself. It was within inches of crumbling rocks, bricks and clouds of dust, showers of splinters and a million and one stained glass fragments. The fragility of the 103-plus year-old wooden beams holding things together were evidently giving up the ghost. This “Sword of Damocles” (to paraphrase the ancients) became evident last summer to the fellowship of the First Presbyterian Church on the corner of College and Irving, San Angelo, Texas.

No, nothing fell on Pastor William Proctor’s head or crushed the pulpit while he was preaching. There was no panic in the pews. News of the urgency of the situation came as an announcement that the following Sunday worship services would be held in the Wood Fellowship Hall. The problem was discovered days earlier while some alert members were looking into another problem in the attic.

Apparently wood like people, with time, does reach a point of feebleness. As with humans the vulnerability of such frailty needs tender and delicate attention. As experts were brought in, the ailing beams were only part of the problem. Proctor told me that “the walls of the sanctuary were bowing out at the top by around four to six inches on each side – not a good situation.”

What could possibly be humorous about such a fate? Nothing. But the ailing wooden beams and my flabby muscles made it a perfect time to cease solving the word’s problems (for a season) and share with the readers three things:

(1) Share a harrowing local story. (April is the date Rev. Proctor hopes the sanctuary can be safe again and services held as usual. Watch for the announcement
(2) Remind us old fogies our muscles can be renewed just as wood beams, with attention.
(3) Share a funny old story. I do not know the author. It was sent to me by Perry Flippin, whom everybody knows is a former San Angelo Standard-Times editor. So if you don’t like the tale, blame him. Here is the story:

There was a Scottish tradesman, a painter called Jack, who was very interested in making a pound where he could. So he often would thin down his paint to make it go a wee bit further. As it happened, he got away with this for some time.

Eventually the Presbyterian Church decided to do a big restoration job on one of their biggest churches. Jack put in a painting bid and because his price was so competitive, he got the job. And so he set to, with a right good will, erecting the trestles and putting up the planks, and buying the paint and ... yes, I am sorry to say, thinning it down with the turpentine.

Well, Jack was up on the scaffolding, painting away, the job nearly done, when suddenly there was a horrendous clap of thunder. The sky opened and the rain poured down, washing the thin paint from all over the church and knocking Jack far off the scaffold to land on the lawn.

Now, Jack was no fool. He knew this was a judgment from the Almighty, so he fell on his knees and cried, "Oh, God! Forgive me! What should I do?"

And from the thunder, a mighty Voice spoke in answer to Jack the painter’s prayer: "Repaint! Repaint! And thin no more!"

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PREVIEW: THE FIELDERS IN CHINA

2011-02-26T10:23:00.006-06:00

(Author on left, and Dr. Wilson Fielder, Stag Creek Baptist Church, March 8, 1953)

For the last decade I have been researching the life and times of two good friends who went out as Southern Baptist missionaries to China in 1912 and 1914. Rather than the usual missionary biography, I am sharing inspirational highlights, the interesting and humorous ways "way back then" with how they went about doing good. I have great deal of interest in the subject, March 8, 1953, upon hearing Wilson speak on China in his home community in Comanche County, Texas, I felt a moving in my soul to consider foreign missions. Which we did, in Taiwan, then Hong Kong and final ten years on the China mainland building bridges of understanding with the churches and people. Here is the opening part of which I hope to publish soon. --- Britt Towery.

IN OLD CHINA WITH MAUDIE AND WILSON FIELDER
Baptist pioneers in Central China, 1912-1950

Part One: Memories

As had become his weekly habit, Wilson Fielder, finished his breakfast went immediately to the closet, got his hat and silk and wool padded coat. Maudie watched from the breakfast nook with a smile of understanding.

She went with him to the door and stood on the small cottage porch as he slowly ambled down the path to the city gate. She didn’t have to be told his mission. Though he was now retired in Houston, his mind and heart were still along the Huang He (Yellow River) that threaded its way through the middle of Henan province.

It was the city gate where the action was. There he met herdsmen, farmers and merchants, even an occasional defunct mandarin. He often met poor former Manchu Mandarins, sitting at the gate, not really knowing how to work. With the fall of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Dr. Sun Yat-sen formed the Republic of China.

Vagabonds in straw sandals or barefoot came as far away as the other side of Zhengzhou and up from the third largest river in the world, the powerful Changjiang (Yangzi River), that separates north and south China.

It was on the great river, as it made its way from the city by the sea, the Chinese meaning of the city’s name: Shanghai, that Maudie and Wilson enjoyed their unique 1914 honeymoon. The ordinary river fishing boat was just the beginning of many a strange and fascinating experience this young missionary wife would find very different from the farm in Miles, Texas.

Maudie stood on the porch as tears welled up in her eyes to see the one she loved through the good and bad years. The War Lords of the twenties; Japan’s invasion in the thirties; Wilson’s four years in a Japanese consecration camp in the forties; the continuing civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists; corruption of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists government; Chairman Mao Zedong’s Long March. Most of Henan province’s droughts brought starvation and disease year after year to this breadbasket of the country.

During all that turmoil, Wilson and his Chinese co-worker were gone for weeks at a time on their donkeys visiting settlements and villages that had never heard of Jesus. Maude held down the fort and raised three boys (Wilson Jr., Richard Byron, and Gerald) and two daughters (Florence Ann and Golda Jean), seeing to their needs and constantly visiting church and non-church women of the area. In the churches women sat on one side and men on the other. So according to custom women missionaries ministered with the women and children.

Bertha Smith, who worked in Shandong province, tells of some churches with a wall to separate the sexes, others simply a curtain. In the churches where famous pioneer Charlotte “Lotte” Moon ministered, the women even used a side entrance.

Maudie sat down in her rocking chair as Wilson was now out of sight. He would return soon as 1960s Houston had no city gates and only a small number of Cantonese-speaking Chinese. (The Cantonese were world vagabonds; some of whom came from Mexico to Texas with General John J. Pershing after his expedition for Pancho Villa in 1916. The Fielders spoke Mandarin.

Memories are strange and often confusing to those of a certain age. Wilson would die soon at the age of 80. He was as good a Comanche County, Texas, cowboy as a back-country central China missionary.

Maudie had a mind sharpened by her farm work, parents who loved the Lord and kept her older brothers from “teasing” her as boys do. Her study at Howard Payne College and the newly-opened Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth unwrapped her eyes and heart to a wider world. Her memory was a great help when she began the study of the Henan variety of Mandarin. She first met Wilson as a coach and teacher at Miles High School. He had finished his studies at the two-year Howard Payne College in Brownwood and was commuting from Baylor University in Waco to Miles.

Maudie was studying at Howard Payne, and the train from Waco to Miles always made a stop at Brownwood. He often “just happened” to stop over for a well-chaperoned visit in the dorm parlor. Sometime during those visits Wilson shared with Maudie his belief that he felt God was calling him to be a missionary to China. Though his parents were active in the Stag Creek Baptist Church near Comanche county’ South Copperas Creek, Wilson left no word about how his interest in China developed. He did know Howard Payne graduate Blanche Rose Walker who was on her first leave home from China.

The honesty and desire to serve added to Maudie’s interest in this young cowboy. But, she tended to put such thoughts out of her mind, after all, he was a Baptist and she a Methodist.

Maudie wrote in her diary: “In August, one day I received a letter saying that the way had opened for Wilson to go to China.” The message did not surprise Maudie. She had known of his deep desire to go. She added in her diary: “What is surprising he left without seeing me again. I was hurt and angry.” In the language of West Texas, his leaving without seeing her “got her goat!”

Wilson left Comanche, Texas, in August 1912, along with Eugene and Annie Jenkins Sallee, who were returning to China for their second term. The First Baptist church of Comanche voted to assume the financial responsible of the new missionary.

Weeks later Maudie got a letter Wilson written on the high seas and mailed from Japan. In this first and brief letter he asked Maudie, straight out, if she would consider becoming a missionary --- then as somewhat of an after thought --- would she become his wife.

Her only thought was: “Why in heaven’s name didn’t he ask this before he left the United States?” In her answer to Wilson, she simply wrote: “I will pray about it.”

Maudie was finishing up the breakfast dishes when she heard the screen door open, Wilson was back from “the city gate” with little or no news. As he settled in his arm chair, Maudie thought of the many times she had seen him come in from doing preaching, visiting merchants and those in the hospital. As well as repairing the well or working on the old car they made every effort to keep it running with no auto repair shops within a 1000 miles.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS COPYRIGHTED AND ANY PORTION OF ITS USE IS BY PERMISSION ONLY
WRITE: bet@suddenlink.net

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Newspaper's Big CEOs Make Money, Not News

2011-02-26T10:01:00.008-06:00

TV entertainment as news fouls the airwaves

Will Rogers’ comment that “All I know is what I see in the newspapers” needs to be updated: “All I know is what I see on the internet newspapers.” And a great deal harder to seek out the truth on the World Wide Web than opening up a daily newspaper and hold it, fold, read in any room. It’s so nice, that special smell of ink on newsprint. Enjoy while you can.

The only thing you smell on the Internet and television is the gun powder stench; lots of screeching tires; bedroom scenes galore and exaggerated over-abundance of cleavage (of the prettier gender) by entertainment hosts.

Anything you want to buy they have long legs and smiling girls pushing it on you. Even advertize condoms and all kinds of enhancers for the wandering male or female. And why is that “nekked” couple sitting in bathtubs outside in the first place? Why does a family of bears need to be promoting toilet paper? More is spent on commercials than news programming.

It is an unfortunate fraud by cable and networks to promote “entertainment” as news and put it on their newscasts. They have expanded and excelled the “yellow journalism” of old time newspapers. It is a smart con the “users of the public airways” puts over on us. They report a starlet’s bra size or who is in re-hab rather than what is actually going on in Washington government chambers and Wall Street board rooms. No money for foreign correspondents anymore.

Recently on C-SPAN, Andre Schiffrin, founder of The New Press, argued that the conglomeration’s take-over of publishing houses, magazines and newspapers (from people who had printer’s ink in their veins) publishing of all kinds began to go downhill. Each book was expected to make a sizable profit or they would not print it.

The demise of many newspapers came about, not because they lost a little money, or broke even, but they did not make enough to suit the suits who took over. That is why foreign correspondents are disappearing and many informative books not published. Greed.

Half a century ago, daily newspapers were primarily published as afternoon newspapers. Remember when the Fort Worth Star-Telegram published both morning and afternoon editions? Those were the days of the Houston Post, Dallas Time-Herald and the San Antonio Light. Along with thousands of others these great papers have been shelved deep in some library archives.

In 1950, there were 1,772 daily newspapers published in America. That has dropped to 1,437. The latest count I could find was in 2006. Probably many more have been closed the last five years.
Research tells me that the average weekday readership of daily newspapers in the top 50 markets has declined from 77.6 percent in 1970 to 48.4 percent in 2007. During the same period, Sunday readership has gone from 72.3 percent to 55.4 percent.

