It's Wine O'Clock Somewhere

This South African Airways Airbus A340 sitting on the tarmac at the Cape Town airport took me to Johannesburg where I very reluctantly left one of the nicest nation’s on the planet.

If you ever get the chance to travel to South Africa don’t think about it, just do it.  I have now traveled to 111 countries on the six continents and one of my three most favorite is South Africa.  When that opportunity to travel presents itself there is only one airline to fly on to get there.  South African Airways, the flagship carrier for this wonderful nation will make you feel like you are already on a Durban beach or hiking the Drakensberg Mountains even before you leave the United States.  After you touch down in South Africa and stretch your legs for a few minutes, you simply must spend some time in the wonderful wine country east of Cape Town.  If you’ve didn't like wine before traveling to South Africa I can almost guarantee you will when you return home.  

This morning South African Airways posted a message on their Twitter feed that began with the words “It’s Wine O’Clock Somewhere.”  The message contained an advertisement for the Cape wine country and as I read the Twitter message and the story about the Cape wine district, and as my mind wandered back to the opening line “It’s Wine O’Clock Somewhere” I remembered a Friday afternoon at 5 O’Clock cover band I listened to in a bar in Lambert’s Bay near the end of my 5 week trip to South Africa.  It was a trip that resulted in the writing and publication of my book Sojourn to South Africa and in that book there is a story about that 5 O’Clock encounter with a cover band.  That story is recounted and remembered here:

Lambert’s Bay Hotel sits across the street from a giant fish processing plant that, understandably, reeks of fish.  Likewise the air in Lambert’s Bay reeks of fish.  I had guaranteed a reservation for a sea view room at the Lambert’s Bay Hotel and that is exactly what I received when I checked in.  If I stood on my bed and looked west over the roof of the belching fish processing plant I could view the sea in the distance.

The hotel bar was one of the town’s hotspots.  If you were a local and wanted to pick up a tourist from Cape Town or Johannesburg, then this was the place to be and be seen.  There in the Anchor Bar at precisely 5:00 p.m. on Friday afternoon, a local cover band took the stage.  Their first song was not some South African melody.  Instead it was a song about time and Jamaican vacations and the fact that no matter where you are on the planet it’s always 5 o’clock somewhere.  And it was in Lambert’s Bay and that is how the cover band got its start.  Next they sang “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” which was most appropriate when you are headed south toward increasingly smaller latitudes.  Then, as the sun was crossing a fictional yard arm on its descent to the South Atlantic, they played “Margaritaville” the national anthem of the Parrothead Nation.

How cool is that?  Here I was 9,000 miles from home in the southern hemisphere in a bar next to the ocean, surrounded by palm trees and the first music I heard was a threesome of Jimmy Buffett tunes.  Anyone who is not aware of Jimmy Buffett's worldwide impact and influence should have been sitting next to me in the Anchor Bar curled up with an ice cold bottle of Windhoek beer listening to this band near the south end of South Africa singing songs about time and latitudes and lost shakers of salt.

I Met The Person For Whom "You Can't Fix Stupid" Was Coined

This morning at my local Hess gasoline station I think I met the person for whom the phrase “You can’t fix stupid” was coined.  She was in her mid-late 20’s driving a small white car like mine and was wearing both a pink top and white shorts that appeared to be painted on her nearly perfect ass.  She pulled up at the pump next to mine and on exiting her car started the pump and on inserting the nozzle in her gas tank set the pump on automatic and returned to her car.  There she began a frenzied session of texting with someone.

She continued texting the entire time that her pump was pumping gas.  When I finished filling my 10 gallon tank I put away my nozzle and washed off my windows.  Meanwhile Ms Hardbody was burning up her fingers in her still-frenzied texting session.  

When I finished washing my windows I heard the distinctive sound of gasoline spilling out of a gas tank and onto the ground.  Obviously the automatic shut off had failed to work and the sound coming from the escaping gasoline sounded like a miniature Niagara Falls.  Concerned about her safety not to mention the wasted gasoline I knocked on her window to get her attention telling her that her gas tank was overflowing.  As I did she was still texting like crazy.  Thanking me for bringing it to her attention she ended the conversation saying “I’ll get it as soon as I finish this text.”

I looked at the gas pump.  It read $70 and some change and was still climbing as I walked back to my car.  The pump was still pumping and the woman was still texting as I drove out of the Hess gas station.  My guess is the gas pump was approaching $100 by now.  

I certainly hope the text message was worth it.

Black-eyed Peas and Corn Bread for Lunch

Thirty years ago today, in a truck stop along Interstate 20 near Cuba, Alabama, I had my first encounter with black-eyed peas and corn bread.  Happily it wasn’t the last time I tried them. 

Black-eyed Peas and Corn Bread for Lunch

Sumter County, Alabama

Spend the first 25 winters of your life in northern Wisconsin and you quickly acquire a fantasy-filled lust for anywhere south of the frost line.  Add that six more winters in North Dakota and soon despite being an atheist you begin to believe that if there is a heaven its somewhere along the Gulf Coast of the United States.  Sitting in a bare-walled one bedroom post-divorce apartment in Jamestown North Dakota one December night I watched the latest in a seemingly endless parade of blizzards blow through town on what local meteorologists called an “Alberta Clipper.” A clipper is just that – a fast moving system of fast moving wind and fast moving snow and quickly plummeting frigid temperatures that were probably in Alberta just an hour earlier. As the night dragged on and the snow blew sideways I watched a news story about the United States invading the tiny island of Grenada in the southern Caribbean.  All the video showed was palm trees and tropical beaches and tropical heat and most especially not one scintilla of a smidgen of snow. I looked out my living room window and saw barren aspen trees and Arctic wind and snow drifts and I knew that something had to change and it had to change before another Alberta Clipper glued me to my apartment for another excruciating storm. 

