SO YOU WROTE IT. NOW WHAT?

The time is always right for writing, and the first step in getting a book in print is to write it.  You can't print what you don't have, so first things first.  And so, you write your book.  Now what?  From personal experience I can tell you that your job as a writer is a long way from finished.  Getting it in print is easy enough in this day and age of self-publishing, and you can get that done free or with very little cost.  You can get your book on sale easy enough in a number of venues, but that doesn't mean much in terms of sales.  Just because it's there doesn't mean anyone is going to buy it.  I've got seven books for sale on Amazon at the moment, and so far, that's a waste of time.

Some of my books have sold locally, and the feedback has been good.  Most people who buy one book come back and get another . . . and another.  I'm learning something from that, which is:  you've got to work the market that offers to most promise.  Many of my books are about Texas, and that's where I live.  I get asked, "Is this book about Texas?"  Yes, I can tell them.  I always knew that my books of adventure would sell if I could get people started reading them.  Texans are big on Texas, and it's only natural they'd like to read about it.

I know several singers down here in the Lone Star State that make a very good living without ever leaving the state.  They don't need Nashville or L.A. or New York because they've tailored their music to fit Texas.  One of these performers could draw big crowds outside the state, but he seldom crosses state borders to do that.  He's working the audience he most appreciates . . . and they sure as hell appreciate him.  With a population of close to 25 million, three of the top ten largest cities in America, there's opportunity enough right here.  That's the reading audience I'm going after, and Texans do like to read, especially if you're writing about something they understand.

I write about contemporary cowboys, and there's is no state in the union with more of them than Texas.  I write about rural life, about common, ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances.  I write about the average guy's struggle for survival and about his occasional rise above the commonplace.  I write about the plight of the little guy, and I take shots at the power brokers and politicians and corporate businesses that screw things up for that little guy.  I'm a writer with a populist zeal, but I'm not a crusader or champion of virtuous causes.  I just tell it like it is (or how I see it) in terms of looking from the middle up . . . and down.  And I always try to find some humor in almost everything.  I'd rather leave the reader with a smile than in tears.  I'm a cautious optimist, a writer who likes to give the ordinary citizen something to feel good about.  And I'm all about Texas.

I don't mind, of course, if anyone else reads my books.  I recently found a review of one of my books online . . . being sold in Europe.  Yeah, baby, that's what I'm talking about.  Maybe I can export a little of Texas other places.  There's more to us, you know, than just bragging.

RETIREMENT NESTEGG? HUH?

I just read an article on a news website concerning seven ways you could easily blow your retirement nestegg.  My first thought was, "What nestegg?"  Exactly what audience do you think you're speaking to here, maybe ten percent of those who retire?  Are we talking white collar class retirement?  Doesn't matter 'cause most people who retire don't have a nestegg.  If they're lucky, they have a retirement system they paid into for many years and can draw monthly payments on that . . . and there's always the meager social security checks, if you paid into that.  But there's no savings account, or bonds, or stock holdings, or any sort of cash build-up for most folks.

But there's always the good advice about how to avoid having your retirment money sapped away, and of the seven ways to lose your money, I ran into several of them.  Don't have a house note, the article said.  Huh?  Most retired people still pay house payments, unless they dump their property upon retirement.  Don't support other folks, like your kids and grandkids.  Ah, duh.  Maybe the writer isn't old enough to know what that's like for older people with kids and grandkids.  Don't run up credit card debt.  Smart idea, but that's hard to avoid.  Don't drive cars that are expensive to repair, or cost lots of money to buy.  Another smart idea, but all cars are expensive to repair.  Again, sounds to me like the writer has never been there when it comes to aging.  Don't travel, too expensive.  Got it, and I don't do it.  Don't spend too much on your hobbies.  Sorry, already did that.

I could add lots of other things, especially for people who don't have nesteggs to fall back on.  Don't live above your means, meaning do some planning.  Don't retire to any place (state or city) where property taxes are outrageous.  Don't retire to places where rentals and property prices are out of sight.  Don't give away any money that's not absolutely necessary - charities, churches, relatives, or civic projects.  Old people are an easy target for these folks, so be aware of that.  And plan for taxes 'cause they're damn sure not going away when you retire and start getting old.  And finally, depending on your situational/conditional factors, think about another country as a place to retire.  Yeah, I know, you want to be close to your friends and kids and all that.  If you can live somewhere else for half what it costs to live here, it might be worth it. 

I met a man who didn't plan well for retirement.  He thought he was doing the right thing with investments, ended up losing it all, and was left with nothing to live on but social security, which was about $1,400 a month.  His wife, a school teacher, was still working, had about two more years to go before retirment, but she had not invested in a teacher retirement fund and would likewise receive only social security.  He moved to Ecuador where he could get along well on his S.S., and a couple of years later, she joined him there.  With about $2,800 a month to live on, they did very well.  They bought a nice condo and even opened a small books store, and ejoyed life . . . and had enough money left over to come back to the U.S. twice a year to visit kids and grandkids. 

Here in a small town in central Texas, that much money would only get me half way there in just being able to survive.  We have a nice house, good transportation, eat well, have hobbies, and it takes about $7,000.00 a month to live here.  And that's with  no savings and nothing left over . . . month to month.  Oh, how I'd love to bail out of here and join those retirees down in Ecuador or some other country where living expenses are much less.  Nothing about that scares me, and I entertain myself by doing research on various countries . . . but it will never happen.  I'm trapped by old age, too many obligations, and a craving to see my kids and grandkids more than twice a year.  I can afford to stay here and not live in poverty, even without a nestegg.  And I'm lucky . . . so far.

Whoever wrote the article about retirement offered good advice, but they sure don't know the realities of what it's like here in America.  Even good planning can't save you from economic woes in your old age.  I look around me and see most people my age still working, still trying to make enough money to keep the leeches satisfied and the wolves at bay.  And if you can't see yourself retired in this country on less than $5,000 a month, start thinking Ecuador, or Panama, or Costa Rica, or Malaysia, or wherever you can actually live and not just survive.  It's either that or the leeches and wolves, and they are always hungry.