The sad part of this era comes down to those who hurt the most, like sports editor Frank DiLeo, who wrote: “For the second time in two years, I am being laid off from my job as sports editor of the New Jersey Daily Record.” He even won the first New Jersey Press Association award for innovation a few years back.

Men like Frank are victims of corporate greed, just like millions of folks out there going through the same thing in publishing, waiters, secretaries and laborers along with farmers and us average folk. It’s all about profit margins.

--30—
Britt Towery, free-lance writer, who once had a writing office in the Southern Building, Center Ave., Brownwood Texas, just across from the Lyric Theater where he made 35 cents an hour. E-mail: bet@suddenlink.net

Steve Allen Meeting of Minds

2011-02-02T16:09:00.002-06:00

The old TV series, “Meeting of Minds, is enjoyable history and entertaining.

From time to time I wonder what it would be like to sit down with men or women who have accomplished something of value with their lives. The people who influenced history, even if as a clown or a comic like Charlie Chaplin.

Loving to read history, I would like to ask the real people a lot of things. Such as getting the “real story” of how Leo Tolstoy wrote such long books; why old Joe Stalin feared Trotsky; where George Washington slept; and see if actress Sophia Loren would explain her 17 days in jail in 1972. (It was for Italian tax evasion – any excuse to see her would be more than worth the effort.)

The originator of the NBC-TV Tonight Show, Steve Allen, did what I would enjoy doing. He created what critics called "the ultimate talk show” --- “Meeting of Minds.” From the start it was a popular, award-winning series on the Public Broadcasting System network.

The “getting on” generation, the “not getting any younger” set, will remember this chit-chat show. It was not exactly your typical night time talk and repartee show. Instead of having the latest movie starlet or personality, the show featured guests who played important roles in the drama of history.

Each week, Steve and his wife Jayne Meadows, would entertain historic guest around a table in the manner of their historic times. Allen, creator and writer, served as the host and moderator and welcomed both heroes and “villains” around his table of discussions.

The series had Steve Allen’s sharp and thought-provoking humor while reminding us of yesterday’s leader’s insight and controversies.

Jayne Meadows, co-writer and actress, was born in “God’s Country” (China) of missionary parents. She is the older sister of Audrey Meadows best known as the dead-pan housewife, Alice Kramden on the 1950s classic television comedy, “The Honeymooners.” (One afternoon in the 1980s I ran into Audrey and her husband in Kowloon, Hong Kong. She did not appear to mind my stopping them to tell her of our appreciation of her life and work. She died in 1996.)

Since the “Meeting of Minds” program could not produce the real Aristotle or Niccolo Machiavelli they had to use actors. Like Keye Luke, who played the "father of modern China," Dr. Sun Yat-sen. For the 19th Century English poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Allen’s wife Jayne Meadows played the part. She also was a perfect Cleopatra.

Among those who appeared on different programs were Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, Marie Antoinette, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Paine, Francis Bacon, Thomas Jefferson, and the infamous Voltaire and Charles Darwin.

In Allen’s books he has written about the series. In his own words, Allen has shared some of his vision:

"The idea is that every syllable will be part of an actual quotation. The degree of the exact quotation varies from character to character. In the case of some people who played important roles in the drama of history, of course, there is no record of anything they ever said or wrote. Two examples that come to mind are Cleopatra and Attila the Hun. Nevertheless, they were both fascinating characters for our show. And there's nothing difficult in creating dialog for them. You bring factual information into conversational form -- and commit no offense in doing so.”

The multi-award winning series “Meeting of Minds” still exists in the form of video cassettes and book form. These have been used in some high school history classes for years. Check and see if the local library has copies.

Of all the comics or humorists, not counting Will Rogers or Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin would be my choice for a conversation over a cup of tea. I like his take on politicians. Chaplin once said: “I remain just one thing, and one thing only –-- that I am a clown, and it places me on a far higher plane than any politician.”

Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief

2011-02-02T16:05:00.003-06:00

Quanah Parker, remembered on 100th anniversary of his death

A few years ago returning home from a visit to Norman, Oklahoma, I drove out of the way to Fort Sill. I did so to give my respects to the monument and tomb of the last of the Comanche chiefs, Quanah Parker.

Quanah Parker died 100 years ago Feb. 23. Beside being a well-respected chief of his clan, much of his fame comes from his famous mother Cynthia Ann Parker. She was a young girl when abducted by a Comanche and Kiowa raiding party, May 19, 1836.

The Comanches were a powerful group of tribes from the forests of deep east Texas almost to the Rockies and south to the Rio Grande. They were a wandering, warring band with large herds of ponies and any Indian or white they could capture.

Later Cynthia Ann became the wife of Pete Nocona, a prominent chief and bore him three children. In 1861 some Texas Rangers attacked Nocona’s camp Cynthia Ann was not able to escape. She had one of her children (Prairie Flower) with her and naturally was grief-stricken at being dragged from her home and loved ones. Something the whites never understood.

Prairie Flower died within three years and heart-broken and confused Cynthia Ann died in 1870.

It is thought that Quanah was born about 1852, but little is known of his early years. Many are the books and articles, some better than others, of Quanah, the two abductions of Cynthia Ann.

Quanah Parker, being a powerful and well-known Comanche, found life on the Oklahoma Territory Indian Reservations difficult, but adjusted. In one of several disputes with Washington’s Indian Commissioner Jones, Apache Jones (no relation) spoke up for Quanah: “He [Quanah] is just like light, you strike a match in a dark room and there is light; that is the way with Quanah, wherever he is is light … some of the Indians are jealous.” (Hagan, page 87)

A 1897 photograph of Quanah and three wives, Mah-cheet-to-wooky, Clo-my, and A-er-wuth-takum, at the Smithsonian Institute. Have no idea what the names would be if translated into English. When he got wife number seven, one left him, saying seven was too many.

Quanah enjoyed a celebrity which was rare on Indian Reservations, especially in Oklahoma Territory. The Apache Geronimo had a great deal of notoriety. When Geronimo was transferred to Oklahoma from Alabama he was respected, but never to the degree as Quanah. The Comanches did not mind the Apaches coming, but did not want white neighbors.

Quanah did not like to talk about his years on the warpath or what life was like during those days. He did, however, enjoy telling in detail about his encounters with Washington officials and controversies on the reservation, such as when white people were moving into the reservation. It was not legal, but congress after congress failed to take any action.

Indian Agent Frank Baldwin understood the problem. His support is seen in this quote: “It is their desire that this reservation be kept exclusively for Indians … they have learned to dread the white man, his avarice and cupidity.”

Quanah did not get respect from President McKinley when he protested the lack of land for his people. McKinley’s men quickly escorted Quanah and the Indian representatives out of the room.

But things were better when President Teddy Roosevelt went hunting in Oklahoma, he sought out Quanah and thought well of him. Quanah told him of the need for jobs for the Indians. 480,000 acres were added to the Indians but was difficult to actually own or use as the white pioneers kept pouring into the territory.

In 1910, Quanah finally got to move his mother’s bones from Texas to Post Oak Mission, Oklahoma. At the memorial service Quanah said of his mother: “she loved Indians so well not wan to go back to folks.” The old chief died the next year.

(For the whole story read: “Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief” by William T. Hagan, University of Oklahoma Press.)

Chinese NewYear: RABBIT

2011-01-24T13:10:00.003-06:00

CHINA ENTERS THE YEAR OF THE RABBIT WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 3, 2011

Rush Limbaugh, he of the golden microphone and chairman of all things looney, tried out his Chinese on his radio program last month. It just happened to be the day President Hu Jintao of the People’s Republic of China visited the United States.

Limbaugh said: “When I hear Chinese or Japanese, it sounds like all the same word. And I can't comprehend anybody understanding it."

Then he began squawking a string of noises that were his idea of what Chinese sounds like. It was as far from any language sounds known to man. It was an embarrassment to everyone but the man spouting it. The man now Senator Al Franken called Rush Limbaugh “a big fat idiot,” in his 1996 book of the same title.

Spoken and written Chinese is far older than any of the varieties of today’s English. It is easier to learn and far more beautiful to be made a parody. Limbaugh, never known to apologize for anything, may think it is satire, but his remark and attitude is the lowest burlesque, lampoon spoof.

When anyone refers to “Red China,” you know they are not knowledgeable and still fear “the yellow peril” which was so prevalent during the late 19th century. It was the West’s fear of the mysterious, unknowable Orientals. (At the turn of the 20th century such fear of the Chinese and Japanese was just as misguided as the fear of Muslims today.)

Just the other day, Feb. 3, was the first day of the Chinese New Year. The Year of the Tiger is behind us and the year of the Rabbit is here. Twelve year cycles represented by an animal has been a tradition in China for thousands of years. It is estimated our year of 2011 is the Year 4708 by the Chinese Calendar.

The Chinese New Year begins on the second New Moon after the winter solstice. It is based on astronomical observations, making it easy to calculate backward or forward for thousands of years.

It is really the only holiday for everybody. It is a time to honor the household and heavenly deities. It is also a time to honor their ancestors.

In 1912, with the birth of the Republic of China (now on Taiwan) the Western calendar was recognized as the formal beginning of the year. But the traditional Chinese New Year continued with a new name – Spring Festival.

In preparation for the lunar New Year, cleaning house and yard were meant to appease the gods who would be coming down from heaven to make inspections. (See more about this in my book, “Lao She, Master Storyteller.”)
People posted scrolls printed with lucky messages on household gates and set off firecrackers to frighten evil spirits. Elders gave out money to children.
In the 1580s, Italian Matteo Ricci and some Jesuit missionaries brought the western Gregorian calendar to China. Beginning in 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong (1893-1976), head of the Chinese Communist Party and founder of the People’s Republic of China, stopped the celebrations of the traditional Chinese New Year. There was little food or joy to celebrate anyway until his death. In 1996 the Spring Festival became a weeklong vacation. In the old days it was a month long celebration.
As with all things the Spring Festival’s traditions have changed with the opening to the West and the coming of color television. It is a time when more attend operas, eat out, but still visit family and friends.
We observed the celebration many times in Taiwan and Hong Kong back half a century ago. I am glad we got a taste of the old as well as the new. With the growth of Chinatowns in America (even Houston has street names in Chinese characters as well as English in the western suburbs), it is time for Americans to re-think their attitude and understanding of peoples of the world.
This past couple of decades has been a year of better understanding between the Chinese from Taiwan and those from the Mainland. Now, let’s have more of that on the government sides, Taiwan, China and the United States. Happy New Year of the Rabbit.