That change came several months later when I was selected for a position in Athens Georgia on the campus of the venerable University of Georgia.  I had several misgivings about living in Georgia and many of them centered on the fact that people there are still upset that former U.S. Army General William Tecumseh Sherman turned Atlanta into a bonfire as he rode through town on his way to Savannah.  Still, despite its shortcomings, Georgia was much warmer than Jamestown, North Dakota and I hurriedly and excitedly accepted the position. 

The research I was expected to conduct would begin in Michigan in June and I arrived in Athens in early May and for a month I had little to do but open my pores and let in the warmth.  My supervisor, a man named Don who grew up in North Louisiana, and who said that squirrel brain was his most favorite meal as a child, was conducting research at Yazoo National Wildlife Refuge in Mississippi and he asked me to join him for a trip to the Delta.  Having never seen Alabama (through which we would have to travel) or Mississippi I quickly accepted Don’s offer.

Don had received his PhD from the University of Arkansas and was as fervent a fan of the Razorbacks as I am of the Wisconsin Badgers.  I first noticed this as we drove into Greenville, Mississippi on the banks of the Mississippi River and Don saw a sign for the bridge to Arkansas.  When he saw the word “Arkansas” he broke into a perfect University of Arkansas “Woooooo-Pig-Sooooooie” chant.  Personally I prefer the more civilized “Fuck ‘em Bucky” chant of the University of Wisconsin but that is just me.  Don and I spent two days at Yazoo National Wildlife Refuge collecting bird eggs for pesticide analysis, and then began the long trek back to Athens.

On our return we traversed the center of Mississippi and intersected Interstate 20 near Jackson.  We then followed it east and crossed the border into Alabama at about noon just in time for lunch at Billy Bob’s Bar-b-Que and Bait Shop near Cuba, Alabama.  That is not the name of the place but it should be.  Don was attracted to Billy Bob’s because a freeway billboard announced a “down-home southern buffet lunch” every day but Sunday.  Don, in his perfect southernese accent pronounced “buffet” as “buff-aaay.”  It was imperative that we stop for lunch because as the billboard said in a small reminder at its bottom it was closed on Sunday, the day that “the Lord wants us to rest and he wants y’all to rest too.” 

Billy Bob’s had a huge spread of food laid out and being a truck stop the restaurant lacked any semblance of ambiance.  Its walls were bare of any art work except pictures of Peterbilt trucks (one sign said “Old truckers never die. They just get a new Peterbilt”), the stench of diesel fumes was everywhere and Willie Nelson crooned loudly and hoarsely through speakers placed at intervals along every wall.   This certainly was not the restaurant in the Plaza Hotel in New York City. In fact it wasn’t even the Country Kitchen in Grand Island, Nebraska.  It was Billy Bob’s and there was no denying that fact.

Before this trip my total experience with eating southern food had been restricted to two incidents each of which was indelibly etched in my brain.  The first was my only-ever meal of biscuits and gravy consumed in a truck stop restaurant near Paducah, Kentucky.  I had to try it because the name on the menu sounded inviting and almost everyone anywhere south of Indianapolis eats biscuits like they are popcorn.  What the waitress placed in front of me when my meal arrived reminded me more of what my dog had thrown up than it did any culinary delight of southern travel.   Reluctantly but bravely I ate the biscuits and gravy and just like after your first time having sex when the meal was over I wondered what all the excitement was about.  The meal stuck with me literally and figuratively and now nearly 40 years later I can still taste it.  My other southern culinary delight was grits (or “greeutz” in perfectly spoken southernese) that crossed my palate in a restaurant at Oden’s Dock on the Outer Banks of North Carolina a year after my first and only bout of dog biscuits and gravy.  At least with enough butter and pepper, grits were bearable and they didn’t look like dog vomit.

The lunch buffet at Billy Bob’s contained no biscuits and gravy because, mercifully, we were there after breakfast but there was a huge crock pot full of grits.  Along with them was every southern food imaginable.  One container held boiled okra and another held collard greens. Next to it was turnip greens and there was a huge vat of green beans complete with the little hunks of ham that make it southern.  There was also cauliflower and mustard greens and poke (not polk!) salad.  There was country ham (someday I want someone to explain the difference between country ham and city ham because it all looks the same) and hush puppies and succotash and boiled potatoes (“balled ‘taters” in perfect southernese) and sweet taters and pimento cheese and a strange kind of bean with a black spot on it.  Over on the meat table was more ham and more chicken and pulled pork and beef steak and shrimp and oysters and something that was passed off as jambalaya and almost everything was fried.  None of it was simply fried.  It was all southern fried.

Don returned to the table and his plate was filled with a sampling of almost everything that Billy Bob offered.  His plate also contained those curious beans with the black thing on them that I had never seen before so I asked Don, “What are those funny looking beans you’re eating?”

