Where Were You?

The morning alarm, preset to the local Grand Rapids, Michigan Public Broadcast Station (PBS), was airing National Public Radio’s (NPR) morning news feed, Morning Edition.  It was a little later than usual for me because I didn’t have to open my store that day.

NPR was plodding along with their pre-recorded feed, and I was none the wiser that anything of import had happened.  Neither the local PBS or NPR thought the events unfolding on Manhattan Island merited interrupting the canned feed.  I don’t know what NPR’s excuse was, but the local PBS blamed it on having a contractual agreement with NPR to not interrupt their feed.  If memory serves (and honestly, it doesn’t always) NPR DID tell me that the President was going to be in Florida visiting an elementary school, a point they would emphasize later in their ‘objective, unbiased,’ editorialized reports following the incident.

I was in my car driving to my store when I got the first hint that anything was happening.  A Grand Rapids Country Music station informed me that they were getting reports out of New York of a major event, and would interrupt their programming as soon as they knew more. 

Running score Country Music Radio 1 – NPR 0

I arrived at my store – I have no idea of the exact time – and began my usual morning managerial procedures, when the manager of an adjacent store called out to me.  Perhaps I should clarify that I managed a custom film processing lab that was physically located inside of a copy shop.  My bosses leases the space from the copy shop which was, itself, located in a strip mall off of the first westbound exit from the interstate that ran from Lansing Michigan to Grand Rapids.

My crew were finishing off the morning newborn packages when the copy shop manager called me.  He had a TV in his office, and as I walked back to see what the commotion was all about, I couldn’t help but notice that everyone in his store – customers and staff alike – was gathered around the static laced 21 inch screen.

I arrived just in time to see the second aircraft plunge through the second tower.  Once the initial round of gasps and ‘Oh my God’ had passed, we all stood slack-jawed, glued in place, staring in shock as the network replayed the loop of the impact over and over again for the now silent audience.

Silent, except for the hum or machines warming up in the background, and the occasional choked sob from the crowd watching the surreal drama unfolding before our grief stricken, and for the most part, tear stained eyes.  Then the unthinkable became the absurdly unthinkable as we watch the tower slowly crumble into a cloud of debris, dust and smoke, live and in static filled color by Technicolor on national television.

Morning Edition was winding down on NPR, its listeners outside of the Big Apple blissfully unaware that the world as we knew it had suddenly changed.

In this one, singular moment, America changed.  The invulnerable giant that was the United States of America had been brought to its knees by an act of terrorism.  We who were beyond touch suddenly shared the same sense of night sweats and uncertain fear as had our cousins across the pond sixty years earlier, under the impending threat of the Nazi U2 blitzkrieg.  If New York City wasn’t safe, where could we hide?

I tried calling my wife in Europe to tell her I was okay, but the satellites had been shut down to all but government and military feeds.  It would be the next day before either of us could get through.

Another aircraft went down in Pennsylvania, missing its intended target thanks to the bravery of a rebellious group of airline passengers who agreed, in effect, ‘not on our watch!’

Another aircraft struck the Pentagon in the wing where my brother would have been working had he not been diverted to Dulles National by his bosses during his drive into work.

A war was waged because of this day – a war fought for the right reasons, but against, it turns out, the wrong enemy.

And America changed.  A flood of patriotism this nation hadn’t seen since World War II flooded every level of the nation.  A sense of national pride and unity – a sense of purpose – a focus on a single enemy – swept and seeped into every crack and corner of a populace still stinging from Viet Nam.  It would be short lived, but it was there.  For a while, once again, America stood together, arm in arm, one nation; one nation under God.

And the question that saturated the memory of Americans in the years following the tragic events of November 22, 1963, once again danced on the lips of Americans.  Country Music icon Alan Jackson probably said it best when he penned the words, “Where were you whenthe world stopped turning?”  Country Music 2 – NPR 0.

Where were you?

The Chick-Fil-A debacle - or what happens when news organizations create rather than report the story

The views expressed in this story are not necessarily those of management or any of its affiliates.

Make certain you read that first paragraph correctly.  This is commentary.  Social commentary, to be exact, with a mix of political commentary thrown in for seasoning.  It is me expressing my opinion.  It is an observation – my observation, not to put too fine a point on it – of the recent media circus surrounding willful deception on the part of the media in reporting the Chick-Fil-A non-story.  I’m not articulating the views of Blogger.com, Google, Microsoft Word (with which I wrote the article) or any other entity either expressed or implied.  Okay.  We clear on that?  Ready?  Here it goes.