HOW IMPORTANT ARE ROOTS?

Everyone knows that roots are important to plants of all kinds, but are they important to people?  Oh, I'd say very much so, and for the same reasons most plants can't survive without them.  Take a tree, for instance.  I've studied trees some and was amazed at how complex they are.  In fact, the tree might well be the most dynamic living thing on this planet, and we pretty much take them for granted.  That's stupid on our parts because we can't survive without them, and that's because they are a part of our roots system - that part we're unaware of. 

We usually think of roots as our family background, our social status, our homes and jobs and other things that provide our basis of security.  Foundation, that's the word we most think of when it comes to roots, and that should include our environment and not just our physical setting.  I won't go into all the scientific reassons we can't live without trees.  My expertise in that are is shallow, but it's deep enough for me to know they are part of our root system.  And we are much like the trees, even from a nutritional viewpoint.  Some tree have roots that reach deep into the earth to obtain the nutrition they need, but others have shallow roots.  Would it surprise you to know that many desert plants don't have deep roots?  Take the creosote plant, for example.  It has shallow roots that spread along the ground so that it can catch as much mositure as possible from the infrequent rains that fall.  In doing that, it pushes out other plants that would compete with it for the water or other nutrients.

We're very much like the creosote plant, that little desert bush, in that we do the same.  Most of us have shallow roots that spread, and since there's just so much space available, that means we're in competition with others to get what we need to survive.  To do more than survive, meaning we want to actually prosper, we need to spread more, and that means pushing someone else aside.  It's the way of nature, I suppose, that survival of the fittest thing.  I realize that's the way it is, but I still don't like it.  Perhaps we do prosper by controlling as much space as possible, taking what we need at other's expense, but does that really make us prosperous?

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.  If in time we don't learn to conserve, to take just what we need, we'll end up in a situation where there's nothing left for us.  We're doing that because people are a much worse blight on the earth than is that little creosote bush.  It's greedy to a point, but our greed doesn't seem to have a point where enough is enough.  Think about that, and then take a look at what's going on around you.  Better yet, walk out into the desert and find a nice healthy creosote bush.  It looks pretty good, but there's quite a bit of bare ground around it.  It's healthy for the time being but in time that bare ground around it could be its doom.  Say, for instance, a rancher comes along who wants to graze cattle there, and he thinks the creosote bush is his enemy.  He wants
grass, not an ugly little bush cows don't eat.  Get the point?

ALMOST COWBOY: MY JOURNEY INTO POETRY

I wrote my first poem in the fifth grade as part of a homework assignment, and my teacher entered it in a contest . . . and it won.  I was mortified.  Winning meant I had to get up in front of the entire school and receive it, and I sure didn't want that.  We're talking late forties here, mill village setting, and at a time when boys who wrote poetry were considered sissies.  I endured the humiliation but didn't write another poem until after I was past fifty years of age.

My second try at it was more enjoyable, and for a period of time (about ten years), I wrote a lot of poetry.  I studied it, practiced it, and got fairly good at it.  I went around to cowboy poetry gatherings and recited poetry, and I even went into a partnership with a friend to create a traveling road show of cowboy poets and singers.  That all ended when my partner died back in the late nineties, and I never performed again.  I didn't stop writing poetry altogether, but I slowed down a lot and turned my attention to prose writing.  And then lately I get this bright idea about publishing my poetry.  Yeah, real bright 'cause books of poetry are hard to sell.  But what the hell!  It's not like I'm selling a lot of anything, so I'm putting together a book called Almost Cowboy: My Journey Into Poetry.

Cowboy poetry, if you're not informed about it, is similar to the poetry of Robert Service.  It's standard meter and rhyme poetry, and usually isn't experimental in any way.  I broke that mold a long time ago, so my poetry doesn't qualify for standard cowboy poetry.  In fact, it might not qualify for being standard in regard to any genre of poetry.  You could stick a name tag on it, I suppose, but that's inconsequential to me.  It's almost cowboy, so that's what I call it.  Some of it is free verse, some is a mixture of free verse and rhymed, and some is experimental.  It is not intended for any particular audience, and there's no particular theme involved.  It's just a collection of poems I've written, along with some short prose and descriptions of how my journey took place.  Is it interesting?  Heck, I don't know.  Readers are always the judge of things like that.  Look me up under
Philip Martin Cawlfield or Cletus Duhon, the pen names I usually write under.  The new book will be
out in less than a month.

EMPATHY: THE PROBLEM WITH WRITING

I've seen where actors sometimes have problems shedding the skin of characters they've played on screen.  They get too involved with a character, then have trouble shedding that skin when it's time to go back to real life.  As a writer, I understand that.  Sometimes you get more than involved because the character skin you wear fits tight and is hard to shed.  Perhaps you use a pseudoymn, a pen name, and you assume that character while you write.  It's more than just a change of names; it's a change of personality to a certain degree.  And then there's the character in the book, or perhaps several characters, you have a hard time with.  Maybe you don't like the character, the bad guy, but he's important to the plot, and you've got to stick with him.  And you need to understand him.  I've known about this empathy problem for a long time because I've gone through months of depression after finishing a book, or I've been angry for a while.  The reverse of that can be true: you could come out of it feeling good, even enlightened and euphoric for a while.

As of late I've been working on a book about my father.  He died over 30 years ago, but he left behind a lot of unpublished poems, stories, little bons mots that I thought were worth a life of their own in print.  I gathered together some information and started digging through it.  At the outset I planned on doing a book of collected poems and short prose without much in the way of annotation, but that wasn't possible.  For the book to be interesting, engaging, and worth the effort, it would require some history of the man . . . and some of my observations about him.  That mean doing some research because I didn't know a lot about his background.