“These,” Don began, “are black-eyed peas.  Haven’t you ever eaten black-eyed peas before?”

When I admitted that I had never seen let alone eaten black-eyed peas Don motioned for the waitress to approach our table. When he did each of the 50 other patrons seated at the buff-aaaay lunch at Billy Bob’s turned to listen.  “Ma’am,” Don began in his finest southernese, “This god-damned Yankee sitting here has never had black-eyed peas. Can you believe that, ma’am?”

The waitress Bonnie, complete with a bouffant hair do, had a shocked look on her face as she turned to me and drawled “is that right?” (Only in Bonnie-speak it sounded like she said a long drawn-out “riot”).  Admitting my transgression, Bonnie looked at me with the same level of shock and disgust as the 50 other people in Billy Bob’s, each of whom now knew that a black-eyed pea virgin Yankee was in their midst.

Don turned to the still-shocked Bonnie and drawled, “Ma’am would y’all fix him a mess of those mighty fine black-eyed peas, please?”

Bonnie turned to me and asked “Do y’all want corn bread with your black-eyed peas?”

Not knowing the proper etiquette of black-eyed pea consumption, I replied, sheepishly, “Are you supposed to eat corn bread with black-eyed peas?”

Bonnie, now on the verge of cardiac arrest, bellowed “of COURSE you eat corn bread with black-eyed peas!”  I could tell she wanted to add “you ignorant god-damned Yankee,” however her proper southern upbringing would not allow it.

I timidly dug into the black-eyed peas and washed them down with fresh corn bread as Bonnie stood over me, right hand on her right hip shaking her head in disbelief that anyone more than one year old had never had black-eyed peas.   The other patrons kept shoveling in fried everything as I found myself wanting nothing but black-eyed peas and corn bread.  In fact the meal was so good I had seconds, and black-eyed peas and corn bread was all I had for lunch.  

More Than Just Fish Stories Are Told on Great Abaco Island

Great Abaco Island in the northeast corner of the Bahamas is a must-visit place for anyone interested in bone fishing, chilling out, and seeing cool West Indian birds.  It also seems to be a place where self-proclaimed Jimmy Buffett "experts" find out that they really aren't.

One thing I have learned since moving to Florida is that everyone south of Indianapolis claims to have met Jimmy Buffett at least twice and everyone south of Chattanooga has had Jimmy out on their boat seemingly every time its keel hits the water.  

Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas is most definitely a Jimmy Buffett sort of place to be.  Boating and sailing are two of the biggest attractions and bonefishing on the "Marls" west of the island are a close third in importance.  The sun bakes here and tourists waste away here and usually the most strenuous thing you can do on Great Abaco is hold yourself up at the bar after two too many Kalik beers.

The Conch Inn Hotel and Marina with its famous Conch Crawl Restaurant and Conch Out bar was right across the street from the Lofty Fig where I stayed for a week my last time on Great Abaco.  Jimmy Buffett admonishes all of his disciples to eat seafood “only when you can see the ocean” and at the Conch Crawl Restaurant that is easily accomplished because most of the place is built on stilts out over the water. You’d have to be blind to miss the ocean here.  Their menu included blackened grouper and the Conch Out Bar had lots of ice-cold Kalik Beer so I was a happy camper.

The Conch Inn and Marina in Marsh Harbour is one of the best places on the island to do absolutely nothing.

As I ate my dinner and absorbed a bottle of Kalik, I couldn’t help but hear an obnoxious 30-something American sitting at the bar trying to impress three stunning 20- something South Florida beach blondes (can’t blame a guy for trying).  His line of bullshit was all about Jimmy Buffett so I listened intently.  Much of what he said was wrong.

“When I met Jimmy the last week of April, 1992, he was sailing from the West Palm Beach to St. Maarten. He sailed right into this dock, got out and bought us all a beer.”

I knew this was a bald faced lie because I met Jimmy backstage at his concert in Fort Lauderdale during the last week of April 1992. He had just come back from bone fishing in the Ragged Islands.  He was no where near Abaco or a sailboat that week. I listened more closely.  The blowhard continued to lay it on.

He professed to be an authority on Buffett and was laying the bullshit on thick to these three absolute babes who were obviously Parrotheads.  He sealed his fate, however, when he pronounced to his covey that “Margaritaville was Jimmy’s first top 10 hit.” I knew then I had to take action. 

Finishing my meal I paid the tab and then slowly walked back past the blowhard.  When I was even with him I stopped.

“Sounds like you really know your Jimmy Buffett music,” I started.  “Do you sing his songs when you play your guitar?”

He said that he did.

I then said, “Do you know where Jimmy was standing when he heard that he first made the top 10, and what was that song?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” he boasted. “He was in Key West and the song was Margaritaville. I just told these girls that before you showed up.”

“Well, partner,” I said, “you’re dead wrong.  Jimmy was in a music store in London, England, when he first heard that Come Monday was his first song to hit the top 10.”

“Oh.”

I then asked “What language is Jimmy singing in when he does the chorus in “One Particular Harbour?”

“Oh, that’s easy. He’s singing in Spanish.”

“Wrong. He’s singing in Tahitian.”

“Oh.”

“Jimmy owns a ranch in south Georgia that he uses for what purpose?”

“He goes there fishing.”

“No. He owns it for quail hunting.”

By now he’s starting to sweat a little because he can tell the beach blondes realize he’s full of Cheney.  I then put him out of his misery.