The Chick-Fil-A story as originally reported by CNN is a fabrication created by a liberal media determined to use whatever means and tools at its disposal, to distract American voters from realizing how badly President Obama and his administration have mishandled pretty much everything in their reach, since being elected in 2008.  Let’s face it honestly and objectively: if you’re busy being caught up in the Chick-Fil-A story, you’re not focusing on things like the national unemployment rate (8.2%), the nation’s abysmal economic growth (1.2%) the fact that America is still waiting for Obama’s FIRST budget (almost four years into his presidency), the drastically increased number of Americans now on some sort of Federal subsidy (food stamps, etc.) or Washington’s out of control spending.  We’re too busy debating a comment from a private business owner that he never actually made!

That’s right.  You read that correctly.  Dan Cathy NEVER said as much as a single negative word in his interview with Baptist Press (original story here) about the LGBT lifestyle or its participants.  That is an out of context extrapolation of a marginally related implication, itself not part of Baptist Press’s interview or Mr. Cathy’s response. 

Read it for yourself.  What follows is the exact, word for word transcription of the part of the interview that has polarized Americans to the point that mayors of large American cities are taking idiotic stands on the non-existent issue, and rallies are being planned around the county to both boycott and support Chick-Fil-A over a comment Owner Dan Cathy never gave as an answer to a question he was never asked. Here it is:

“The company invests in Christian growth and ministry through its WinShape Foundation (WinShape.com). The name comes from the idea of shaping people to be winners.

It began as a college scholarship and expanded to a foster care program, an international ministry, and a conference and retreat center modeled after the Billy Graham Training Center at the Cove.

"That morphed into a marriage program in conjunction with national marriage ministries," Cathy added.

Some have opposed the company's support of the traditional family. "Well, guilty as charged," said Cathy when asked about the company's position.

"We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.

"We operate as a family business ... our restaurants are typically led by families; some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that," Cathy emphasized.”

"We intend to stay the course," he said. "We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles."*

Dan Cathy was NOT asked his opinion or stand with regard to the LGBT lifestyle choice, from either s personal or professional point of view.

Dan Cathy did not mention the LGBT lifestyle choice in his answer to the questions given during his interview.

In fact, ALL Mr. Cathy DID do was agree to assertion that he was trying to run his company according to Biblical principles, as he understands them, and that he, as an individual, espouses the Biblical definition of marriage, which is between a man and a woman.

The topic of the LGBT lifestyle was NEVER mentioned in any of the questions or answers.  I can’t emphasize that enough.  It simply was not part of the discussion.

Not, that is, until CNN got ahold of the transcript, saw the words, “"Well, guilty as charged," said Cathy when asked about the company's position. "We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit.”, lifted them from the context of the interview, and extrapolated them into an anti-homosexual attack that was never part of the story.

Now, I have to ask myself – why would a respect news agency intentionally skew a story like this, intentionally creating a firestorm response to an issue that did not exist?  Was it just a slow day in Atlanta, the location of CNN’s world headquarters? When did the mission statement at CNN change from ‘report’ the news to ‘dude – POTUS is looking bad – Americans are starting to notice – get busy and distract them even if you have to fabricate it.  Find a hot-button topic that liberals will blindly follow without questioning, and if you can, find a way to pin the blame on ‘Dubya’.”

That’s exactly what’s going on here, my friends – all but the ‘blame it on Dubya’ part.  Guess they were in too much of a hurry.

Make no mistake.  The plan is working.  While we are all busy chasing media fabricated bunny trails, we’re not focusing on America’s real problems.

And when that’s happening, our nation is still tanking.

Is there an issue to debate somewhere in here about the GLBT lifestyle/Biblical lifestyle?  Perhaps, but boys and girls, this ain’t it.

Shame on you CNN, and shame on ALL the local and national outlets who picked up this assemblage of smoke and mirrors and ran with it without bothering to check the facts. Perhaps CNN actually stands for Contrived National News.

*( quotations taken from an article originally published in Baptist Press, posted on Jul 16, 2012 | by K. Allan Blume/Biblical Recorder.  ©2012 Baptist Press and the Southern Baptist Convention, all rights reserved.)

Romancing the Bone

“And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.”

 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place.  Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.

And Adam said:

“This is now bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Genesis 2:18, 21-24 NKJV

I really wanted to do a clever, witty take on the title of the Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner film, “Romancing the Stone”, but I couldn’t find a legitimate word for wife that rhymes with ‘stone’.  So, in the end I went with ‘bone’, hoping that with the addition of the Bible passage in which God himself proclaims that He took one of Adam’s ribs (i.e., a bone) and from that bone, created a woman/wife/spouse/helper/partner suitable for him.