He was born and raised in the eastern Oregon town of Burns.  I'd been there once as a seven year old, and didn't remember much.  I didn't know either of my paternal grandparents because they were either dead or near death when I was born.  I knew a few of my uncles and aunts because they had visited with us, and I knew only one of my first cousins.  Worst of all, I didn't really know my own father.  I grew up in a house with him, knew a lot about his personal life, but I didn't really know him until I read his stories and poems.  In doing that, I got to know the man quite a bit better, and there's a problem with that.  I buried him in 1983 but mostly in a haze of confusion and grief . . . and then I went on with life and worked hard at not thinking about it.  And now, I'm faced with having to bury him again, and this time wide-eyed and knowing what was lost.

The upside of all this is an awakening of who I am and where I came from.  I'm on the one hand sad and depressed, but my head is full of images of my father as a youngter, young adult, and until I got to know him as a father.  I'm piecing together his story, and through his own words, I got inside his head a little.  I never read his poetry before, and I should have.  We all say in print things we sometimes can't say in person.  I should've read it before, but better late than never.  I'll get back to being me before long, but at the present I'm still dealing with images - those pictures of the mind that can damn sure hold your attention for a while.  And even though it's a bit troubling, I don't mind at all.

IT'S THAT SEASON AGAIN!

No, I'm not talking about hunting season, or basketball season. or any season related to sports . . . unless you consider taxation a sport.  I've come to the conclusion that government may well think of it as sport.  Somewhere out there in some city hall, courthouse, state capitol, or Washington, there's a plan at work to hunt you down and attack you where it hurts the worse . . . in the pocket.  Got extra money?  Forget that, Uncle Sam and all his little brothers and cousins are coming for it.  Maybe they've already been taking it from you throughout the year, but this is the season for catching the ones they didn't get before, like me.  I'm a hunted man.

Government at all levels has figured out ways of getting in your pocket that span the spectrum of possibilities.  They take money from what you earn, take it from what you spend, and they take it from what you spent it on.  I earn money, they take a chunk.  I buy a car, they take a chunk again (lots of chunks, actually), and then because it's parked in my driveway and belongs to me, they take another chunk.  I buy a house, they take big chunks each year, and this is the tax that infuriates me the most.  All taxes are levies on life.  Government figured out what you need the most to live, and because staying alive, or survival, is almost instinctive with people, they go after what you must have in order to do that - your income, what you spend (sales tax, excise, etc.), and your property.  In other words, they tax the essentials, and a home is essential.  I view that as as a bad tax, one that should be done away with. 

So, the last day of this month I'll march down to the tax collection office and give them about $1,300.00, and that's just the first payment.  If you're a senior citizen here in Texas you get a break in that they'll let you spread payments over a six months period.  Otherwise, I'd have to come up with the entire amount, which my wife will have to do to pay property tax on her business.  Between the two of us, we'll give the county about four grand this month.  And while I'm paying off the remaining property tax on the house, income tax will come due in a couple of months, and we'll have to come up with several thousand more for that.  And you know what?  It ain't that bad a deal, not compared to what many other Americans are paying.  It puts us in a bit of a bind for a while, but it can be managed.  That's the good news.  The bad news is:  THE SEASON ON TAXPAYERS COMES AROUND EVERY YEAR.

THE LOST ART OF HANDWRITING

I could easily fill a book with criticisms of the American educational system, but lots of people already have.  Not long ago I read a blog written by a lady living in France.  She wrote mostly of the adjustments she had to make when her husband moved the family to Nice where he took employment.  She went from southern California to that part of France, amd has been there for some seven years now.  After some difficult adjustments, she has come to love living there.  The most troublesome adjustment came when their three kids enrolled in school . . . and couldn't do the work required of them at the same grade level they were in out in California.  In fact, each of them was set back several grades due to poor performance.  This could have been for a number of reasons, but the family had to find a school tailor made for English speaking kids.  It was easier, and not just because the language barrier as no longer a problem.  Their system is more demanding than ours . . . and better.

Her blogs didn't come as any surprise to me.  As a former college professor, I'm well aware of what the public school product is capable of.  Colleges used to be the cream separator of education in America, but that's no longer the case.  You work with what you have these days, and it's not beneficial to the system to send home too many rejects from higher education.  In short, we've lowered our standards by a considerable margin.  One thing you notice right off in teaching is that kids can't write.  They can't express themselves well enough to do well on essay type tests, and most professors I know gave up on written tests.  Part of the reason for that is the handwriting problem.  College students often can't write fast enough to get much said on an essay test, and even if they can, the grader can't read it.  Handwriting in this day and age is awful.  Is that a new problem?  Apparently not, but it seems to be worse than it was years back.

My father was a highly educated man.  Since he'd done clerical work in the miliary, he could make an old typewriter rattle like and old Ford truck.  He bragged of being able to type sixty words a minute, but he couldn't write.  My mother, on the other hand, had beautiful handwriting, as did most women I've known who came out of her generation.  It seems that bad handwriting is somewhat of a man thing.  Anyway, I'm doing a book of my father's poetry and journalistic endeavors, and the most troublesome thing I've run into is reading what he wrote out by hand.  In fact, I'll have to give up on including some things because I can't find it in type.  He knew he couldn't write, often apologized for it.

I've always had a decent handwriting style, but as I grow older, it gets worse.  I've noticed that even my signatures on checks don't look the same, but there's an excuse for that.  These old hands have suffered some abuse over the years, and now they're stiff.  But I can still write some, and I can type up a storm.  Some modern conveniences are helpful to old codgers like me, but I still need to practice more with my handwriting.

By the way, the book is called Gathering Ground, and it will be out in a few months.  I knew my dad's handwriting wasn't good, but I didn't know how good his poetry was.  And, I knew he was an enthralling conversationalist, but I didn't know he was such a good storyteller.  A book that should've been in print forty years ago is finally coming to life, and I'm pleased with it.  Keep an eye out for it on Amazon.