“Okay,” I said. “Here’s your last question. – What is the name of the dolphin in the song “Jolly Mon Sing”? 

He said “That’s easy. I sing that song all the time. The dolphin’s name is…” He stammered and stuttered a bit and finally said “I don’t know.”  The first truthful thing he’d said all night.

“The dolphin’s name is Albion.  You would only know that if you were actually a Parrothead.  We know the answers to the questions I just asked you.  I personally think you’re full of shit and so do these three women.”

I expected to get hit in the mouth but instead when he realized that he’d lost all face, he stood up from his chair and bolted for the exit. As I did one of the three hot south Florida blondes he was trying to impress chimed in saying "That guy Alex is such a pompous ass.  We were getting so sick of him, and then you came along and put him in his place. It was perfect timing.”

What would have actually been perfect timing would have been meeting those three about 30 years earlier.  

May 4 1970 - The Day America Killed Its Children

At 12:27 p.m. on May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard committed murder on the campus of Kent State University in Portage County, Ohio.  It was the single most important formative event in my young life and one that changed my personal and political views forever.

I was a freshman on the University of Wisconsin River Falls campus that day yet even today I remember it like it was yesterday. One of the first warm days of spring that year and not a cloud in the sky. I was back in my dorm room, 209 Johnson Hall, studying when someone on the floor yelled "They're killing students in Ohio!" I thought at first it was just a normal afternoon drunken outburst on the floor. Then someone walked in with his transistor radio set on WCCO Radio from Minneapolis. They gave complete coverage of the carnage, at least as much as they knew at the time. As we all sat around listening to the news a feeling of gloom set over us.

Granted, UW River Falls wasn't a hotbed of political activity in those days but we had experienced our share of campus protesting of the intractable unwinnable, unnecessary war in Viet Nam. Now Richard Nixon had expanded the war into Cambodia and our few campus activists were more agitated. I wondered as did most of the guys on my floor, if the Wisconsin National Guard was going to show up and start shooting us.

Kent State happened because of the over reaction of the Ohio National Guard in response to legally assembled (according to the United States Constitution ) students exercising their legal right (according to the United States Constitution) to protest an illegal war (the President never asked Congress for a formal declaration of war therefore it wasn't a legal war) and its expansion. Some of the students weren't even protesting - Alison Krause was merely walking to class.  I will never forgive the Ohio National Guard for what they did that day.

When it finally sank into my thick skull that students were being killed for exercising their rights, and the government that sanctioned this killing was a Republican government, I rejected all of the conservative mantra that my mother ever spoke. The next day May 5, 1970, I started to let my hair grow, I participated in my first anti-war sit in. My politics and my outlook were radicalized.

Just two days before the massacre, Richard M. Nixon, made the following statement regarding the campus unrest. Never once in his statement did Nixon acknowledge that it was HIS actions that were causing the unrest.

“You know, you see these bums, you know, blowin' up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world, going to the greatest universities, and here they are, burnin' up the books, I mean, stormin' around about this issue, I mean, you name it - get rid of the war, there'll be another one. -- Richard Nixon, New York Times, May 2, 1970

Fuck you Richard Nixon. It is my sincerest hope to one day piss on your grave.

Despite the tragedy that day there were some positive things that came out of it. Most importantly for me is the very real fact that my political beliefs were forever altered on that fateful day. In response I have voted in every election since my first election in 1972 (the first vote I ever cast was for George McGovern and I feel proud of that vote). In that election I voted a straight Democratic ticket. I have never missed an election since that day in November 1972 and I have never once voted for anyone who was not with the Democratic Party.  I would eat a steady diet of used kitty litter before I would vote for a Republican. 

Another positive thing that came out of the murders was this song with its haunting music and haunting lyrics written by Neil Young.

On May 4 1990 while living in Grand Island Nebraska I contacted every radio station in town and in the surrounding area and asked them to play, at 11:27 a.m. Central Time that morning (the exact minute the murders took place at Kent State 20 years earlier) "Ohio" by Neil Young as a memorial to the fallen students. All the stations agreed to do it but one where I was told by the programming director "We don't have the music or I would play it." I asked if they'd play it if I brought the music to them. They would.

I was standing outside the music store in Conestoga Mall at 10:00 a.m. when the door opened. I darted in and purchased the vinyl album and raced down to the south side of town to the radio station. I arrived there by 10:30 with 57 minutes to spare. Breathlessly I told the woman behind the counter that her station was going to be playing this song as a memorial to the murders 20 years earlier. She looked at me with a deer-in-the-headlights look on her face not understanding a thing I'd said. Finally I asked her age. "I'm 19" she said. She wasn't even born when the single greatest formative moment in my life occurred. I would be afraid to ask the question again today.

Finally the murders at Kent State were the catalyst in 1988 for the University to establish the Institute for the Study and Prevention of Violence.  The mission statement for the Institute reads:

The Institute for the Study and Prevention of Violence:

* promotes interdisciplinary research on the causes and prevention of violence
* engages in the design, implementation and evaluation of community-based programs for violence prevention
* trains teachers, law enforcement personnel and other professionals on principles and practices related to violence prevention
* helps bridge the gap between science and practice to effectively inform public policy related to violence prevention

Some good has come out of the insanity of that day after all.