I want you to note that all of those words (woman/wife/spouse/helper/partner suitable for him) are implied in the original text, very specific, and rich with theological, cultural, practical, and anthropological meaning.  From the very beginning of humankind on this planet it has always been God’s intention that the partnership we call marriage consist of a man and a woman, and that neither is superior to the other.  They are partners of equal standing in the relationship.  The phrase “ comparable to him” (‛êzer neged in the original Hebrew) literally means ‘equal counterpart.  That this equal counterpart is of the female gender is undeniably precise in any language.

That, however, is not the particular rabbit I want to chase this morning. 

I’m a child of the 50’s.  That means the television in my formative years showed families in which ‘father knew best,’ children obeyed and respected their parents, and husbands romanced their wives.  They bought them flowers and chocolates.  They opened doors for them and helped them put their coats on.  They held chairs, said please and thank you, and while Rob and Laura Petry slept in separate beds, they did show their affection for each other.

We used pen and paper to send ‘text messages’ even if our handwriting was undecipherable.  Typing a ‘love letter’ was impersonal.

The men of ‘my day’ (my father, grandfathers, uncles, etcetera) for the best part married their special someone, stayed married to her, and treated her respectfully.  Yes, I know there were exceptions.  As someone once said, “I’m crazy but I’m not stupid.”  My role models told their wives face to face that they love her.  They didn’t post an impersonal ‘hey love u babe – ur the gr8test’ status update on facebook, that looks more like they’re trying to convince themselves than the object of their badly spelled, grammatically incorrect affection.

On the other hand, given that these 21^st century Casanovas only have individuals the likes of Bart and Homer Simpson, Roseann Barr, Charlie Sheen, Rosie O’Donnell, Kim Karsashian and the glitter encrusted vampires of Twilight fame to emulate, perhaps such impersonal dribble is 21^st century romance.

Perhaps to these children of the 80’s and 90’s, telling your 694 ‘friends’ that you love your wife is enough.  I don’t know.

What I DO know is that I tell MY WIFE how I feel.  I make it a point to communicate my affection to and for her, face to face as many times in a day – every day –  that circumstances allow.  If the circumstances don’t fall in line naturally, I try to create them so I can both show her by my actions and tell her with my words that I love her more than any human being alive on this planet or any other.

The writer of Proverbs said in chapter thirty one that the man who finds a virtuous wife has found someone whose worth is more valuable than  that of precious stones.  It says of this woman, that :

Her children rise up and call her blessed;
Her husband also, and he praises her:
“Many daughters have done well,
But you excel them all.”
Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing,
But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.

Proverbs 31: 28-30 NKJV

In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul instructs husbands that they should cherish and nurture their wife and, should the circumstance arise, be willing to lay down his life for her.

Guys, here’s my point.  Your wife is special.  She is a precious gem.  A friend once said “if you’ve been married five years or more and you’re not happy with your wife, you’re doing something wrong.  You’re not following the Biblical precepts.”  Every human being is responsible for their own individual choices, but I think this idea has merit.  Good marriages don’t just happen – you have to work at them.  Both of you.

A wise man once asked me what I thought about this whole marriage thing.  I answered “It’s a 50-50 proposition.”  He told me in return, “If you really believe that, I don’t give it 6 months.  If you’re serious about making it last, you both have to give 100% percent to your wife/husband 100% of the time and expect nothing in return.  If you do that – you’ll be getting so much you won’t notice how much you’re giving.”

I met my wife 9 years ago this month.  We’ll be married eight years come October.  I’m getting so much I’m really not aware of what I’m giving, other than that for nine years now I’ve made every effort to romance my wife – to tell her as often as possible how much I love, respect, and appreciate her.

I know how precious my special jewel is, and I know how fortunate I am to have found her.  This week, she will celebrate a birthday.  She’ll be twenty years older than she actually looks.  Yeah, I know – it’s tough to bear that cross.

I don’t know what she sees in me or why she’s sticking it out, but I’m sure glad she is, and furthermore, I’m not going to post a status update to tell her.  It’s far more effective to whisper it in her ear while slipping her a chocolate chip cookie.

A Hero's Welcome

Maria Johnson welcomes son,
 Army  Sgt, Ryan Clarke
 home from Afghanistan.

There was a giddy nervousness about her, not unlike a school girl fidgeting about before her first date, and a blind date at that. At least that was the impression this wound up mother of three gave in the final moments before piling into two cars with her two younger sons, her husband, mother-in-law and a smattering of family friends, and headed down the Suncoast Parkway to Tampa international Airport (TIA) where, after nearly two years of silence and a tour in the heat teaming deserts of Afghanistan, her oldest child, Army Sergeant Ryan Clarke was finally coming home.