Perils of the Whistleblower

2011-01-24T13:05:00.003-06:00

Whistleblowers: Setting things right

Our country has a whistleblower law that protects anyone reporting illegal or law-breaking in government and corporations and the non-profits. The action of the whistle-blower is correcting wrong and hurtful actions. Setting things right.

It is known as the “Whistleblower Act” and prohibits retaliation against employees who report official wrongdoing. Those exposed cannot terminate the person, or take any adverse action against them.

The most common types of fraud include Medicare and Medicaid, pharmaceutical, defense contractor and cheating (defrauding) on the payment of taxes.

We rally around those who uncover such crimes and value the brave men and women with the backbone, fearless guts to go public with the matter.

Far too often the whistleblower is blown out of the water by the powers that be in government or in the business world. We’ve read how hard it was to get tobacco barons to admit they added nicotine and lied about other matters when confronted.

For the last five years, India has such a law. It is called the “Right to Information Act.” Such a step of progress in the laws of India is to be applauded. There is one problem: it is filled with difficulties there just as it is in the United States.

Amit Jethwa of Kodinar, India, knew the Act allows citizens to demand almost any government information. The law helps the people stop petty crime and corruption, having to pay a bribe for almost everything.

Amit Jethwa had just left his lawyer’s office after discussing the lawsuit he filed about an illicit limestone quarry run by local politicians. He was shot dead by men on a motorbike, guns blazing.

Reports say at leas a dozen have been killed since the “Right to Information Act” law was enacted. Jethwa had so much information of 55 illegal quarries which led to a powerful member of Parliament from the Bharatiya Janata Party was involved. Justice is in the process of prevailing. The Parliamentarian is charged with hiring a contract killer to kill Jethwa.

Most of whistleblowers in our country do not often face that fierce an opponent, but they seldom see justice. They are out-gunned with high-pocket lawyers, corrupt officials and all kind of semi-legalized bends in the road in their challenge to bring out the truth and teach the powerful a lesson.

In this week’s Orange County Register the question was ask “Which Mystery Senator Killed the Whistleblower Bill?” The Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (WPEA) – a bill that would have strengthened protections for federal employees – was killed by one senator’s decision to place an anonymous hold on the legislation during the last day of the 2010 congressional session.

Lindsay Bigda writes in the newspaper’s report: “The WPEA would have helped federal whistleblowers like Robert MacLean – a former federal air marshal who blew the whistle on a cost-cutting plan to remove marshals from long-haul flights – by giving them access to regular courts.”

The perils of those who believe in the work of the whistleblowers of the world beware. Your work is not going to get easier, especially when a senator, anonymous and a coward, can hinder progress of “setting things straight.”

Limbaugh Disrespects Chinese

2011-01-22T11:47:00.007-06:00

Chinese character for Spring

CHINA ENTERS THE YEAR OF THE RABBIT

Rush Limbaugh, he of the golden microphone and chairman of all things looney, tried out his Chinese on his radio program last month. It just happened to be the day President Hu Jintao of the People’s Republic of China visited the United States.

Limbaugh said: “When I hear Chinese or Japanese, it sounds like all the same word. And I can't comprehend anybody understanding it."

Then he began squawking a string of noises that were his idea of what Chinese sounds like. It was as far from any language sounds known to man. It was an embarrassment to everyone but the man spouting it. The man now Senator Al Franken called Rush Limbaugh “a big fat idiot,” in his 1996 book of the same title.

Spoken and written Chinese is far older than any of the varieties of today’s English. It is easier to learn and far more beautiful to be made a parody. Limbaugh, never known to apologize for anything, may think it is satire, but his remark and attitude is the lowest burlesque, lampoon spoof.

When anyone refers to “Red China,” you know they are not knowledgeable and still fear “the yellow peril” which was so prevalent during the late 19th century. It was the West’s fear of the mysterious, unknowable Orientals. (At the turn of the 20th century such fear of the Chinese and Japanese was just as misguided as the fear of Muslims today.)

Feb. 3, 2011 is the first day of the Chinese New Year. The Year of the Tiger is leaving us and the year of the Rabbit is here. Twelve year cycles represented by an animal has been a tradition in China for thousands of years. It is estimated our year of 2011 is the Year 4708 by the Chinese Calendar.

The Chinese New Year begins on the second New Moon after the winter solstice. It is based on astronomical observations, making it easy to calculate backward or forward for thousands of years.

It is really the only holiday for everybody. It is a time to honor the household and heavenly deities. It is also a time to honor their ancestors.

In 1912, with the birth of the Republic of China (now on Taiwan) the Western calendar was recognized as the formal beginning of the year. But the traditional Chinese New Year continued with a new name – Spring Festival.

In preparation for the lunar New Year, cleaning house and yard were meant to appease the gods who would be coming down from heaven to make inspections. (See more about this in my book, “Lao She, Master Storyteller.”)
People posted scrolls printed with lucky messages on household gates and set off firecrackers to frighten evil spirits. Elders gave out money to children.

In the 1580s, Italian Matteo Ricci and some Jesuit missionaries brought the western Gregorian calendar to China. Beginning in 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong (1893-1976), head of the Chinese Communist Party and founder of the People’s Republic of China, stopped the celebrations of the traditional Chinese New Year. There was little food or joy to celebrate anyway until his death. In 1996 the Spring Festival became a weeklong vacation. In the old days it was a month long celebration.

As with all things the Spring Festival’s traditions have changed with the opening to the West and the coming of color television. It is a time when more attend operas, eat out, but still visit family and friends.
We observed the celebration many times in Taiwan and Hong Kong back half a century ago. I am glad we got a taste of the old as well as the new. With the growth of Chinatowns in America (even Houston has street names in Chinese characters as well as English in the western suburbs), it is time for Americans to re-think their attitude and understanding of peoples of the world.

This past couple of decades has been a year of better understanding between the Chinese from Taiwan and those from the Mainland. Now, let’s have more of that on the government sides, Taiwan, China and the United States. Happy New Year of the Rabbit.

--30—

Britt Towery, local resident, spent 35 years in Asia, His e-mail: bet@suddenlink.net

Bachmann heads off Palin

2011-01-20T14:28:00.006-06:00

Thoughts on ladies of the right

Few girls that can hold a candle to half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin, but there is one who is catching up. Not the Nevada women who wanted to settle problems using the Second Amendment. Not the one who wanted to use chickens to pay doctors like in the old days. Not the one who claimed she was not a witch.

Not Michelle Malkin (née Maglalang) the American conservative blogger and political commentator, though she backs any person who ever misspoke. President Barack Obama is not her favorite leader of the free world. All these ladies get time with Shawn Hannity because of his softball questions.

(In advance of Sarah Palin’s interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Slate’s David Weigel proposed a new definition to the neologism “Hannitize”: “to clean up a messy situation with a softball interview.” Hannity is the go-to interviewer for right-wing women and men following a scandal or controversy.)

But the one character that is doing her best to “out do” Ms. Plain and take over the spotlight of ego-driven politicians is Representative Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., the de-facto promoter of one of the Tea Party groups.
Ms. Bachmann claimed in a speech last month that she left the Democratic Party and became a Republican because she was horrified by the portrayal of the Founding Fathers in Gore Vidal's 1973 historical novel “Burr.” "I reached out to the 85-year-old author. Called the novel a “snotty book,” she said.

Gore Vidal’s portrait of our Founding Fathers in “Burr” is a historical novel. It emerged during the mayhem of the Civil Rights Movement; controversy over the War with Vietnam; followed closely by President Richard Nixon’s resignation. It was a time when the government’s image was one few trusted. Vidal said it was that way with the Founding Fathers. They were human just as we are, filled with jealousies, agendas and disgust of one another. This surprised some readers but not to the extent it seems to have had on Ms. Bachmann in her Freshmen college experience.

She boasts of how that trashy book by Gore Vidal made her storm out of the Democratic Party and unite with “God’s Own Party.”

Not so very much longer through an assistant, Vidal offered a written statement in response to Ms. Bachmann tirade. He wrote her: "She is too stupid to deserve an answer."

I have yet to hear Ms. Bachmann’s thoughts on Michelle Obama, but the right-wing media attacked the First Lady for wearing a red dress to the White House State Dinner last week. It was their opinion Ms. Obama wore a read dress to, honor "Commie Red China." The right wing has a history of seeing political messages in Michelle Obama and other administration figures' attire.

Some of Ms. Bachmann’s best, listed by various writers, are: Sen. Harry Reid is trying to get kids gambling early. There is an African American genocide going on in this country. Her extreme love of Mountain Dew is weird.
Ms. Bachmann earned CNN's "Wingnut of the Year" title for all the inane things she said in 2009, especially this Sean Hannity-enabled quote: "Where tyranny is enforced upon the people, as Barack Obama is doing, the people suffer and mourn." She went on to declare President Obama is in bed with terrorists. Her paranoia runs deep.
And the folks of her Minnesota district keep on re-electing her to Congress. I always thought Minnesotans were elegant and neat like the Garrison Keller.

Now she is making plans to run for president in 2012. I wish her well, it will be entertaining on the campaign trail to hear more of her astute perceptions on how to save America.

This is a good time to add a bit of levity to this week’s opinion piece. My old buddy, Dr. George R. Wilson, Jr., former president of the Hong Kong Baptist Theological Seminary, sent me a birthday card that was probably written with me in mind: “You’re not really old till you pick up the remote control --- hold it to your ear and wait for the dial tone.”

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U.S. Constitution ratification book

2011-01-20T14:24:00.001-06:00

Ratification of the U.S Constitution

The making a Constitution for the United States of America traveled and travailed through the 13 original colonies, 1787 to 1788. The individual states worked on hundreds of drafts, proposals and revisions before they molded what we have today.

The meetings were not closed door discussions or backroom huddles of a few. In every state the conferences were open to the public to hear what the elected delegates discussed. These were not like the off-the-wall “town hall meetings” of last summer. In 1787 there were no political parties.

After a year of meetings, each state voted for or against ratification of the document. That took time also, for a letter from Richmond to New York City could sometimes take two weeks.

Americans are showing an increased interest in the U.S. Constitution. Most of the talk is among extremist, left and right . There are those who want a “return” to the Constitution’s original intent. This desire by some to understand the original intent of the 18th century is a good thing. But we do not want to return to the original aims.

“Restoring” this nation to its original aims would not answer today’s problems.

Going back is not the answer to anything. Such reverse thinking cannot restore our liberties. Mainly because our liberties are still as vibrant as in the original days. It is not as simple as restoring a Rembrandt. Restoring a work of art brings out the color and brush strokes. Restoring words of an ancient written document, replacing or rephrasing 18th century ideas with 21st century, would be the beginning of the end.

Andreas Teuber of Brandeis University writes: “The Constitution is open to interpretation, after all, it does not wear its meaning on its face, … The series of commentaries it has generated rival the voluminous studies on the Bible and the Talmud as well as those on the most commented upon of all texts, the plays of William Shakespeare.”