In 2005 I traveled from Washington DC to Kent State to be there for the 35th anniversary of the murders. Stepping from my car in a University parking lot I asked a couple I saw walking "where's the Hill?" Without batting an eye they pointed to the west. As I walked toward the hallowed grounds that are the site of the murders several students came up to me and asked "were you there?" I told them I was there in spirit alone that day.

On getting near the Hill I found four curious areas cordoned off with light fixtures. Asking what they were I learned that they were permanent memorials that marked the outline of where each of the four kids died that day. The first one I found was Alison Krause.

Standing on the Hill overlooking the scene I met a mother and her college freshman son. The son was showing mom the campus and brought her to the Hill. I saw them and made a comment about the tragic deaths that day. The mom, about my age, snapped back in reply saying "Those fucking kids DESERVED what they got that day."

Shocked I said "you mean Jeffrey Miller deserved to die for protesting something that was wrong?" Mom said "You're god-damned right he did. All of them did."

Her son then jumped on her case and backed up what I was saying. They walked away yelling at each other. I guess, at least 5 years ago, there was still a lot of angst and anger on the Hill.

And a note for any Vietnam Veterans reading this post - know up front that our protests were designed to get you home and we didn't even know you at the time. We were mobilized against the war, not against you.

Now the Kent State University Historic Site has been established and dedicated on the campus as a memorial to the tragedy of that day. I hope the memorial is completely successful in helping America to Never EVER forget Kent State.

Rededicating a Monument to the Loss of a Species

On May 11, 1947 the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology established a monument to the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon. The monument was dedicated by none other than author and environmental philosopher Aldo Leopold, the first wildlife biology professor at the University of Wisconsin 

The monument resides in Wyalusing State Park at the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers in Grant County just south of Prairie du Chien. For the 100th anniversary of the extinction (the last bird, a female, died in the Cincinnati Zoo in September 1914) the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology has redesigned the monument and will be re-dedicating it on Saturday May 17th 2014

The original monument to the pigeon was immortalized in Aldo Leopold's essay “A Monument to a Pigeon” that was published in "A Sand County Almanac."  (That's an Eastern Wood-Pewee singing in the background at the start of the video).

I'm headed back home to Wisconsin for the rededication ceremony for this most somber occasion. The photo at the top of this post shows the design and wording on the new monument. 

A Visit to Bill's Birthplace in Hope Arkansas

Just before midnight Mountain Standard Time on November 3, 1992, I was laying in my bed in the Doubletree Hotel on Union Boulevard in Denver when news was flashed on the television screen announcing that Bill Clinton had become the 42^nd President of the United States.  I leaped out of bed and danced around my room, screaming and hollering.  I opened two bottles of beer, shook them, and then sprayed them all over the room! 

Soon there was a knock on my door and on opening it I found hotel security standing there with a rather stern look on his face.  Asking me what was going on I told him “Bill was elected!!! Twelve years of tyranny against the earth is now officially over!!!”  The security guard smiled and said “I’m excited too but just try to hold it down a bit will you?”

Bill Clinton's first white house was this tiny one in Hope Arkansas

Bill Clinton was born in a tiny house near the intersection of two major roads (for Hope Arkansas at least they are major) by the railroad tracks in Hope Arkansas.  From those humble beginnings he moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas about 90 minutes away where he attended and graduated from high school.  After college and a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford and then Yale Law school he taught at the University of Arkansas, got into politics, was elected Governor of Arkansas four times, then elected President of the United States, and left office on one of the saddest days of my life. 

While Bill was in office he enjoyed some major accomplishments summarized by the National Archives and Records Administration including these documentable facts:

Longest economic expansion in American history

Highest homeownership in American history

Lowest unemployment in 30 years

Raised education standards, increased school choice, and doubled education and training investment

Largest expansion of college opportunity since the GI Bill

Connected 95 percent of schools to the Internet

Lowest crime rate in 26 years

100,000 more police for our streets

Enacted most sweeping gun safety legislation in a generation

Family and Medical Leave Act for 20 million Americans

Smallest welfare rolls in 32 years

Higher incomes at all levels

Lowest poverty rate in 20 years

Lowest teen birth rate in 60 years

Lowest infant mortality rate in American history

Deactivated more than 1,700 nuclear warheads from the former Soviet Union

Protected millions of acres of American land

Converted the largest budget deficit in American history to the largest surplus

Lowest government spending in three decades

Lowest federal income tax burden in 35 years

More families own stock than ever before

Most diverse cabinet in American history

When Bill left office the nation 1) had a multi-billion dollar (>500 billion in fact) budget surplus, 2) had not been lied into a war with Iraq, and 3) was adored by 85 percent of the world’s population. Those are all things his predecessor could never claim.

Those accomplishments and his humble beginnings are memorialized at the President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home National Historic Site in Hope, Arkansas.  This NHS, the 394^th unit of the National Park Service system was the 393^rd unit I have visited.

The National Historic Site consists of two buildings.  First the visitor center set in a brick building with a spacious back yard and next to it the small white house that was the first White House he lived in.  Dioramas and other educational materials in the visitor center tell the story of his life in Hope and in Hot Springs and his eventual movement through the ranks to be one of the best Presidents in the 20^th Century. 