Maria Letner Johnson, West Pasco Chamber of Commerce Membership Director by day, Pampered Chef consultant by night, and full time concerned Mom to an overseas serviceman, oozed anticipation and restlessness fiddling for toll booth change, bubbled with excitement that ‘her boy’ was coming home.

But it wouldn’t go smoothly for the Land ‘O Lakes, Florida resident and her supporting entourage.

They were met at the roof level parking lot at TIA by Members of the Tampa branch of PATRIOT GUARD RIDERS, a motor cycle club made up of veterans of the Viet Nam War and other military conflicts, waiting, flags in hand, to join in the salute.

They were met at the gate by representatives of Sand Soldiers of America, a non-profit organization serving veterans, active troops and military families, on hand to welcome Sgt. Clarke home, and make a presentation to him.  Pasco County District 5 Commissioner, Jack Mariano waited with the nervous Mom and her slowly growing group, offering his support, not, he said, as a politician, but as a neighbor and friend.  Commissioner Mariano remained by Maria’s side throughout the flight delays, canceling other meetings to do so.

The flight from Louisiana VIA Houston was due to arrive at 10:20 AM.  At 11:00 the boards were updated to say the flight was delayed.  Again at 11:15, 11:30 and 11:45.

 Finally, at 11:50 a frantically pacing Military Mom reached into her pocket for her ringing cell phone.  “Hi Mom,” the voice in her ear said. “We just touched down and should be at the gate in about ten minutes.”

You could see the look of relief in her now teary eyes as she shouted to the crowd now grown to nearly a hundred, including total strangers who were passing by, heard why they were here, and joined into the celebration slowing growing at gate eighteen in TIA’s ‘A’  concourse.  “He’s here!  He’s here!  He’s here!”

One of the groups of strangers consisted of elementary school aged members of a local Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) group visiting the airport on a field trip.   These excited kids quickly and enthusiastically joined the party, each taking a small US flag and waving it every time a shuttle from the gate to the concourse terminal arrived.

It was nearly noon when finally, after several false alarms, one more shuttle arrived.  The doors on the left side shuttle landing opened and the tired passengers disembarked.

One of the last in the group was a short haired, neatly shaved all-american kid in a grey T-shirt and khaki shorts.  As he walked down the concourse entryway, you could see the spark of recognition turn into a slowly growing big toothy grin as the sounds of over a hundred people chanted “Sergeant Clarke!...Sergeant Clarke!...Sergeant Clarke!”

Then it happened. The burst of applause as even more strangers joined in welcoming an American hero home from Afghanistan.  The Patriot Guard Riders snapped to attention, popped a crisp salute, and held their full sized American flags out as an impromptu color guard honoring this young returning hero.

And a tearful mother wrapped the son she had not seen in over two years in her arms while the crowd of joyful onlookers clapped, cheered, and cried with her.

For his part, this humble young man warmly and appreciatively thanked everyone who had come to greet him – after giving his younger brothers a half-hearted scolding for not warning him about all this.

Sergeant Ryan Clarke is a young man about whom America and Pasco County can be proud.  Humble in his appreciation of what was going on and at the same time uncomfortable that people were making such a fuss over him!

And Mom, well she’s walking on clouds.

“My family is now complete.” She said through teary eyes as she hugged all three sons for what was a small eternity.

Sergeant Ryan Clarke, US Army, welcome home!  We salute you, and wholeheartedly thank you for your service to your – and our – nation!  God Bless and protect you, Sergeant Clarke, and God Bless the United States of America!

First Day of Hurricane Season

A Girl Called Katrina

Welcome to the official first day of the Atlantic Hurricane Season.  That’s what the official word is.  Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Season (what we grew up calling ‘the hurricane season’ before tropical cyclones/hurricanes became politically correct and started alternating male/female/transgender names for the storms) officially starts on 1^st June and ends 30^th November.  Of course, Mother Nature, being the woman she is refuses to be constrained by the rules imposed by mere mortals.  Tropical Storms (baby Tropical Cyclones) Alberto and Beryl came and went before the season set aside for them began at midnight oh-one today.

Mother Nature is not one with whom to be trifled.  And of course, we all know that it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.  At least that’s what the old margarine commercials used to say.  Then again, is one guilty of a sort of pagan anthropomorphic assignation by attributing the circumstances of the natural world to ‘mother’ anything?

I’m not in the mood for theological squabbling today, so let us just set that thought aside for another time, shall we?