TIME MACHINE

Time machines make for good science fiction material, but in the real world they would be a disaster.  Time travel into the future?  Could be exciting, informative, even specatcular, but the chances are it would be worse than depressing.  Want to see yourself old? Dead? Want to see your grandkids old and dead?  Want to see a world at war, or mired in deep depression with millions of starving people?  Maybe you'd want to go backward in time, say for instance take a look at what the world was like when the pyramids were being built, or when Rome was at its zenith.  Speak of depressing, that would sure be it.

Look, we've come a long way in the world as a race, we humans, and an up close look at ourselves several centuries ago would not benefit us.  But history should tell us that the movement of time doesn't always bring about progress.  Sometimes we regress, take giants steps backward, as can be seen in the Dark Ages.  Besides, if you could go forward or backward, what would you see?  Would you really know what's going on?  My guess is, you wouldn't . . . unless, of course, you could hop around to a number of places, and even then, you might not see much.  You'd be there, but there's no guarantee you'd learn anything of value. 

Here's how it works and why time travel is of no use.  If you went back in time to when the Constitution of the U.S. was being written, and could sit in on the discussions of men who eventually crafted that basic law, you'd be taking with you a mind already preset in the year 2014.  You'd be able to understand just what that preset brain would allow, and what you'd see and hear would be tainted by that.  Watching them at work might infuriate you, make you want to step forward and say, "Hey, that won't work!"  And if you moved forward in time and watched the U.S. Congress in session a century from now, the same would apply.  Your 2014 brain couldn't make the adjustment to understanding what they were doing.  You'd see some things, of course, but you might come back to the present thinking, "Well, Congress damn sure hasn't changed much.  Same bunch of dumbasses."

I don't want that.  There's no time in my life I'd like to see again, don't have any desire to see myself as a younger man.  I don't want to know what happens to people I know after I'm dead and gone, and I sure as hell don't want a peek at the far off future.  With me, it's the mystery of life that makes it challenging and worthwhile, or perhaps not so worthwhile.  Quite often we're not even capable of seeing the right now, and we're living it, being part of it.  What's behind us is dead ground, a graveyard where lots of yesterdays are buried.  What's ahead of us is a big question mark, a vast expanse like an enormous blackboard waiting on us to fill it in.  The big question is:  Are we taking advantage of the right now, that chance to write our own history?

BLAME IT ON THE PYRAMID

When  you study public administration, the management of government, you learn about the various organizational structures.  Here in America (and most other places), we employ an organizational scheme that looks like a pyramid . . . and it's a lousy approach to creating a system that works properly.  I don't think anyone sat down with a ruler and pen and devised the thing; it built itself, according to Parkinson's theory.  A job is given one person, and in time he feels overburdened with it and wants help.  Two more jobs under him are created, and the pyramid begins.  So, we've got A at the top, and C and B, under him . . . and sooner or later C and B decide they need help.  Under B, two jobs are created, and we can call them D and E.  Not to be outdone, C demands help, and F and G are created.  The pyramid grows.

This looks like a good approach to management.  You've got a boss at the top, underlings below him, and underlings below the underlings . . . and everyone supposedly understands their role.  Job specialzation is created to fit the people employed to take care of such matters.  But as the pyramid grows, confusion arises.  This is understandable because even if I know exactly how I fit into the pyramid, know what I'm supposed to do, I most often don't know what others are doing . . . and I lose sight of the overall goals of the organization.  A pyramid creates unhealthy competition.  Job specialization makes workers protective of their particular field of expertise, and a pyramid isn't one sided.  How can I know, if I'm somewhere down the pyramid at a F or G level, what other people in my organization are doing on the other side of the pyramid.  I can look up and down it on my side, but I'm blind to the other sides.  And that's just one of the problems with the pyramid.

American government is set up like this, as are state governments, and country and city governments.  Experts in the field of public administration, which was my field of study, have been telling us for a long time that our system is flawed, that it needs to be changed.  Nobody listens because it's hard to attack the pyramid, even harder to tear it down.  Many companies, megabuck businesses, also employ the pyramid, but some of the better ones have gone to something else.  And if all this sounds nitpicking and insignificant, think of it this way.  Would you want a car or house that requires you to fit it? Why not build the car or the house to fit you?  User friendly, I think that's the word we use this day and age, and our government structure is definitely not user friendly.  We face enormous obstacles under this system when it comes to change, one reason it's so hard to reform the health care system.  It sucks, is bottom rung when it comes to providing health care to the masses, but we can't seem to change it.  Education needs a complete overhaul in America, but we can't get it done, and part of the reason is due to the pyramid . . . that damn pyramind.

I'll follow this up with some suggestions on what structures would work better, but there's not much use in doing that until you start to see the need for change.  And we haven't seen that, and that's a shame on us thing.

STARS ARE FOR LOOKING AT, NOT WORSHIPING

Imagine a night sky with no stars and you start to get the picture.  No stars above leaves you looking up at a blank sky, and that's not much of a picture.  Maybe that's unimportant to you, but if you don't have interest in stars, you're a pretty boring person.  But that's real stars, those things far out in the galaxie that have intrigued mankind for . . . well, since we've had eyes on this planet that could look at them.  I get it, full well understand that fascination, but what I don't understand is the apparent need for people to make stars of famous people . . . like sports stars, or movie stars, or even political stars.  That, in my opinion, is a bunch of bunk.  They're people, dammit, just people, and fame isn't enough to qualify someone as a star.  That word should never be applied to a person . . . ever.

If you're starting to think I'm jealous or resentful of these so-called stars, you're wrong.  In some cases, I appreciate their work, respect what they do.  I can even appreciate the people who've been called stars purely out of luck.  Fame is most often a fleeting thing, however, and that alone can't qualify a person as a star.  Even if a person remains famous forever, they're still not stars in the real sense of the word.  They don't deserve the fascination a real star is due, and again, I'm not talking about the stars out in space.  Here's a short list of some real stars:  A fireman who puts his life on the line to save others, a nurse who works in a cancer ward for children, an attendant of old people in a retirement home, a teacher of the blind or deaf, a person who works with the mentally retarded, the cop who pulls extra duty the keep streets safe, a soldier doing his duty overseas, a protector of the environment against the destruction of forests and endangered species, a caretaker for abandoned or abused animals, or perhaps a doctor who donates time and talent to treat the homeless.  The list could go on and on, but it sure as hell wouldn't include actors, football and basketball players, politicians, preachers, professors, dentists, or musicians . . . unless they get involved in some of the things mentioned above, or anything else that actually does something worthwhile for mankind and the planet he lives on.