I visited the site on April 13, 2014, on a blustery Sunday morning with storm clouds hanging ominously in the western sky.  After obtaining my NPS passport stamp for the site I had a nice chat with the NPS employee working that morning who filled in a lot of missing bits of information I thought I had about Bill Clinton.  From the Visitor Center I followed a small path to the white house (not open for entry) and then hung out in the back yard trying to imagine him darting around being a typical little kid there. 

Because of the relative newness of the National Historic Site the amount of information about him is meager in comparison to most other NPS sites.  However there is a super abundance of information about him at the Clinton Presidential library along the Arkansas River in Little Rock.  I jokingly asked the NPS employee if Bill ever stops by his National Historic Site and was informed that he does not.  That is unfortunate because Jimmy Carter regularly shows up at his National Historic Site in Plains Georgia.  The NPS employee chuckled and said “He’s probably too busy out trying to save the rest of the world to stop by to see us.”

The Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, Arkansas is the only airport in America named after a former and a future United States President

After about 30 minutes at the National Historic Site I left Hope and made my way back to the Little Rock airport only 120 miles away.  On driving into the airport I noticed the large sign announcing its presence and on looking at it noted what I hope is an omen.  The Little Rock airport is named the “Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport.”  That makes it the only airport in the United States named after a former and a future United States President.  That’s just more hope coming from Hope Arkansas.

Every American Should Visit Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site

The United States Supreme Court, in its landmark decision in Brown vs Board of Education in 1954 mandated that public schools in the country could not be segregated.  It all gets back to the “separate but equal” clause in the often-trampled Constitution.   Despite word from the Supremes that segregation was no longer to be tolerated, knuckle-dragging Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus decided (over the disagreement of the Little Rock School Board) that Little Rock Central High School would not be integrated after nine black students registered for classes there in 1957. 

When the nine black students attempted to enter Little Rock Central High School (which was their right according to the Supremes) Governor Faubus activated the National Guard and made them block the school entrance to keep the black students out.  An outraged President Dwight D. Eisenhower (the last real Republican to be President) Federalized the National Guard and suddenly those same guardsmen who were keeping the students out of the school were protecting them as they tried to enter.

An oft-forgotten amendment to the US Constitution

In a response reminiscent of the protesters at the Democratic Convention in Chicago chanting “The whole world’s watching” the entire world was focused on the events unfolding in Little Rock.  Arkansas became the epitome of state resistance when the governor, Orval Faubus, directly questioned the authority of the federal court system and the validity of desegregation. The crisis at Little Rock's Central High School was the first fundamental test of the national resolve to enforce black civil rights in the face of massive resistance during the years following the Brown decision. As to whether Eisenhower's specific actions to enforce integration violated the Posse Comitatus Act, the Supreme Court, in Cooper v. Aaron (1958), indirectly affirmed the legality of his conduct, which was never, though, expressly reviewed.

In 1958, federal Judge Jesse Smith Henley of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, stating that integration had "broken down under the pressure of public opinion," suspended operation of the federal integration order until the 1960-61 school term. The school board said that it had faced large fees and could not afford to hire security guards to keep the peace in school.

The words of one of the Little Rock Nine

Eventually Little Rock Central High School along with every other public school in the country was integrated and for the most part the plan continues to work.  The Congress established the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, located directly across the street from the actual high school, to memorialize that historically important event.  I visited the National Historic Site the first time on May 20, 2000, when the visitor center was in an old (now preserved) Mobil gas station across the street from the school.  I returned on April 11, 2014 to a much improved and expanded visitor center at the corner of 14^th and Cumberland near downtown Little Rock.

In typical National Park Service fashion they have produced a superb site for educating the public about the events of those long ago days.  Several dioramas are in place telling stories of the Little Rock Nine, there is a constantly running news clip from the day Eisenhower Federalized the National Guard, and there are reminders all over the building of how horribly white people treated (and often today continue to treat) black people.

One of many photos available in the National Historic Site that tell the story of that horrible period in American history. Although this little Hitler youth's sentiment is largely overshadowed today it is unfortunately not behind us. Places like the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site are excellent places to help bury that sentiment forever.

I spent about an hour at the National Historic Site before heading out to visit some National Wildlife Refuges in Arkansas.  As I departed I said to the person at the front desk that “everyone in this country needs to visit this site.”  And everyone in this country does.  

Perhaps if more people were slapped in the face with the reality of how black people were treated there wouldn’t be so much outward anger and hatred directed at folks who, just like white people, bleed red when our skin is cut.

The Unsportsmanlike Conduct of Jesus Montero of the Palm Beach Cardinals

Jesus Montero, the hot-headed catcher for the Palm Beach Cardinals in the Florida State League seems to have a little bit of an issue with not only plate discipline but also personal discipline.  The following is an email I sent today to the general manager of the Palm Beach Cardinals and to the President of the Florida State League regarding the unsportsmanlike conduct of Jesus.  I wanted to send it to the St. Louis Cardinals Director of Player Development but couldn't find his email address.  I sent it to him by snail mail instead.  I have now christened Jesus as "Peroito" - or "my little lap dog" and Sanguineo" which means "quick tempered" or "the hot head" for the remainder of his tenure in a Palm Beach Cardinals uniform.  Jesus is a very slow learner.

April 9, 2014

Dear Florida State League

Dear General Manager of the Palm Beach Cardinals

In case you weren't aware before you have a little issue that needs to be dealt with on the roster of the Palm Beach Cardinals.  Jesus Montero, the Palm Beach Cardinals catcher is in need of a little counseling and perhaps a good ass chewing.