What is unique about the American Constitution and what distinguishes it from its European counterparts is that it was, in Thomas Paine's famous definition: "not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government."

Exploring interpretive maneuvers of a “return” to the original is not wise nor practical. Could it not be true that the authors wrote it in such a way that their original intentions would not determine its meaning?

Possibly the Framers drafted the text in such a way as to leave little trace of their concrete proposals or substantive intentions. This could be part of the special and enduring feature of the Constitution. The document is not a God-delivered or ordained sacred record.

Our country and government are still, after all these years, a surprise to much of the world. It looked to the 18th century man as an experiment with little hope of working. No one, especially the British, saw it as a few peasants trying out an unheard and unwieldy system. The kings and queens of Europe saw their divine right as kings and queens in danger.

A new, detailed book on the events of 1877-1878 is by MIT history professor Pauline Maier. The book is fascinating reading filled with the drama, pros and cons of those men who are unknown to history. Her book, “Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788” is a good addition to American history.

The Prologue to the U.S. Constitute is pure poetry: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.”

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

With apologies Pastor Bumpus

2011-01-03T10:51:00.002-06:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVEN IF YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE IT.

With a hoarse and sore throat and a head that felt twice its size from a month-long cold, I stayed home from worship services last Sunday

All the doctor could tell me was I didn’t have the flu. So with that assurance I stumbled on toward Christmas, wishing January would come quickly. The old wives’ tale says nothing cures a cold, just wait it out. It will be gone before the week’s out. I was longing for January as it became evident one week was not chasing away this demon of a cold.

With all the strength I could muster I turned on our television and dialed cable number three last Sunday. Jody (she caught the cold also) and I sat on our sofa and watched the 10:30 morning service from the First Baptist Church of San Angelo.

Pastor Mark Bumpus’s sermon was not just for Sunday, but for every day of the week. Like most preachers know “church” is not just a Sunday thing. Sunday only starts a week with God, if we so choose. A church visitor ask an usher “when does the service begin?” Christian service, replied the usher, begins right after the sermon.

The scripture was from the Old Testament, Isaiah 41:10. “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

With apologies to Pastor Bumpus, I thought it wise to go through the week with this first 2011 column. The scripture from Isaiah has an encouraging word for every day of the week. Each day’s word:

SUNDAY, God is reminding us to not be afraid. None of us know what a day or even a week can bring, but “fear not.”

MONDAY, God explains “fear not,” by assuring us that He is our God. One of the primary teachings of the Christmas just past is “Emmanuel”—God with us, even on “blue” Mondays.

TUESDAY, do not be worried, anxious or troubled about events near and far, for once again God is ever-present. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He is even closer when trouble rears its ugly head.

WEDNESDAY, He assures us of the fact He is still with us in the middle of the week. “I am your God!” means we are in a personal relationship, not some spiritual “feeling.” You can’t go so far that He is not there.

THURSDAY: “I will strengthen you!” If ever a sentence demanded an exclamation point, it is this one. “Wait upon the Lord, who renews your strength” (Isaiah 49:31). America, like Israel, should know God is our strength, not a strong military.

FRIDAY, God is not just a spectator, but the only reliable one to help us. We need lots of help as the week ends, for often find our work is not finished. He helps us when under pressure.

SATURDAY, not only is there strength and help in time of need, but His righteousness is always underneath. His righteous right hand keeps us from wandering. We will not slip through his fingers.

For the many who are facing unemployment; death of a loved one; fear of death itself; disappointment in others; loved ones in prison or twisted with doubts: remember that God has not forgotten you.
“Let shadows come, let shadows go, let life be bright or dark with woe; I am content, for this I know, Thou thinkest, Lord, of me.”

I’ve read many 19th century newspapers. A majority of them printed a local sermon each week. Reporters took notes and printed a summary (when short of news, sometimes the whole sermon). If well done, they informed and blessed the readers. Back in great-grandfather Argyle C. Towery’s day there was no television for the homebound. (Somewhat of a blessing in disguise.) Argyle was also great-grandfather of a Texas Pulitzer winner, Ken Towery.
For the New Year may all your sniffles and colds be little ones.

Afghan War enters 10th Year

2010-12-28T10:27:00.004-06:00

The U.S. took an elephant gun to shoot a flea ! ! !

Another look at the Afghanistan War

The New Year of 2011 has us entering the tenth year of the U.S. military blitzkrieg-like invasion of Afghanistan continues to be a curse with no light at the end of the tunnel. The high cost in lives and borrowed money is obscene. Enough is more than enough!

The on and off forays to free a village or a valley against the Pakistan and Afghanistan Talibans only make the locals more upset with our being there. The corruption on all sides is as normal as a walk in the park.

To make these far-away peoples and their trials more human to me I went through some dusty old books for a mental trek of Central Asia. By understanding a small portion of the past they become more real to me. This present conflagration must end long before President Obama’s summer of 2014. If not, the next president might extend it to 2024.

The Central Asian experience has not made its way into Western school studies. Little of its history and literature are known in American schools except for specialists, linguist and scholars. Only in the last few years have modern translations of ancient and modern “stans” poetry become available in English.

Present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan are the best known of the six “stans” in Central Asia: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan (formerly Russian Turkistan). In the 1800s there was a Chinese Turkistan that is now the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of western China.

Afghanistan had been the center of great empires ruled by foreigners and numerous tribal monarchies. Such a history magnifies today’s difficulties of tribal differences, dialects and thought processes. Add into that mix foreign armies and total chaos results.

Afghans are Indo-Iranian, possibly originally Tajiks of the Persian race. The area only became a separate and independent state named in English by colonists as Afghanistan in 1747.

Less than three hundred years before Christ, Alexander the Great came on the scene and changed that world with his conquests. From Egypt to Persia and India he led in the eventual foundation of Greek dynasties. His Greek influence in Afghanistan waned and the Parthians arose to power and adopted the Buddhist religion.

During the 6th century the Moghul Empire out of India divided Afghanistan in two parts, India ruling Kabul and the Persians held the province of Heart.

The Arabs of the 7th century had their day in the spotlight before various Indian despots ruled much of the area. In between were the Turks and Persians who took several swings at being the potentiate. To use a poor analogy, no one got a home run.

In the 13th century the people probably thought the end of the world had arrived. The Mongols of Genghis Khan invaded most of Central Asia on their way to a bloody world conquest.

In the 19th century Great Britain was the world’s only super power. They lost to no one in their day. When it came to Afghanistan they had the ignoble honor of being massacred and driven from the country.

The last days of 1979 the Russian Soviets invaded Afghanistan attempting to make it another of their subservient satellites. Ten years could not control the Afghans and was a major reason the Soviet Union came to an end.

This is where the movie “Charlie Wilson’s War” comes into the picture. Fiction, with a few facts, it reminded us of some of the background of how the United States got involved in Afghanistan’s war with the Soviet Union. The U.S. sent money and supplies to our present enemies, which helped throw out the Soviets.

When in early October, 2001, the U.S. military, to get revenge and justice for Osama bin Laden’s crimes against humanity, began bombing the caves and valleys of Afghanistan. We took an elephant gun to shoot a flea.

Our leaving the battlefield will definitely bring on a civil war that will kill hundreds of thousands. That will happen if we leave now or fifty years from now. My study tells me Enough is ENOUGH.

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CHRISTMAS IS WHAT WE CHOOSE TO MAKE IT

2010-12-11T19:22:00.003-06:00

WRITTEN FOR CHRISTMAS EVE Friday, Dec. 24, 2010

Christmas is what we choose to make it

As you read this it is Christmas Eve. Some are glad the whole exciting season is almost over, when, in truth, it has actually just begun.

So many distractions come every Christmas season. Every Christmas we tell ourselves it will be different this year; we’ll even attend church. Enjoy the choirs and hymns and remember it is all about the coming to earth of the Prince of Peace.

Year to year, there are those without a Christmas tree, wreath or gifts for their children. Or as in this war, loved ones unable to be together for Christmas. When it is the first Christmas without a loved one for the first time, the time can easily becomes a painful experience.

For the many who are lonely and even unhappy this Christmas, for any number of reasons, pause --- pause and reflect. At home or church, hospital or retirement home, pause – reclaiming the “now” of life instead of repeating “what if---?”

The Advent, or coming of the Christ to earth, is an event in itself. The days of preparation (after Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday) have a special meaning and preparation for Christmas. Seldom considered is the fact that day Christmas Day is the beginning, not the end, of the celebration. As a boy my mother never took the tree down until mid-January. Keeping alive the spirit of the season.

In a perfect world, after the 25th of December has passed, the parties and good deeds begin. We celebrate after, not before, the traditional event of Christ’s birth. Just as Christ brought the promise of hope, the season should be the revival of more hope for the future.

A colleague from Denmark told of his family putting up a Christmas tree or wreaths late on Christmas Eve. I identify with that custom. It announces something big and important is about to take place. The family enters the next day, thankful for the suddenness of, as well as the glory of Emmanuel, “God is with us”.

Lest this is too “sermony,” keep in mind that materialism is not going away. Don’t let commercials interfere. Think of the joy a Santa Claus means to many children. The simple poem ‘Twas the night before Christmas, helped make Christmas a commercial success. But it is also one of the most moving ditties of the season.

The commercial aspect is a significant part of the traditions of the season. Some thoughtless individuals tell us there is a “war on Christmas.” Not so! Except for disbelievers and people of other faiths, Christ is never left out of Christmas or Xmas.

My Aunt Mae Johnson was generally upset at Christmastime by the use of “Xmas” for Christmas. The use of Xmas in English is not an attempt to secularize the holiday. It actually puts Christ at the very center of Christmas.

The “X” and “P” are the first two letter of “Christ” in the Greek language of Jesus’ day. Since X in English has a different meaning and use, English speakers have mistaken Xmas as leaving Christ out of Christmas. The abbreviation Xmas expresses ideally the heart of the celebration.

John Calvin, a great 16th century Protestant reformer, was opposed to the bad things that were associated with Christmas. And there were many appalling observances in many cultures and countries. But John Calvin kept the holiday as celebration of the birth of Christ and saw it as a matter of liberty for the churches and the individual.

It is well known that the Puritans, in England and later New England, opposed Christmas. Puritan pastor Cotton Mather felt there was no biblical or historical evidence for it representing the birth of the Christ. There is no evidence, biblical or historical for a Christmas holiday. Traditions, even if tainted with myths, are what we make of them..

Christmas is what we choose to make it. Make it such a good season of peace and love that it carries on into the New Year and all the remaining years we have. Choose well.

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Towery Column for Christmas Eve, Friday, Dec. 24, 2010
(Brownwood Bulletin; San Angelo Standard-Times) (672 words)

Julian Assange Phenomenon

2010-12-07T19:57:00.005-06:00

The WikiLeaks Phenomenon

Julian Assange, the creator of WikiLeaks, and the man most people in power hate, awaits in a London jail while the rest of us try to figure out what all the fuss is about.