When I really love a movie or sports celebrity, or any other kind of famous person, is when they finally get big enough to stoop low to help someone up.  I love them when they cut loose with big chunks on money to better the lives of others.  I love them when they take the time to be down to earth people like the rest of us, and when it gets right down to it, that's about the only way any of us are really worthwhile.  Nobody should get so big that they start to get small, if you get my drift.

THE GATHERING GROUND

I decided some months ago to take on a new book project.  My father died back in 1983 and left behind some interesting papers, notes, that sort of thing.  He was a minister, but that wasn't the extent of his lifelong work to carry "the word" to people.  Writing was his firt love, and he produced a lot of poems over the years.  He also wrote some prose, hundreds upon hundreds of sermons, kept up a weekly newspaper column . . . was an artist at times, and a talented musician.  And he didn't publish any of his work, and so I'm finally getting around to organizing a book, mostly of his poetry.  I'm going with a working title The Gathering Ground, and not because I'm gathering together his writings for the book.  If there was anything he loved more than writing, it was a gathering of people.  A gathering to him meant opportunity to spread the word, and he was a helluva good preacher.  I can't capture that in a book, but I can highlight some of his religious poetry.

I did a book of collected poetry some years ago, and I thought this would be easy.  Wrong.  I'm having to wade through lots of old papers, and that's tough on me because it brings up a lot of old memories.  I've found things he wrote back in his teenage years, when he was a soldier back in 1931, when he was a minister in South Carolina (my childhood years), and when he was growing old in retirement.  And I'm learning things I didn't know about the man.  I'm finding lots of old letters, some written by me after I left home and started a career of my own.  I don't like digging up old bones, and I don't like having to decide what goes into the book and what is left out.  I can see already that this won't be a short book, not like most poetry books.  I could chop it up into several small books, but that would mean I'd have to go through this process again.  I think once is going to be enough for me, and I want to present something he'd be proud of.  Good poetry deserves a good presentation, don't you think?

PREPARING FOR THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

Are you prepared for the big collapse, the downfall of the government, the end of the world as we know it?  Are you a doomsday prepper, or maybe just a little bit of one?  The vast majority of people aren't, and maybe that's for the best because prepping for a nuclear disaster, solar flare-ups, the complete collapse of government, a zombie uprising, or another ice age is stupid.  No, not just stupid, it's big time stupid.  It's stupid because the chances of any of those things happening are impossible or highly improbable.  Zombies?  Give me a break.  And if we really experience a doomsday event, how long do you think you can live in a hole, a bugout place?  You'd die sooner or later anyway, so why not go down the tubes with everyone else.

But all doomsday events don't have to be the complete end of the world.  If asked about believing in the end of the world as I know it, I'd say yes.  The world as I've known it is already gone, and the world as I know it now will be gone again before too long.  That's the way it works, you know.  Change is inevitable, and sometimes it's good, and sometimes it's not.  If I had my way, we'd still be living in a world without cellphones.  There'd be no Walmart or McDonalds, and cars wouldn't talk to me and expect a reply.  I remember better times . . . and I remember worse times.  My world, just like yours, will keep changing, so I can't expect to wake up in the same one every morning.  The world around me will be slightly different, and that's what I need to prepare for.

We had a power shortage here not long ago, and it lasted for about a day and a half.  No biggie, right?  It can get to be a biggie when you live in an all electric house like I do, and that little inconvenience (and it was little compared to a major event) started me thinking that I should be better prepared.  And the doomsday preppers aren't all wrong about some things.  We'd all be smart to consider what might happen if some major catastrophe came along.  Do you have a decent food supply?  Can you heat your house without electricity?  Do you have a gas generator in case of an outage?  Do you have a supply of water?  Is your home adequately safeguarded against invasion?  All kinds of questions come up, and my answers to them were woefully lacking.

My home isn't a fort, but it's secure.  I live in a safe neighborhood, and in a small town, and I own guns . . . several of them.  I've got two refrigerators and a big freezer, both of them worthless when the power is out.  I don't own a generator.  I don't store food or water.  I don't keep extra gasoline or other fuel around.  My income comes from a retirement fund and social security, and it's a decent living . . . unless there's a wholesale collapse of government and the economy.  And my biggest shortcoming is that I don't have a cash backup fund.  And I'm not all that worried about it.  If there's a wholesale collapse of government, money will be worthless anyway.  That's when you might need tight security, and lots of guns . . . and even then, you won't last long.

I don't buy into any of the doomsday prophecies, and I'd never spend good money on preparation for something that is not likely to happen.  But like everyone else, I should do a better job of preparing for short term emergencies.  That's one of my 2014 projects - to get better prepared.  The world as I know it will change, and how it changes is often unexpected.  I can't do much about catastrophic events, but I can do better when it comes to preparation . . . and so could you.

WHAT'S IN YOUR WALLET?

I got my first charge card back in the seventies.  Back then, you didn't have bank cards, just company cards - like gas station cards, or sears cards, or some other business.  When bank cards started getting populat in the nineties, I got one, and that's when my spending woes began.  Cards allow you to overspend what you can afford to pay at the end of each month, and so you end up carrying a balance . . . and sometimes it's a big balance.  I kept my card balances in check until I retired, and that's when they went up . . . and up . . . and up.  By 2007, I owed four different card companies more than $30,000.  And that's when I ran them through a shredder and started paying them off.  For the next three years, I paid about $1,500 a month on the cards, and I got out of card debt.  For the past few years, I've been doing without them, and it's been easy to do.