In a game with the Bradenton Marauders on August 14, 2013, Mr. Montero stopped his activities and gave me the finger essentially saying "fuck you" to me as I heckled him from behind home plate at McKechnie Field. My heckling of the opposition was no different than it was for any other visiting player.  

In reviewing notes on Palm Beach players before last night's April 8 2014 game between the Cardinals and Marauders I discovered a notation about Montero giving me the finger last year.  This led to immediate reminders of that incident each time Montero came to bat last night.  In the 6th inning of last night's game, after Montero made a mistake behind home plate, he turned around and mouthed the words "Fuck You" to me.   Then later, in the 9th inning when Montero was at bat he received more than the usual amount of attention from me and my colleague Dave Hilsheimer.  When Montero struck out and Hilsheimer did his now-famous march back to the dugout, Montero turned around and in front of the entire crowd gave us the finger again!  His actions were obvious enough that nearly the entire stadium responded when they saw him.  Not only does this reflect badly on Montero and demonstrate his lack of maturity, it also reflects negatively on the Palm Beach and St. Louis organizations.

Heckling is as much a part of the game as is throwing strikes or hitting a home run. And if players at this level (Advanced A) can't handle a little verbal distraction by two retirees in the stands behind home plate, they will never survive a place like the stadiums and fans in Philadelphia or New York.  Montero's repeated use of giving opposing fans the finger on top of him openly and obviously mouthing the words "fuck you" to a fan he doesn't like suggests to me that he is not mature enough to be allowed on a professional baseballl field.  

What is Montero going to do with the next fan he doesn't like?  Will the Palm Beach Cardinals pay for his legal defense if he comes off the field and shoves a knife into a fan who pestered him?  We live in a state where everyone and their brother carries a gun and where shooting someone and claiming you were standing your ground is almost an art form. What will the Cardinals do if this little hot head shoots someone who pesters him between innings?

For me personally I love the fact that Mr. Montero is so easily flummoxed on the field and if he thinks giving fans the finger is going to stop us from heckling he is completely misinformed.  In fact Montero's actions last night only served to earn him more unwanted attention and at a louder, more personal level.  Bottom line from this, however, is that the Palm Beach Cardinals and the St Louis Cardinals organization have a walking powder keg on their hands with Mr. Montero. If you take no action on reprimanding Montero for his unsportsmanlike behavior and he ultimately harms a fan he doesn't like, then both Palm Beach and St. Louis can never say "we had no idea" because now you do.

I wanted to include the St. Louis Cardinals director of player development on this email but couldn't find his email address.  I will copy the email and mail it to him instead.

Craig Faanes

Why Isn't Earth Day a National Holiday?

Earth Day is Tuesday April 22. On the first Earth Day in 1970 the Cuyahoga River was on fire as it flowed through downtown Cleveland on its way to Lake Erie. 

The cornucopia of unregulated pollutants being dumped into the Cuyahoga River at Cleveland caused the river to burn as it flowed into Lake Erie 

Today after passage of the Water Pollution Control Act aka Clean Water Act and other protections we have salmon spawning in the Cuyahoga River in downtown Cleveland.

The Cuyahoga River near downtown Cleveland today looks like it belongs in the wilds of northern Wisconsin - and it has lake-run salmon spawning in it each spring

Protection of Mother Earth is celebrated one day each year (shouldn't we celebrate our real mother everyday?) in April. Given the importance of clean water to drink and clean air to breathe and wild areas to get in touch with ourselves again I think Earth Day should be a National holiday. Columbus Day is and Chris never stepped foot on what is now the United States.

Shouldn't the giver of all life - the Earth - rank higher in priority than an Italian sailor who was looking for spices for the King and Queen of Spain when he landed on Grand Turk island in the West Indies?

When Rice Lake Beat Montello in Chicken Judging

The Rice Lake (Wisconsin) Future Farmers of America program was a powerhouse among Wisconsin chapters in the late 1960s.  This was due in whole and in part to Donald Triebensee our teacher and chapter advisor.  Don was a great teacher and a great man on top of being a great inspiration to many.  He always strived for excellence in his students even when some of us (like me) were major league goof offs.

One of the things Don had us actively involved with was the various statewide judging contests.  We kicked ass and took no prisoners when it came to Meat Animal Judging (beef cattle, sheep, swine) (State Champions in 1968), and Dairy Cattle Judging (State Champions in 1968) on the University of Wisconsin Madison campus. There was some other contest we won on the University of Wisconsin – River Falls campus. A couple years later it would have been a beer drinking contest but right now I can’t remember now what it was.  For some unexplained reason we simply could not get it when it came to Soil Judging (last place 1968, 1969) but give us a living breathing animal and we’d correctly judge it 99 times out of 99.

Forty five years ago this month, April 1969, just a few weeks before the Rice Lake Senior High School Class of 1969 was unleashed on an unsuspecting world (our unofficial class motto was “Booze, Broads, Butts, Wine – We’re the Class of Sixty NINE!”) the Wisconsin FFA association held its annual Poultry and Egg judging contest on the campus of the incomparable University of Wisconsin campus in Madison.  Rice Lake had participated in this judging contest in the past but had never fared well.  In those days Montello High School in Marquette County (north northeast of Madison) always won the Poultry and Egg contest – nobody ever came close. Still that did not dissuade Don Triebensee from putting together a team and giving it a shot.