Not in a long time has someone come along who believes in transparency and truth as much as this Swede and his associates. Julian Assange first released cables and notes, with some stuff blacked out, on Iraq last Spring. Pundits knew it would cause America’s work in the Middle East to crumble. Nothing happened. Just a little insight of how much our government lies and works in the dark.

The stuff Assange released on the world wide web this summer and fall really go under the skin of the Pentagon, embarrassed ambassadors, war hawks, friends and foes alike. Still the release did not set off World War III in Afghanistan. Our deadly drones, directed from Florida, keep flying raids over “neutral” Pakistan and our soldiers continue looking for the evil enemy. From sand dune to mud brick villages, rugged mountain and dangerous valleys, our volunteer military and mercenary soldiers the government calls “civilian contractors,” continue looking for Osama bin Laden---the reason we went to Afghanistan in the first place.

The Pope employs hundreds of mercenary soldiers, but calls them Swiss Guards. The French and the British did the same in their colonies. Americans call them “contractors.” Through the ages, many mercenaries have been ex-soldiers.

And it is extremely difficult to tell who is who. Like the old slur about another races: “they all look alike.” Who is the enemy? Maybe a body guard for President Hamid Karzai; a Pakistani soldier or peasant; a Taliban or just a simple goat herder; or an Afghan policeman or trainee? It is a scary place. It is a corrupt place that corrupts all involved.

Add to our soldiers dilemma, the vast majority of people in the Middle East loathe our military presence. The more devoted the war hawks are for what George W. Bush started, the more at odds they’ll be with any kind of democracy.

President Obama’s offensive of understanding each other instead of making them the enemy of the world has been successful. Before any right-wingers blow a gasket over that sentence. Read on. It was President Obama that convinced the Russians into the START treaty and for them to put more pressure on Iran. The proposed treaty is having a hard time in the Senate.

I am on record of not understanding several members of the GOP – the party of “NO”. Men in congress like Mitt Romney and Jon Kyl only enrage the Russians by doing their dead level best to sink the START treaty.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came out last week in favor of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia. She joined other Republican ex-Secretaries of State -- including Colin Powell, George Shultz, and Henry Kissinger -- in endorsing the proposed treaty.
Getting back to the uproar of Wickileaks bringing some truth out of the closet it has only begun. Julian Assange is doing what the American press has quit doing: Investigating and keeping our leaders honest.

Apparently he is threatening to out an American mega bank. Today our branches of government are controlled by the mega Banks. (Called “bankesters” by some disenchanted citizens.)

As someone said Assange is a hero of the people and for that reason alone the powerful want him stopped. A blogger wrote, “I wish George Carlin and George Orwell were alive to see this!” It was Orwell who said: “In time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

The government of Sweden called for his arrest. Two women are claiming rape. One of the women is tied to the CIA. As of this writing he was safe in a British jail, from women, offended power-brokers and some hit men.

Government goes after the whistleblower rather than the crooks.

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Dubious Honor plus FreeSpeech TV

2010-12-02T18:05:00.005-06:00

Free Speech Television is an eye-opening channel

During these three years of writing opinion pieces for the San Angelo Standard-Times, I have been amazed with the depth of insight and understanding of many of my readers.

Or in the words of one reader: “Britt, you have got to be the most intellectually dishonest contributor to these pages, hands down.” Or another who wondered why I evidently write with “half a brain.”

Having risen to become the most intellectually dishonest contributor to this newspaper, there is little for me to strive for in 2011 unless an extra column on Sundays is suggested. Once you are at the top of your profession, what’s left to do? Where are the challenges after having attained such a distinction?

Today I must not only note, but accept this excellence in “opinion” writing in the spirit in which it was given (whatever that was). I will wear this dubious honor proudly as I did when I once passed a third grade school arithmetic test at old Coggin Ward.

Breaking away from all these plaudits and praise, it is time to use the rest of this space for more worthy and new “opinions.”

One of Congress' most likable veterans, Rep. Charles Rangel Democrat of New York City became the 23rd House member in the nation's history to be censured. Why did it take so long? What about the rest of the “people’s servants” who find it difficult to walk the line? Most of them enter Congress as paupers and leave as rich as Croesus.

Since Bro. Rangel is not from our district, or our concern, I will write about satellite televison. Last year Jody and I subscribed to the satellite DISH Network. We did it primarily to obtain a couple of Chinese language stations. One turned out to be inlaid with Spanish but occasionally has Mandarin programming.

In the process we soon discovered a number of interesting stations not found on local cable outlets. (Full discloser: These satellite network promise 200 great channels. That is misleading advertizing --- half the channels only sell what you don’t need or want.)

But they relay news and opinion the corporate media (ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, NBC for example) has difficulty finding or sharing with America’s viewers. One of these is FreeSpeech.org which is channel 9415 on the DISH Network and channel 348 on DIRECTV.

Cable affiliates that carries FreeSpeech.org programming are growing in number. Newscasts from German’s Deutsche Welle (www.dw-world.de) and South Asia, South America, Israel and the Middle East. Documentaries seldom seen in West Texas remind us how the rest of the world lives. Foreign and classic films that never get to our town are special entertainment.

They present a variety of programming for the mind and soul (even those with half a brain). Inspirational and eye-opening, informative, helpful talks, lectures and stimulating discussions, Add to that music of all kinds and great opera or symphony. They distribute their programming (Doctumentary.org, LinkTV.org, GRITtv.org), to over 35 million US homes. Over 100 US cable affiliates air these programs. Suddenlink could improve their product by adding this content.

Suddenlink cable has 12 HBOs but no not-for-profit FreeSpeech or LinkTV channels. Write them a note requesting FreeSpeech TV channel be added as most modern cities have done.

(One more word of full discloser: I was not requested nor paid to write these good words for DISH Network or DIRECT TV satellite companies.)

This sort of programming may not be your television cup-of-tea. It is non-profit and not dictated by or owned by one of the huge media corporations.

The viewing is so good it could be called “fair and balanced” (in their own way). Since one of the richest media corporations already claims the “fair and balanced” slogan, I’ll just call their programs “True and Honest.” The “fair and balanced” network has four staffers running for U.S. president and a self-made president of his own un-credited university.

(First published in West Texas dailies Brownwood Bulletin and San Angelo Standard-Times)

Peacemakers Are Special

2010-11-20T09:47:00.002-06:00

There’s something special about peacemakers

In all the copies of my Bibles I find Jesus saying, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God." It has been my impression that this was not a sound bite. This was not just an off-the-cuff remark. Peace making was not just a passing fancy of his. It was not just a good quote his hearers to jotted down in their discipleship study books.

Jesus knew the subject of peace was not considered important to his hearers. Coming from Nazareth, how could he know the problems of Jerusalem, the great City of David. What made a carpenter’s son think he knew anything about the real world of dog eat dog. “Git ‘em, afore they git us” was not the national anthem of Israel, but of the whole universe.

Jesus did know his Bible (the Christian Old Testament) and knew the history of his people. He knew that for centuries king after king led them into bloody wars. He knew too of the society and laws never helped the poor or outcast among them.

Seldom on the table for discussion (then and now) were peaceful remedies to problems. The Roman Pax was anything but a peaceful solution for the empire. Jesus also knew that the different sects of Israel had little love for each other. Too many wanted to fight. Sling shot trigger-fingers were always cocked. A few knew there had to be a better way to work out their differences with their spouse, or town councils of the immigrants in their midst.

Jesus knew his audience just as he does today. His disciples were keen on fighting just as churches of all labels apparently do. Jesus’ disciples probably talked behind his back, such as:

“You suppose he is serious?” “Nobody talks of peace with those depraved half-breed Samaritans next door.” “How can he know God with such talk?” “Other countries have a God of War.” “You can tell he ain’t got a wife like mine…a mother-in-law like mine…problems like mine.”

The rabbis, with all their knowledge of ancient times, could quote without end of how God’s armies vanquished the enemy. How the God of their Bible sent Joshua out to destroy the original Canaanites. The Prophet Jonah had no sympathy for Nineveh even after he saved them. The Apostle Peter refused to eat with the hated Gentiles. He knew they were bad. He had heard nothing else from birth.

Social scientists tell us the first few years of an infant’s life are molding and nourishing the brain. If those precious (once in a lifetime) years are filled with goodness there is hope for that child. A pattern is laid that affects all the years of life. Any kind of trauma for that infant is present all their days.

When children are traumatized by war, they are more apt to become warriors and killers too. What will the next 80 years be like for the children of Iraq and Afghanistan?

Thanks to being unprovoked into two wars the last decade we should expect hatred and violence to come America’s way. Around the world people love America and hate our government. A vast majority of the world want love and peace. While most governments want conflict and the ability to cover it up.

It’s a mystery to me why some Christians make up excuses for violence and war. So few Christians go all out and “take him at his word…” as in the hymn:

'Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus/ 
JUST TO TAKE HIM AT HIS WORD/
Just to rest upon His promise/ Just to know, Thus saith the Lord.

We sing ‘em, but it’s more fun when we believe ‘em.

Working Poor Deserve Break

2010-11-20T09:44:00.002-06:00

HOW TO BETTER ENJOY THE THANKSGIVING SEASON

While eating out recently I ask our waitress if she worked two jobs. She said yes. She has another job, not because she wants to, but because she has to carry such a load. She and her husband have three children nearing the teen years.

Unlike many working wives, she has a working husband. The widows, the divorced or deserted wives are among the working poor in the gravest predicament. But it is a sad commentary that the richest country in the world has reached such a condition.

I grew up in a fairly sheltered world. There were jobs when I finished college. No lotteries. Casinos, we walked a lot around the neighborhoods. No Internet trivia to tempt our base moments. Downtowns, large and small, thrived with parking meters, mom and pop stores an

Not so long ago families were not as separated as they appear to be today. I grew up with uncles and aunts and seven funny cousins. Too many of today’s kids have never met their cousins; siblings grow up with one parent or the other through no fault of their own; children with little idea of their heritage or self-worth.

The fun of having a grandmother two blocks away was special. Mammy, as all the grandkids called her, came to Texas in her mother’s womb in a covered wagon in 1870. Her “learning” did not come from books, but she could spell any word ever invented. Her common sense came from dirt farm living, nourished by Garrett’s snuff, giving the extended family security and a sense of being.

Minimum wage was thirty-five cents an hour and up to age 12 a movie cost a dime. No malls, just bicycles and drug store milk shakes. But memory can be tinged with myth. “I remember when” is not always trustworthy.

Today my grandson is on his way toward graduation at Texas Tech. Happy? Yes and no. Glad, because he had the grit to work and give it his best. Sad, because he will have student loan debts over $30,000 with little chance of a good-paying job.