Card companies and merchants (almost anyone with something to sell) want to convince you that life without a credit card is impossible.  And there are some inconveniences to not having one.  When I buy gas for my cars now, I must walk inside and pay cash for it.  No big deal.  I had to give up trading on Ebay because they require a card, and that's fine because it kept me from buying things I didn't really need.  I can't rent a car at an airport, and I can't make lodging reservations without a card . . . but again, I don't care.  If I'm lucky, I'll never have to get on an airplane again.  I don't plan on renting a car either, and I sure as hell don't plan on being pressured into getting another credit card.

If you've got crippling credit card debt, my advice is to do exactly what I did.  You can live without them, and the inconveniences aren't all that hard to deal with.  If you can't totally get away from having a credit card, reduce the number to just one . . . and then do your best to keep the balance low.  What keeps me away from cards these days is remembering how difficult it was to pay them off, and I love the freedom of not being in debt to a bank.  Statistics show that the average American family caries a card debt of about ten grand.  In most cases, that's not an outrageous amount.  But then you have people like me, the abuser, the dumbass.  I'm sure glad that's behind me.

SOMETIMES IT'S GOOD TO BE UNKNOWN

Hardly anyone pays attention to what is said by people who aren't known to the public, but it doesn't take much to set off a firestorm of protest if fame comes into the picture.  In fact, you don't even have to be famous; you just have to have a connection to a well known person . . . like a parent who posts a tweet.  So, some famous quarterback's mom tweets about another quarterback's television appearance after winning the national championship, and the backlash begins.  I saw the young man's statements, thought the same thing the mom did - which is that he might be a genius as a quarterback but his linguistic skills are meager.  In short, he didn't express himself well, but who cares?  He was excited, all jacked up after winning a big game.  I probably wouldn't have made much sense either.  My point is:  why should any of us care one way or another?  Why would a simple tweet matter?

The press in America is a sick enterprise, and the public's interest in matters like this is to blame for it.  I'm sick of news coverage of inconsequential bullshit.  The woman had an opinion, expressed it, and that offended some people . . . and that's life.  Get used to it.  And quit reporting it.  I'm weary of hearing about the personal lives of the famous.  I'm past weary of reading news reports (or listening to it on television) about irresponsible comments some well known person made.  In short, I'm just sick of news coverage that's little more than soap opera crapola. 

Recently, a highly regarded quarterback was asked point blank about his sexuality.  Rumors that he might be gay supposedly circulated, and so he was asked about it.  His response was a short and simple no, he wasn't gay.  Had I been asked that question, I would have turned it on the interviewer.  I would have demanded to know who put the bug in their ear.  Who's your source?  Why do you ask?  What's your proof?  Are you yourself gay, and are you looking for a new club member or something?  I would've been angry, very angry, and he handled the situation better than I would have.
Given the situation we have with the press in this country at the moment, anyone with a public profile should never post anything on some social network page . . . ever.  Even if you say something in complete innocence, with not intent to harm anyone, you've got people out there looking to turn what you say into news . . . tacky news . . . bullshit news.

Then again, you could be like me, just a blogger nobody knows or cares about.  Sometimes it's good to be unknown.

WHAT'S FER SUPPER, GRANDPA?

Grandpa Jones used to get asked that question each week on Hee Haw, a popular television show some years back.  He's answer with a menu of down home cooking.  That old country star has passed on now, but our eating habits have changed very little.  We're still munching down on things we've been eating for a long, long time, and it's time for a change.  In fact, we're way past time to change because we're running out of food sources.  Problems abound when it comes to feeding a nation as large as the U.S., and part of the problem is that we're badly spoiled when it comes to food.  Even people with little money are unwilling to eat low on the hog, as the old saying goes.  We're high on the hog eaters here in America.

We eat too much meat, and that's a fact, not just an opinion.  Meat consumption in this country is responsible for many of our health problems, overweightness being a major contributer.  Mexico is the only nation in the world fatter than we are.  Mexico, a poor country, and they're fat?  Do the research and you'll find that they're fat because of what they eat, not how much they eat.  A friend of mine just came back from vacation in Europe, and said, "You know, they're not fat like us."  Hummmmm.  Wonder why.

The morning news had a story about a large bluefin tuna selling for $70,000, and that's encouraging in at least one way.  I figure the only way we'll ever quit eating them is when we run out of them.  If a decent cut of steak cost five times what it does at the moment, we'd cut back on that too.  I can afford to be critical of meat eaters because I'm one of them, but my tastes in meat aren't expensive.  And I don't eat a lot of beef.  I prefer fish or chicken, and I eat some pork . . . and I'd like to stop doing that.  My concerns are not so much about health as the are a rising respect for the animals we eat.  It's time for us to take a serious look at our dependence on eating other living creatures.  Yeah, I know, everything we eat was alive at one time, vegetables included.  That's a lame excuse for continuing down this same path of consumption.  We need to change, and we need to do that before those food sources are used up. 

We will always be able to raise animals for slaughter commercially, and that will continue for a long time.  But the lakes, rivers, and oceans of the world are badly overfished, and that food source is endangered.  Land, the space required for farming, is going away too, as it the water it takes to irrigate crops.  Groups concerned about animal welfare are getting stronger, and that voice will get louder and louder.  I could name off dozens of other problems, but the bottom line is simple:  We need to learn to eat differently.  We need to get off the let-the-animals-feed-us tit.  If we don't learn to eat something besides meat, we may end up eating each other.  Yuk!

JUST DESSERTS

When someone ended up getting what they deserved, folks down south where I was raised would say, "Well, he got his comeuppance."  More frequently, I hear getting what you deserve called just desserts.  If you had it coming, and you got it, consider yourself served with a healthy dose of comeuppance.  And do we enjoy seeing that happen?  Oh, yeah.  Were that not the case, we wouldn't still have the death penalty.  Society demands it, and that's about the only excuse for having it.  If you take a life, give up your own.  An eye for an eye, and that's the just desserts folks scream for.  At a much less significant level, we even enjoy seeing a bully get punched in the nose.  That guy who just ran a redlight?  Yeah, seeing him get a ticket makes you feel good . . . and it should. 