The 1969 team was made up of three seniors and on Thursday before the contest the following Monday (four days earlier) it was determined that two of them could not make the trip (for whatever reason I cannot remember now).  That left one senior on the team and two others were desperately needed or Rice Lake would not field a team.

For whatever reason with just a couple days to go before the contest, Don Triebensee almost begged FFA Chapter President Dave Bollman and me to be on the team.  At the time about all I knew of chickens was that 1) everything tastes like them including chicken, 2) they get run over while trying to cross to the other side of a road, and 3) my mom could burn eggs while frying them almost as easily as she could burn everything else.  However Mr. Triebensee was desperate and I couldn’t turn him down so I said yes.  If nothing else we would get a free trip down to Madison where we could ogle college girls recently emerged from a winter of long pants, sweaters, and over coats as they sunned themselves on the shores of Lake Mendota. 

With little time and even less chance of winning, Mr. Triebensee gave us several books to read and said he had made arrangements with the Uchytil Egg Farm in Haugen to teach us what they could about chickens and eggs.  By this stage in our lives, we were far from proficient at feeling up girls in the Class of 1969 but that didn't stop us from wanting to learn how to feel up a chicken or how to candle an egg to determine its quality.  Uchytil’s had offered to give us that essential training and we were to be at the egg farm at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday morning.  The three of us spent almost all day Saturday at Uchytil’s learning the ins and outs of chicken feeling up. 

Among other essentials we learned that if you could place three fingers in the space between the pubic bone of a chicken then they were in prime egg laying condition (life later taught us that it worked that way with human females also but we didn’t know that then).  If only one or two fingers fit in the pubic bone socket then she was not in good condition.

We learned how to tell the health of a chicken by feeling for its breast bone (another technique readily and eagerly transferable to the girls in the Class of 1969).  If the breast bone stuck out above the level of the breast meat then the chicken was undernourished and not in good condition.  However if you felt her breast and there was lots of flesh there and little bone then she was in great shape (I tried that technique later that night on a girl in our class and was amazed how similar were the results).

We also learned how to candle an egg.  Place an egg with the small end against a light source and judge how much air space existed in the end of the egg.  If there was very little airspace then the egg was fresh and of good quality.  If a lot of airspace was present then the egg and its quality were questionable and that egg would get a lower ranking.  We later tried to figure out how to transfer this bit of knowledge to the girls in the Class of 1969 but never made the connection.  However we were ready if the opportunity arose.

A candled egg showing the airspace

After spending a full day in a crash course in Chicken Feeling Up 101 at Uchytil’s farm in Haugen we returned home, milked cows, packed our bags and prepared ourselves for the four hour drive the next day down to Madison.

A trip to Madison was a major thing in those days.  A year previously, on the same weekend that Martin Luther King was assassinated, we were in Madison for the State Meat Animal judging contest.  The most memorable thing about that trip was watching Greg Rindsig, who was as skinny as a rail, wolf down 7 McDonald’s cheeseburgers, 4 packets of McDonald’s French fries, and 3 McDonald’s chocolate shakes in one setting in a Mickey D’s on US 151 on the east side of Madison.  Greg wasn’t with us in 1969 since he graduated the year before so we just relied on ogling college girls sunbathing on the lake shore.

Monday morning dawned crystal clear on the campus of the venerable University of Wisconsin (“Fuck em Bucky!”).  Mr Triebensee took us out to Camp Randall Stadium after breakfast just to look around.  Camp Randall is where the Badgers play football. It is the second most hallowed ground in the entire Cheesehead State – only Lambeau Field where the Packers play in Green Bay is held in higher reverence among Cheeseheads than is Camp Randall Stadium.

Bucky on the hallowed ground of Camp Randall Stadium

After an invigorating visit to the cathedral known as Camp Randall, and with one entire day of knowledge of chicken feeling up under our belts, we three intrepid seniors showed up on the College of Agriculture of the Madison campus where we did battle with the chicken goliath’s from Montello and 28 other high schools.  Team members were separated from each other and despite each participant feeling up the same chickens, no team members were allowed to be near the same chicken at the same time, ostensibly, I guess to reduce the chance for passing notes on chicken tits and their fullness to team members.  The same was true for the eggs we candled – we were in this alone. 

At the end of the contest the total scores for each team member were tallied and a cumulative score was awarded to each of the 30 teams involved in the contest.  As we waited for the judges to make their determinations we anticipated just how badly Montello had wiped the floor with us and everyone else.

However that was not the story today.  Nope.  When all the score cards were graded and all of the team numbers combined the Rice Lake FFA team had 2 more points than the perennial favorite Montello FFA team.  We beat the goliath of chicken feeling up. Not only were the Montello team players livid, their advisor/teacher was close to having a stroke.  Unable to believe his team had been defeated he demanded a recount during which it was determined that a mistake had been made. Rice Lake actually won by 3 points over Montello to become the undisputed Poultry feeling up and Egg judging champions of the Cheesehead state in 1969.

When we accepted the trophy later that afternoon we were told this was the first time in something like ten years that Montello did not win the contest.  A few minutes later we all piled into Don Triebensee’s car and sped north with the trophy in our hands.  To this day we never told Montello that they were beaten by three kids who didn’t know a chicken from a chinchilla three days earlier.