We forget that over half a million Americans have gone through bankruptcy court, primarily due to health care costs. The rest of the industrialized world gets along fine without FOR PROFIT health insurance companies. Education for profit as well as for profit health insurance is wrong. European countries may pay fifty-percent taxes but they get free health and college education, books and all (look at Denmark).

Our ultra-wealthy Americans are upset because there is a possibility of losing what President Bush did for them ten years ago. Thinking people see the wisdom of doing away with the Bush tax cuts by letting them expire. If congress can get a spine they might let them expire for the wealthy.

Most Republicans say letting Bush's tax cuts expire at the end of the year would increase the tax burden for the rich. Actually it would only be returning to a more reasonable fair tax situation. Remember, the wealthy once paid ninety percent. All other thriving democratic governments pay more taxes than the U.S.

Paul Krugman, professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, writes: “Temporary tax breaks for the rich are stunningly bad economic policy. . . Basic economic theory tells us that affluent taxpayers are likely to save rather than spend the great bulk of any funds they receive via a transitory tax break.” The middle class and working poor would not squirrel away a tax break, but spend down their debts and buy more goods. This, we are told, helps families and the economy.
Getting back to our waitress friend’s situation, realize how difficult it is for them in this economic downturn. Don’t forget to tip. Be generous and give a gratuity of more than twenty percent. Twenty-five percent would really help. It is a golden opportunity to do something for those who work so hard and have so little. You will enjoy your celebration of Thanksgiving Day a lot more.

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USA loves Immigrants. REALLY?

2010-11-11T16:28:00.006-06:00

IMMIGRANT LORE IS REVIVING

It is a well established fact that The United States is a country of immigrants. No debate on that historical fact. Americans have shown true affection for some immigrants: those who have been here for awhile –- a long while.

As the Irish Catholics began coming in large waves in the early 19th century, Protestants feared being taken over by the “bloody hand of the Pope.” There were even riots in Philadelphia, setting fire to the Irish part of town.

Richard Shenkman’s book “Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of American History,” relates after the Irish immigrants, the Southern and Eastern Europeans began arriving. Many old-line Americans reacted as if the country was being invaded by a horde of criminals. One old New Englander, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, lamented: “O Liberty, white Goddess! Is it well to leave the gates unguarded?”

Shenkman’s book calls attention to excesses of our countrymen. Bernard Weisberger, “American Heritage” editor, writes “Richard Shenkman briskly applies the varnish remover to American history.”

Even into the 20th century, our “more civilized” century, immigrants were not treated much better. In a popular book endorsed by Theodore Roosevelt, the racist Madison Grant suggested the state had a moral obligation to put certain immigrant types to death.

In the 1920s the federal government decided to limit those coming into the country. Russia was allowed two thousand, China and Palestine, a thousand. It was not so many years ago that Vietnamese fishermen on our Texas Gulf Coast were threatened with their fishing rights and livelihoods.

It is often overlooked that historians estimate that of the twenty million immigrants who came to America between 1820 and 1900, about five million returned to their homeland. Immigrants have always returned home in great numbers. (“A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn)

Early on John Jay wrote in “The Federalist Papers,” America was “one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, …sharing the same language, professing the same religion, … very similar in their manners and customs.”

Not everyone agreed with Brother Jay. A French immigrant farmer, whose wife was Dutch, had four sons. Each married wives from four different nations.

In 1790 three out of five Americans were not of English origin; two out of five didn’t even come from English-speaking backgrounds (“The Melting Pot” by Arthur Mann).

The term “melting pot” came into circulation much later, about 1908. Webster’s dictionary included it in 1934. Then sometime later it was suggested America was not a “melting pot” but a “salad bowl.”

Tennessee State Rep. Curry Todd takes issue with America as either a “pot” or a “salad.” His idea is more like “spoilt curry.” Curry Todd has trouble with the birthright citizenship clause in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which reads: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Rep. Curry Todd was quoted in USA TODAY (Nov. 11) volunteering that pregnant immigrants will "multiply" like "rats …" Sounds more like an Oklahoma senator than a gentleman from the Volunteer State.

The beat goes on. As the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud said: the cerebral challenged will be with us always. (I have no written proof Brother Freud actually said that – it might have been old fogey Thomas Bailey Aldrich.) Adiós.

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Keith Olbermann, voice of truth

2010-11-07T16:22:00.005-06:00

Olbermann and Maddow two of the few lights revealing the real world.

Sen. Bernie Sanders is one of the few senators who is not afraid of the truth and facts. I admire the fact he spoke out on Keith Olbermann's suspension from MSNBC. Sander's called it: MSNBC's Disgrace. Here's is quote:

"It is outrageous that General Electric/MSNBC would suspend Keith Olbermann for exercising his constitutional rights to contribute to a candidate of his choice. This is a real threat to political discourse in America."

I have little respect for network nightly news casts. No substance, no news, just something "funny" or weird, but never what is actually going on in this country and the world.

Network and cable wheel-horses like to remind us "the airwaves are ours." What a joke. They are controlled by major corporations who are about as interested in America and the future of this land as a wombat in heat. Just make money and be sure the world knows what Spears and Hilton are showing off.

I am thankful for the BBC and the BBC-America newscasts. You can get them on both DishNetwork and DirectTV satellite providers. People like Amy Goodwin"s Democracy Now! and Thom Hartmann's show are useful with telling us what the networks and cable never dare speak. See them on FreeSpeech and LinkTV.

San Angelo, Texas, radio has only right-wing wackos day and night. NPR comes via Texas Tech University for which we are grateful. FM 90.1 locally.

There are three Christian radio outlets, but two of these spend all their time fussing and complaining about having a black man in the White House. They give Hannity, Beck and Limberger a run for the money when it comes to "give us back our country" Well, just watch and see what Republicans can do in going back to the future and making an even bigger mess than the Democrats.

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With Mother Teresa, 1977

2010-11-04T18:23:00.006-05:00

Mother Teresa and new believer in her doorway, Calcutta, India. I took this photo the one time I was in India, November 1977. That was two years before she was recognized world-wide receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.

The death a few years ago of Mother Teresa brought back the personal memory of my one occasion of meeting this one who was called of God to work among "the poorest of the poor."

I was there to visit this diminutive woman of such personal devotion and see for myself what God could do with a dedicated soul. I was allowed the privilege of joining in an afternoon prayer session with a dozen or so of her assistants. My visit in her sitting room was one remember. Simple wicker chairs, a small table. That was it. Simple, but powerful just as the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. She gave of time as if I was the most important person in the world. This one who cared for the dying and gave her every day to others could not have been more patient and kind to me, an associate pastor from Texas.

After a walk through the grounds and buildings with the ill and dying "no bodies" I left at a side entrance of her Home for Dying Destitute. The sign was also written in several Indian languages. No door, you just step out into the small but crowded backwater lane. But not leaving in spirit. Her spirit of loving our Lord and the outcasts has stayed with me. The little Albanian nun who first taught the well-to-do when she got to India but soon was granted her request to be with what the world calls dregs of humanity.

British author Malcolm Muggeridge brought Mother Teresa to the attention of the world several years before the 1970s. A woman who demonstrated the value and importance of the spirit of discipline in prayer.

She answered my question that so many have ask her: "With all the poverty and suffering so staggering here, where does one begin to make a difference?" She said, You start with what crosses your path, what is right before you ... give dignity to the first dying person you meet ... take in your arms the first abandoned baby you see ...you just do what comes naturally.

FROM MY BOOK, "Saints Alive, saints are sinners who keep on trying" 2006.

Political campaigns ignore our wars

2010-11-01T15:25:00.003-05:00

Leaving the war on the back burner

The “war on terror” is seldom mentioned these days; like “war on drugs,” a complete misnomer. How can you have war on fear, horror, fright, dread or shock? We have swallowed that phrase without thinking what it means.

Call it what we will, it is a tragic time of despair and grief to millions of military and civilians of Iraq, Afghanistan and the U.S.A. Doves are more my kind than hawks.

Never have our troops, with such minimal backing and even fewer resources, faced such an overwhelming mission. A mission that appears to slow down but with no solution in sight. The purpose of the war has changed throughout this decade. Invasion and war was not the answer to the crime of 19 Saudi Arabians who hijacked planes and killed thousands. Wasted money and lives.

Our military men, women and their families are the only ones making sacrifices. Over 2 million American military have served as best they could for almost ten years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. To do that takes a lot of sacrifice and money. According to Paul Rieckhoff, only 3 percent of our citizens “have war on their radar.”

Rieckhoff is a veteran of these wars and is the founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. With the ridiculous expanded TV cable and network coverage of the just ended election season, the war disappeared from public view.

But the killed are still being buried. The injured are still being brought back for treatment. The involved families are still experiencing pain. Over 20,000 have been injured and more than 500 have lost a limb. The post-traumatic wounds grow by the day. Hundreds of these are homeless.

A footnote in this war is the large number of combat wounded women. This is a war with no front lines. It is similar to our 17th century fight with the American Indians, hidden snipers in the forests. The front lines are around any sand dune, corner teahouse, or potholed road.

As good as the rehabilitation efforts have been, Congress has shown little commitment to these wounded men and women. With very few exceptions, the government has shown even less interest in ending the war. Leaving the troops to linger any longer does not solve anything. Now is the best time to stop the war. The war has raged for the entire lifetime of American youths 15 years or younger.

This has been an election year and Congress has ignored the wars. Not a single politician, of any party, spoke of the war’s horrors. It is anti-American to ignore a war during a election season. Political rallies completely avoided the war. It was the overlooked elephant at the rallies.

If the war continues to be out of sight and out of mind, what can we civilians do? I am sure some entrepreneur will suggest printing more bumper stickers to show how “supportive” we are. We can buy more flags and wave them with more patriotic passion. Our government can borrow more money. The pastors might give the challenge of being peace-makers a greater priority. Those of us in the pews have a short memory when it comes to sermons.

“God bless America,” a nice anthem, but what does it have to do with baseball’s seventh-inning stretch? To ease our conscious? To show we support the troops? Why should Go bless our land? Fortunately, I have run out of space. I must take up that question at another time.

Curiosity Leads to Success

2010-10-26T16:43:00.004-05:00

Curiosity was Benjamin Franklin’s secret to success.

So far, the month of October has been one of the most pleasant in years. For many, jobs are scarce, food is higher, and the country is in hock to the People’s Republic of China.

Aside from this, we can be sure of one thing: almost three of the weeks of October will be wonderful. This is according to Benjamin Franklin's “Poor Richard's Almanac.” The month of October always has exactly 19 fine days (Today is the 29th, have we used up all the good ones yet?). Old Ben went out of his way to help folks and make a shilling as well.

Ben was a believer in seizing every opportunity to learn more about the world and improve it as much as possible. He was one of the first to write self-improvement books. He felt everyone could use some moral enhancement.