Like most other people, I enjoy seeing just deserts served to those who deserve it.  Down here in Texas, UT longhorn football fans wanted the old coach out . . . and they got him out.  And they had plans to bring in a bigger name, someone befitting the job as head coach of one of America's premier football programs.  But the big boys they went after didn't want the job, and they ended up hiring a new coach with a history in coaching that doesn't come close to matching what they just lost.  So, they name the new coach, and my first impression was . . . who?  From where?  Never heard of he dude.  He's sure no Nick Saban, that's for sure. 

So, why didn't the big boys want the job?  Texas has deep pockets, could make them rich beyond their dreams, but they didn't want it . . . and maybe that was partly out of respect for the guy they just ran off.  Maybe they didn't want the pressure they'd get at Texas to win, a place where going 10-2 won't cut it.  Will the new guy win at Texas?  Yes.  Will he win enough to please the football fanatics down here?  No.  Will he be here as long as the old coach they pushed out?  No.  Just desserts, that's the word for it . . . and nobody deserves it more. 

Everyone enjoys winning.  That's a given in the society we live in, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to come out on top.  Nobody, on the other hand, should expect to win all the time.  And college sports are really the least important thing about an institution of higher learning . . . or it should be.  The people who rank colleges according to academics, the most important thing, leave Texas off most of their lists.  The second largest state in the union (population and size), and we don't have a single uinversity ranked in the top fifty among colleges and universities.  Oh, wait, there's one
little college down here that gets ranked high.  Trinity University in San Antonio, and they also play football . . . but few people outside the state have ever heard of it.  And if you chose to go there, you go for an education.  Sometimes just desserts doesn't mean bad desserts . . . it just means you get what you've got coming to you. 

THE C STUDENT

There's a myth running around saying that C students make better employees, even suggests that they end up doing better in life than B or A students.  I'm a former college professor who gave out lots of C's over the years, and most of the kids who received them were disappointed . . . no all, but most.  And I agonized some over grading, especially when a student was close to getting a higher grade.  That's when I took other factors into account, like class attendance.  My scale was always a ten point scale, meaning a C was from 70 to 79.  But a fair grader looks at overall class performance, not just a particular student's performance.  You look to see where the fair breakpoints come in.  If a bunch of kids are clumped in the 68 point range, and there's a jump down to 65 from there, you're wise to move the starting point for a C to 68.  And you never worry about giving out too many grades in the same category.  If well over half your class earns C's, then give them that grade.  And if you have a disproportionate number of A's, don't worry about it.  A student should get what they earned. 

But . . . what about those C students?  C stands for satisfactory but average grade.  We'd all be satisfied with a satisfactory worker, but most folks don't really want a surgeon working on them who went through school with a C average.  I don't want an accountant who's a C person, if you get my drift.  It could well be that a C student earned the grade because they put in average effort in that particular course.  They might've been capable of more, and that's probably the case with most C students.  But on the other hand, they might just be average to the point where a C is about as good as can be expected of them, and that too is often the case.  In short, there's no bragging point about being a C student or a C person.  There's no shame in it either because if you're a C person, you've got lots of company. 

Philip Wylie, in his book A Generation of Vipers, tore into the common man as being less than satisfactory.  He pointed out all the average things comman man was capable of and said that the only thing good about a common man was his occasional rise above the commonplace.  I think he hit the nail on the head.  Yes, average behavior and performance is mediocre and nothing special, but those same people who spend the majority of their time performing at that level sometimes step forward and do something spectacular.  In other words, sometimes a C person gets an A for his work.  And
that, my friends, is a lot better than an A person doing C work.

I LOVE MY JOB!

. . . and that's because I don't have a job, at least not an official one.  In other words, I'm unemployed, but I won't make it to any list that designates as such.  I retired early from college teaching, barely made it out the door just a few months before turning sixty years of age.  By the time I was 62, my social security and teacher retirement amounted to more than I was making while still employed full time.  Ain't that a kick in the ass, huh?  It could be better, I suppose, considering I'm almost as busy now as back when I had to deal with an employer.  That's my fault because I don't like inactivity, can't stand just sitting around.  I work at something all the time, and that's my new job - working at projects that must be done in order for me to have a decent life.  Or what's left of a life.  Just because my time is short doesn't mean I can get by without a job of some kind.

I work as a writer part of the time, perhaps as much as half the time.  That's the one thing I do that shows some promise of making money.  I build guitars, but that's done out of love for the work, and I build other things.  Building, that's my job now that I'm an old guy.  I can do carpentry work, so I like building little houses and doing renovations and things like that.  And I've been making cabinets and furniture since my twenties, so I'm fairly good at that.  If it involves wood, I usually enjoy working.  If it involves concrete, I'm a mess. I'm likewise lousy at other things, but that doesn't mean I won't try to do them.  So my job now doesn't have a designation, unless you'd like to call me a professional piddler and handyman.  And I love my job.

THE SOONERS DID IT!

You would've thought they'd won the national championship, something they've done some seven times in the past . . . but all they did was beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.  They got some help from lady luck (the breaks went their way) and an outstanding redshirt freshman quarterback in beating the best football team in America.  I'm not complaining.  OU has been my favorite college team for a lot of years, and it's always good to see then come out on top.  As for Alabama, I've never liked them, and that comes from being a native Mississippian.  Over the years I've watched them beat down my bulldogs and rebels, so watching them take it on the chin last night was a sweet victory for me. 

With that said, I should admit that I'm not much of a football fan these days.  Too much is made of it from top to bottom, and somewhere along the line, I reached a saturation line.  I'm full up with football, but I understand why people love it so much.  Even when it's played poorly, it's a fun game to watch.  It's rough as hell, takes lots of strength and agility to play, and it's a graceful sport despite all the difficulties it faces.  Yes, difficulties because the danger of injury is always there, and one can only imagine how much work goes into getting a large team to play together.  When it comes to games played with a ball of some kind, football is still king.