I was born in New Jersey, a place which saw more tropical cyclone activity last year than the area of west central gulf coast Florida I now call home.  Locals say we (Florida we, not New Jersey we) are long overdue for a hurricane.  And yes, I prefer ‘hurricane’ to the more politically correct ‘tropical cyclone’.  I always have.  But then, I think they should still only be named after girls.  Some girls more than others.  Some girls should get two or three storms a year named for them.  Blizzards, too.  If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of ‘the cold shoulder,’ you know exactly what I mean. In fact, if it weren’t for silly things like libel, slander, and defamation of character I would gladly tell you at great length just exactly which  feminine designations, in my experience, should be awarded open ended status.  You could, for example, follow after the Chinese model and designate 2013, for instance, as the year of Irene, hence naming that year’s storms Irene-1, Irene-2, and so on. You might also take into consideration a proposal which replaces the existing Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale with hair color designations.  In this new system a category five on the Saffir-Simpson scale would be instead identified as Irene-1-RED, the fiery nature of the redhead seeming appropriate for the designation.

But, I digress.

As I stated at the onset, I was born in North-Central New Jersey.  I’m not certain of the specific exit number.  Fellow Jerseyites will get that.  The rest of you, well, not so much.

In August of 1964, my parents folded six of the seven children ultimately born into our blended family, into the back of a beat up old station wagon hauling a U-haul trailer and all our worldly possessions and headed for Florida, passing several hundred “South of the Boader” billboards in the process. Number seven would be an idea conceived and produced in the Sunshine State, making his grand entrance into the world on tax day nineteen hundred seventy, having known neither blizzard nor Atlantic Tropical Cyclone, named in alternating gender designations or otherwise.  Ditto Blizzards, whose first name is almost always compound and numeric in nature. “The Great Blizzard of Nineteen Seventy-Seven”, for example.

I began my participation in the Dade County Public School System at Melrose Elementary School, under the tutelage of one Clyde Culpepper, a white-haired bespeckled gentleman who walked with a wooden cane and whose tweed sports coat had very oxfordian leather patches on the elbows.  Melrose is memorable because it at the eastern terminus of the east-west approach to Miami International Airport, and the South Florida/Miami branch of the Coast Guard was adjacent to that runway.  Because of this, on certain days when the wind was just right, all teaching and whatever widely scattered learning that may have been in the process of trying to take place came to an abrupt and screaming halt until inbound and outbound 727’s and Coast Guard turbo propped ‘Clippers’ took off or landed.  My memory of the time is that the clippers were louder than the jets and I’m astounded that my ears still work.

The other cool thing about Melrose was that it was just around the corner and a couple of blocks from the building that housed operations for the ‘hurricane hunter’ aircraft – the flying weather stations whose brave crews sailed directly into the eye of the storm, or belly of the beast if you prefer, to gather the most up to date meteorological data available to forecasters of the day.  Plus, an enterprising sixth grader, not unlike my precocious self, could just walk right in, tell the desk jockey’s he was researching a school report on hurricanes (none of those sissy tropical cyclones with girly man names back then) and walk out with an armful of cool black and white 8X10 glossy photos and hurricane maps, the coolest of which was one of a coconut palm with a single piece of Everglades sawgrass sticking out from both sides of the tree, blown through the resilient, spongy trunk by some previous storm.  I had that photo for years, and it’s probable still somewhere at my Mom’s home in Opa-locka beneath the staggeringly oppressive weight of forty-seven years of memories.

Of course, I eventually did leave the perennially sloshy humidity of south Florida, vowing never to return for more than a disappointingly short visit, the tepid attraction of tropical cyclones notwithstanding.  I managed to hold onto that promise with dogged determination for almost forty years, at which point the tempestuous sirene call of the fury dragged me back on the twelve foot wings of everglades swamp skeeters, with the sticky reminder that not only is it not nice to fool mother nature, but probably the last thing you want to do in life is tell God where you will or will not go.  In the words of Solomon, Son of David, King of Israel:

A serpent may bite when it is not charmed;
The babbler is no different.
The words of a wise man’s mouth are gracious,
But the lips of a fool shall swallow him up;
The words of his mouth begin with foolishness,
And the end of his talk is raving madness.

Ecclesiastes 10:11-13  (NKJV)

And here we are – right back where we began.  Friday, 1^st June, 2012.  First day of the official Atlantic Tropical Cyclone (A.K.A Hurricane) Season.  Alberto and Beryl have come and gone. Chris will be next, tossed into the mix for no other reason than to confuse the masses.  After all – Chris might be short for Christopher…but it might just as well be short for Christine.  Time will tell.