As the United States first Postmaster, he spent his life finding ways to unravel mysteries of science. As a printer, diplomat, inventor, philosopher, civic leader and a part-time founder of the United States. He was anything but lazy.

In his day most of the world was an agrarian society. An almanac was read more than the Bible. Farmers needed to know stuff: “When badgers are fat, expect a cold, hard winter.” “Store a bumper crop pumpkins and winter squash under the bed in an unheated guest room.”

Ben warned farmers “Tight cornhusks mean a cold winter.” Another way to know the coming winter will be cold is “when the onion skins are thick and tough.”

Ben Franklin grew up poor and had very little formal schooling. Yet he became a diplomat (the French loved him, so said some ladies), a very successful businessman, civic leader and revolutionary. He was filled with curiosity.

The colonial governments, before the American Revolution, used money printed by Ben Franklin. To protect from counterfeiting, one side of the bills had images of real leaves, carefully printed one at a time. His lifetime stretched most of the eighteenth century, from 1706 to 1790. He would have been named the man of the century but Time Magazine had not been invented.

Franklin might be amazed that today's $100 bill features him and special designs to foil bogus bill makers. (Actually, Franklin would not be amazed his likeness is on our money, he did believe in his own greatness.) Today the $100 bill, has several safeguards against counterfeiting:

Among other things, “The United States of America” is micro-printed on the lapel of Ben's coat. A second portrait of Ben in the form of a faint watermark is embedded in the paper. Ink in the lower right-hand corner numeral changes from green to black when viewed from different angles.

I did not get this information from an original source as I have not seen a hundred dollar bill lately. I confess I got this information from a book, not the Internet. The Web did tell me a Mars Rover was named “Curiosity.” It's strange that people aren't more curious about curiosity. It's a powerful thing. Benjamin Franklin would never say “curiosity killed the cat.” Curiosity solves problems.

(First published 10-29-10 Brownwood Bulletin and San Angelo Standard-Times)

Religious Extremes Dangerous

2010-10-19T11:14:00.003-05:00

In the late 1970s a group of radical Fundamentalists began their take-over of the Southern Baptist Convention. I paid little attention as I knew Southern Baptists were far more conservative than liberal or even moderate in theology and practice.

It took the Fundys nearly two decades to prevail. Mostly by setting up a bunch of “rock-hard beliefs” and condemning any Baptist individual, church or school that did not conform to them. That is, claiming the Bible is without error; that women are not up to the calling of God to preach and pastor; that the Convention leaders decide if a church is worthy and if not to withdraw fellowship. No where in the Bible is there such a “hierarchy,” “denomination,” “church” “church polity” or any group to choose whose church is fit or unfit and exterminate them. These are power grabs and self-promoting stunts that have evolved throughout the history of Christianity.

Baptist heritage has never rested on one creed or hierarchy. Each church decides worship procedure, urges stewardship; seeks to make their community better (and Baptist of course). They do not answer to bishop or superintendents. This system, like American democracy, is a tenuous thing. It is fragile, very easily broken, misled, misunderstood or abused.

Baptists can be compared to the spirit of Forrest Gump’s famous phrase: … Baptist churches are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you might find inside.

Extreme fundamentalists thinking is as close as you can get to the opposite of what religions are all about. They are dangerous in Islam, Hindu, Buddha, Jehovah’s Witness, Mormons, New Age stuff, fill in the blank and especially Christianity.

Working Poor Deserve Break

2010-10-19T10:58:00.004-05:00

While eating out recently I ask our waitress if she worked two jobs. She said yes. She has another job, not because she wants to, but because she has to carry such a load. She and her husband have three children nearing the teen years.

Unlike many working wives, she has a working husband. The widows, the divorced or deserted wives are among the working poor in the gravest predicament. But it is a sad commentary that the richest country in the world is in such a state.

I grew up in a fairly sheltered world. There were jobs when I finished college. No lotteries and downtowns, large and small, thrived. Families were not threatened as they are today. I grew up with uncles and aunts and seven funny cousins in our town. The ability to have a grandmother just two blocks away. She came to Texas in a covered wagon in 1870. Her old-time common sense and wisdom gained from dirt farm living, nourished by Garrett’s snuff, gave us cousins security and sense of being.

Minimum wage is good for teenagers in the summer but is not a living wage a family needs. Today college graduates find it difficult to get a job in their field. These days, there are terrible stories everywhere you look.

For those of us with good jobs or reasonably fair retirement find it difficult to realize how many families are barely scraping by. Families are hoping they don’t get sick or lose their job.

We forget that over half a million Americans have faced bankruptcy court, primarily due to health care costs. The rest of the industrialized world gets along fine without FOR PROFIT health insurance companies.

While other Americans with secure jobs and rather high incomes and bonuses live in another world. They are not aware of how the rest of the world lives (this includes those members of the millionaire club we call the Senate). These ultra-wealthy (top 2 percent of our population) are moping around feeling sorry for themselves.

They are upset because there is a possibility of losing what President Bush did for them ten years ago. Thinking people see the wisdom of doing away with the Bush tax cuts by letting them expire. If congress can get a spine they might let them expire for the wealthy.

Most Republicans say letting Bush's tax cuts expire at the end of the year would increase the tax burden for the rich. Actually it would only be returning to a more reasonable fair tax situation. Remember, the wealthy once paid ninety percent. All other thriving democratic governments pay more taxes than the U.S.

Paul Krugman, professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, writes: “Temporary tax breaks for the rich are stunningly bad economic policy. . . Basic economic theory tells us that affluent taxpayers are likely to save rather than spend the great bulk of any funds they receive via a transitory tax break.” The middle class and working poor would not squirrel away a tax break, but spend down their debts and buy more goods. This, we are told, helps families and the economy.

Remember those who have it worse than your family. Giving a gratuity of at least twenty percent for waiters and waitress is the very least we can do. It is fine to pray for them but they deserve more green stuff for their family. It is a golden opportunity to do something for those who work so hard.

China Rejects Nobel Peace Prize Choice

2010-10-08T19:03:00.006-05:00

CHINA REJECTS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE RECEIPIENT, LIU XIAOBO

Very few people inside China have heard the name Liu Xiaobo, but last week he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. (He is far more deserving for this honor than the one chosen last year.) The choice of Liu is this year’s foremost symbol of the struggle for human rights in China.

Liu Xiaobo is presently serving an eleven year sentence for urging the “Charter 08,” a human rights manifesto, be accepted for discussion among the people and the government of the People’s Republic of China. (Ever notice how all “People’s Republics” or “people’s movements” have little concern for the people.)

“Charter 08,” that he supported two years ago, called for a new constitution in China, an independent judiciary and the simple freedom of expression. It was backed by 300 China academics, artists, lawyers and activists, who want a fuller debate about China's future political development.

The Beijing government never liked even the thought of “Charter 08” and now the choice of Liu receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace sticks in their craw. The free world leaders praised the choice. Does the Communist Party of China give it consideration? Yes, they took about two seconds and immediately called the Norwegian ambassador to come to Party headquarters to protest Norway’s bad choice. They called Liu a “criminal,” and such an award could damage relations with Norway. A typical response by paranoid government officials.

Liu (one syllable pronounced lee-oh) has been a political activitist even before the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre of students seeking more democracy. I was in Beijing for a week before the martial law was enforced. The protests were peaceful and did not want to overthrow the government. The Premier, Zhao Ziyang, begged the students to leave the square, knowing what would happen if they stayed. (Zhao was later fired and kept under house arrest until his death. Typical of how China treats its more thoughtful and patriotic people – those who love China.)

Liu Xiaobo, 54, author, university professor and a constant annoyance for the Chinese Communist Party was not informed of the Peace Prize. Since last December he has been in a prison in Liaoning province for “subverting state power.”

The 1989 massacre made a deep impression on him and was one of the reasons the Beijing Normal University banned him from teaching. For the last dozen years he has not let up criticizing China’s treatment of Tibetans. In 1996 Liu was arrested for speaking out about China’s one-party political system. Instead of prison he was sent for re-education at a labor camp for three years.

Then in 2008 he was arrested again, just two days before the “Charter 08” was to be published. It was typical of the late night arrests one-party countries do to perfection. When his wife, Liu Xia, asked the authorities about his where-abouts, they ignored her. The authorities would not admit to taking him. It was weeks before news of his arrest was made public.

At his trial in December last year the United States government felt compelled to speak out: "We call on the Government of China to release [Liu Xiaobo] immediately and to respect the rights of all Chinese citizens to peacefully express their political views.”

Announcing its 2010 peace prize in Oslo, the Nobel Foundation said: "Liu has consistently maintained that the sentence violates both China's own constitution and fundamental human rights."

The police said if his wife wants to go to his prison and tell of the prize, they will allow that. How nice of them!

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My Red Headed Blanche Skinner

2010-10-03T19:27:00.004-05:00

Brownwood, Texas has a lot to be proud besides friendly people.

Brownwood’s own Blanche Westerman Springer’s paintings have been exhibited in many states and are represented in private collections in Minnesota, Florida, California, Kansas, Arizona, Virginia and Texas. We were classmates as we grew up in Brownwood.

Just as Charlie Brown’s “little red-headed girl,” Blanche was my red-headed love. And just as Charlie Brown’s experience, nothing ever came of it. Years later at a reunion we told each other of the long-ago grade school fantasies.

Not counting me, painting has always been her first love as far back as when she and Tom Springer were married in Brownwood’s First Methodist Church in 1947.

Blanche paints character studies, landscapes and still life in oil, pastel, charcoal and watercolor. Working in pastels she does very detailed and realistic presentations of Indian heads, some with colorful headdress. She has won awards in numerous shows and was selected to show work in the 19th National Sun Carnival Art Exhibition at the El Paso Museum of Art.

She has displayed several of her paintings in Marble Falls, Brownwood and Central Texas. She was one of 11 artists chosen to show at the Second International Conference of the United State-Mexico Board of Governors in 1981. She has twice been named Artist of the Month by the El Paso, Texas, Chamber of Commerce.

It was during this time she became close friends with another Brownwood High classmate: Jacquelyn Rice Powell (BHS Most Popular Girl 1944 and FFA Sweetheart 1946). Jacquelyn was tall and stately and one of BHS’s finest graduates.

The BHS Class of ‘47 Newsletter’s of Dec. 1997, carried Blanche Westerman Springer’s portrait of fellow classmate, the late Fern Wooldridge Butler (BHS cheerleader; 4 years with the band) on the front page. As far as I know the original hangs in the Butler Brownwood home.

In one of Blanche’s letters she told me: “Fern and I became best friends our senior year in BHS. She stayed with me the first night I was home alone with our first baby girl. Whenever I was in Brownwood I always saw Fern.”