I'm familiar with the University of Oklahoma in ways other than football, and that comes from living in Oklahoma for so long.  I'm a Texan now, but I worked for the Oklahoma State University system for 30 years at a regional college.  Oklahoma is not a big state, and it's not known for a lot of things other than quarter horses, cowboys, the dust bowl, rednecks, tumbleweeds, and feedlots.  It's not rich either, at least not like Texas.  Down here, where there's close to 25 million people living, we've got big colleges flush with money . . . and not near as good, in my opinion, as OU.  In fact, Oklahoma is far ahead of Texas when it comes to academics, and they usually come out on top when it comes to football.  Everybody needs a bragging point, and although Okies don't brag nears as much as Texans, they do their share of it when it comes to football. 

I miss lots of things about Oklahoma (except the weather), and there's a lot worse places to live than Texas.  I really don't care that both states produce outstanding college football teams, but I tend to pull for homefolks when they go up against outsiders . . . like Alabama.  So here it is:  OU 45, Alabama 31.  And for one year in one bowl game, the sooners are indeed number one. 

Burning History

Smoke gets in your eyes when you're burning history, papers you've kept for a long time.  This week I fired up my big kiva in the back yard and started burning boxes of stuff that's been stored in my little house out back for a long time.  God only knows  how many moves those papers have made over the years because some of them were fifty years old.  But they're up in smoke now, gone, and so is a little bit of me.  A lot of me was in those papers, some of them left over from college and graduate school . . . and some from my 35 years of teaching college courses.  I watched them burn with mixed emotions, but I'm just doing what someone would've done in a few years when I'm gone. 

I don't know why I saved all that stuff long after I had no need for it, but I've got a feeling it was because they may well have saved me.  To say that I struggled as a teenager and even through my twenties would be an understatement.  My parents agonized over what would become of me.  At twenty, I was going nowhere - had barely graduated from high school, showed no inclination that I'd amount to much.  Restlessness was my worse enemy, my demon, that thing that drove me to do some self-destructive things.  I loved fast cars, even faster women, and booze.  A car accident when I was 21 almost took me out, left me with injuries I'd never fully recover from.  What do you do with a kid like that?  Well, you make a college professor out of him.

My parents and a select few other people refused to give up on me.  I managed to get a couple of years of college behind me, then quit for a while to work are several jobs.  Back in college finally, I did much better and that's because I finally learned how to study.  I fell in love with history and political science, ended up getting a college degree and a M.A., finished my residency and course work on a Ph.d., and then went to work as a college professor.  I stuck with that occupation for almost 35 years, but I didn't calm down until my forties.  I stopped drinking, went through a divorce, and remarried during the decade of my forties.  Looking back, I'm a slow learner about some things, but life as an academician saved me.  I'm still using my education in retirement, perhaps more now than ever before.  Books have been my life, and now I'm writing them.

But I burned a lot of information over the past few days - lecture notes, research material, class lecture notes, and other stuff that allowed me to get the education I needed.  I don't need them now, but I sure needed what they gave me.  They served a purpose, and they were little more than remembrances of where I've been and how I got where I am now.  Stored safely here in my files are other papers I'll never burn.  I don't need the warmth of a fire that much, and sometimes it's good to keep around enough things to remind you that history is important . . . especially when it's your history. 

THE TAX NOBODY NEEDS?

Somewhere in a far off distant land, there are no taxes.  Right. 

Somewhere in government offices, there is no discussion about taxes.  Right.

Somewhere in the Great Hereafter, there will be no taxes to be paid.  Do what?

The period of enlightenment brought about lots of changes in the world, all for the better in my opinion.  People around the world had been taught for centuries a concept called the divine rights of kings, which meant that God had selected these monarchs and that it was your christian duty to obey them.  And kings were big into taxation because the notion of taxing the masses had been around for  a long time.  One of the things enlightenment preached was that we should scrap the divine rights of kings concept.  Life should be more than living under autocratic rule where the kings took what they wanted and left you very little.  Don't wait on the hereafter as a promise of reward for being dutiful citizens . . . do something about it now.  Get rid of the kings. Get a government that works better for people.  Get rid of taxes that choke the life out of you.

And we did get rid of kings, and government is better than it was several centuries back . . . but wait!  What about the tax thing?  We've still got 'em, and they're still choking us down . . . well, most of us.  Some people, because they have influence with government, pretty much skate when it comes to taxes.  And we, meaning those of us who live in the U.S., are suffering under a heavy tax burden that needs to be changed.  Inequity is the biggest problem with it, and most taxes are too high.  So, why do we still have them?  'Cause we're suckers, that's why.  We've been chumped by propaganda that for the most part says government needs all that money so it can take better care of us.  We're still being told, in a round about way, that God wants us to pay taxes so we can save liberty and all that good stuff. 

I won't argue that we don't need some taxation.  Government has never come up with a way to make money any other way, so they take it from the citizenry.  They always have, and it may always be that way . . . and there's some justification for it.  And you can't argue that we don't get back a lot from what we put into the system.  Everyone wants good roads to drive on, good schools for our kids, prisons to put away the bad guys . . . and to defend our country . . . and to take care of the poor and disadvantaged.  And that's not the big problem because most people will willingly pay taxes, regardless of the reasoning behind it.  It's the inequity, the unfairness about how taxes are applied and collected.  And there is a big reason for that - politicians.  Do you trust these people to do it fairly?  I don't.  And you want to know what really burns my butt?  I don't have a solution to the problem, and apparently neither does anyone else. 

There's an old saying that the only thing we really have to do is die and pay taxes.  Right.  But if you're thinking that one fixes the other, that when you die the paying of taxes will be over, you're wrong.  You won't have to pay it because you're dead, but whoever gets it will damn sure be taxed.  It looks like taxation is more permanent than even death.