Blanch studied with Manuel Acosta, Lewis Krupp, Ben Konis, Carlos Pineda and Ray Lopez-Aleman. She is a member of El Paso and Lower Valley Art Association and has served as president.

Her paintings have been exhibited in many states and are represented in private collections in Minnesota, Florida, California, Kansas, Arizona, Virginia and Texas. She paints character studies, landscapes and still life in oil, pastel, charcoal and watercolor. Working in pastels she does very detailed and realistic presentations of Indian heads, some with colorful headdress. She has won awards in numerous shows and was selected to show work in the 19th National Sun Carnival Art Exhibition at the El Paso Museum of Art.

Could anything in life be more wonderful than doing the thing you love all the time, even into a mature age. She finds that painting and art became her love when she discovered pastels and the joy of becoming acquainted with individual faces as she painted portraits.

There is another BHS beauty who became a very well-known artist. She was Nelda Grace Phillips when we graduated from BHS. For many years she has lived in Dubai and held exhibitions all over.

Brownwood, Texas has a lot to be proud of of its artists and art. There is more to this central Texas town than just friendly people and 2010 Division 3-A best football team.

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I Think Therefor I Am

2010-09-28T15:59:00.004-05:00

Spend more time thinking and less talking

Have you ever had someone come up to you about something or other with the question: “What’d you think about this?” Be careful.

Such a question has you facing a sticky situation and being put to the test --- the quandary of thinking as in the old admonition to “stop and think.”

“Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar territory” (G. Behn). Or as Winnie the Pooh said: “Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?”

The famous Dane (not Victor Borge), Soren Kierkegaaard said: “People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”

A huge amount of Kierkegaard’s ideas go way over my head and make little sense to me. But I understand him here. He is right when he complains that the art of thought is seldom used.

Take a look at our supreme leaders (Washington politicians impersonating statesmen), who were duly elected to see that government business runs like clockwork. Not a cuckoo clock as it often appears. If any of our Washington warriors ever gave much thought to the people and country, it would be like a miracle from heaven.

Someone should compile and publish what our elected “servants” thoughtless say. The antics on the floor of the House and Senate reveals how little they think before they speak. (See C-Span, which shows everything but the empty seats. You can always catch some of the more outlandish, irritatingly silly and bizarre blurbs on Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” or “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central.)

Rex Stout (author of Nero Wolfe mysteries) edited just that kind of book in the 1930s. He recorded the actual stupid remarks made on the floor of the House and Senate. Stout’s book is “The Illustrious Dunderheads.” (Some library may have a copy. This classic’s prices begin at $70.)

American poet Archibald Macleish urged us to think for ourselves: “The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.”

The actual act of thinking has meant trouble for many who broke from the herd to think for themselves. Real thinking can turn into a dangerous sport, but it is needful if anything is to be accomplished in our lives or in the nation’s capital. Example: Think more before voting. Think about oversight.

Thinking is what got men like Robert Kennedy and his brother John killed. Thinking was the culprit for most of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s troubles.

Voltaire (pen name of Francois Marie Arouet), a seventeenth century French satirist author, put a lot of stock in the act of thinking. He once said: “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.”

To think, to actually think, is not as easy as you might think. Yet thinking remains as rare as purple hen’s teeth. A local philosopher parsed Rene Descartes’ dictum “I Think Therefore I Am” to simply mean our real selves come out when we think more and talk less.

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Are We Really That Ignorant ???

2010-09-22T11:52:00.004-05:00

“ARE WE REALLY THAT IGNORANT”?

The polling business expands almost weekly. You can find a poll that one in four Americans believe in just about anything. A Pew poll found that 26 percent of adults believe spiritual energy indwells trees, stones, and inanimate objects. And 25 percent put stock in astrology.

The business of estimating what Americans believe, or think about something, is a huge industry. A new poll comes out every week on politics or sex. Polls help fill newspaper space when Brittany Spears or the millionaire Hilton girl fails another sobriety test.

If you read the polls and it agrees with our views, you think it is another sign of how smart people are. But if the polls results go against the grain, you ask yourself, “are we really that ignorant?”

I’ve written about the Baylor University senior who was going to work in Japan and could not find it on a huge wall map. According to Time Magazine and Newsweek, and other pollsters, the poor fellow is not alone.

With a map before them, young Americans were ask to find Iraq. After seven years with hundreds of thousands of Americans being based in Iraq, only 63 percent could find the country. Only a third of Americans of all ages could find the continent where the world’s largest river runs. (It’s the Amazon River is in South America.)

Barely half of Americans were correctly able to state that Judaism was older than both Christianity and Islam. Another 41 percent were not sure. For those in doubt, the three strains of Father Abraham were founded in this order: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

A Zogby Poll ask readers to name at least two of the seven dwarfs. Not quite three-quarters could name two of the Snow White dwarfs. Then they were ask to name at least two members of the Supreme Court. Not quite a quarter could do that. Disney reigns.

The majority of Americans – three in four – correctly identified Larry, Curley and Moe as the Three Stooges. To put that in context, only two out of five could correctly identify the executive, legislative and judicial branches as the three wings of government.

Local and national polls are all over the charts when it comes to the freedom of smoking, where they please and when they please.

Opinion polls on when and where an adult may smoke has touched a tender spot with many a smoker and non-smoker. It is almost as hot an issue as religion and politics. In the old days, the time between Sunday school and morning worship was for the men, led by the deacons, to step outside for a quick smoke. This I witnessed as a boy at the town church (First Baptist, Brownwood) and the country church (Stag Creek Church, Comanche County). New Orleans pastor J.D. Gray enjoyed a big cigar as did England’s greatest pulpiteer, Charles H. Spurgeon. Back then medical doctors not only smoked but were the heart of tobacco industry’s poster boys.

Smoking rates by state vary widely, with smoking twice as prevalent in some states as in others. States with the most highly educated residents tend to have the lowest smoking rates and vice versa. Smoking is also lower in states with higher cigarette taxes and broader smoking bans. Now mayors and city councils are faced with the big problem of where to allow smoking in public places. It is easily solved by taking the side of health over commerce.

Some unknown polling source, with unusual courage, announced blonds were smarter than brunettes? It must have been some estúpido brunettes thinking blond hair would make them smarter. (Learned the Spanish word for “stupid” last week when I did something estúpido.)

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Lao She, China's Master Storyteller

2010-09-13T11:08:00.014-05:00

VISIT NEW LAO SHE WEB SITE

Few writers have had the influence of China's Lao She (1899-1966). He is required reading in China schools and was voted by the Chinese of the world their favorite writer. His works appear in over seven languages. He was a Manchu and knew what it was like to be a minority.

His son, Shu Yi, writes in a Hong Kong 2009 Festival Magazine about the need for more of his short stories to be made into films.

Shu Yi and his sister Shu Ji, both writers of renown in China, wrote glowing forwards for my book on the life of their father: Lao She, China's Master Storyteller, published in 1999 in honor of the 100th anniversary of his birth. It is also the year the Towery-Lao She Collection was dedicated at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas. It houses Towery's vast collection of and by Lao She, outside of China, is the largest to collections in Japan.

His many short pieces, first printed in newspapers during the 1930-1940 era are not as well known as his Rickshaw Boy (Camel Xiangzi), Yellow Storm (Four Generations) and Tea House, but they are filled with his insight and humor for the human spirit.

His work along with Lu Xun's writings helped in plane easy to read language their readers to the plight of the underdogs and led to what is now Modern Chinese Literature.

My book has filled a gap in the study of world literature. It is the only book in English of his life and introductions to his work. University studies in world literature can receive as many as five copies for only the postage. ORDER BY E-MAIL: bet@suddenlink.net

VISIT NEW LAO SHE WEB SITE

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Steve Biko, South Africa Martyr

2010-09-01T10:10:00.004-05:00

Steve Biko was 30 when he died in South Africa detention, Sept. 12, 1977

I remember seeing the permanent wooden sign across the highway going into Greenville, Texas that boasted in huge letters to have the blackest land and whitest people in Texas. In Brownwood’s Coggin Ward School I learned that neighboring Comanche County had no blacks. Going through town on a train was dangerous for “darkies” as white bigots called them.

That brought me to thinking about a black hero who gave his life that his people could be considered human beings. Sunday, Sept 12, is the 33rd anniversary of the murder of South Africa’s Steve Biko.

South Africa’s Apartheid government was dismantled in 1990. World opinion was slow to close in. The change began with the release of Nelson Mandela in February 1990. For the first time people of all races were allowed to vote. In 1994 Nelson Mandela, over 25 years a prisoner of the system, was elected president.

Apartheid (an Afrikaan word meaning ‘apartness’) control evolved as a force after World War II. The system was based on the complete segregation of the races. Townships and villages dismantled, blacks moved out to slums. They could work for the whites but had to be out of town before dark. There was no justice for indigenous peoples.

The white man knew, based on their view the Holy Scriptures, that he was superior to all other races and set about keeping them ignorant and apart.

First, a little background on the southern tip of Africa. In the late 16th century the English and the Dutch trading companies challenged each other for a stopover on the continent’s southern tip. They went the sea route because the Arabs controlled the land routes to the spices of India and the East Indies. English and Dutch stayed apart but never liked each other.
The Boer Wars of 1880-1 and 1899-1902, were fought between the British and the descendants of the Boers (Dutch settlers in South Africa) decided who would “own” the black man’s land. It took two wars to decide which white overlord would head a government. The Second Boer War ended with promised eventual self-government for the Boers (which never came). The blacks, Zulus and others were in for a century of hell in their own homeland.
This Sunday, September 12, is the anniversary of the murder of Steve Biko in a South Africa prison. He was one of South Africa's most significant political activists and a leading founder of South Africa’s Black Consciousness Movement. The uprisings of 1976 brought about his arrest along with thousands of others. His death in police detention in 1977 led to his being hailed as a martyr of the anti-Apartheid struggle. He was but 30 years old.

His struggle gave hope to the masses who were not just segregated but harassed, beaten and killed at the whim of the white superiors.

In a speech in Cape Town in 1971, Biko said: "The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."

Since the evil of one race over another seems to be having a revival here and around the world, I thought it time to remind us of a man who rose above the others and proclaimed all men equal.

“Cry Freedom” by South African journalist Donald Woods tells how he is forced to flee the country after attempting to investigate the death in custody of his friend the black activist Steve Biko. Denzel Washington plays Biko and Kevin Kline is Donald Woods. Worth reading and is a well-made film.

Another South African journalist, Alan Paton, wrote “Cry, The Beloved Country” with insight into how difficult life is in Apartheid South Africa. He tells of a South African preacher’s search for his wayward son. The book was made into a move by the same name, starring James Earl Jones and Richard Harris. A moving story.

For inspiration and information, Nelson Mandela’s book “A Long Walk to Freedom” is at the top of the list of books on South Africans.