Wayland, Kentucky Homecoming, August 31, 2024

 

Today, August 31, 2024, my wife Candice & I attended the Wayland, Kentucky Homecoming and had a wonderful time.  The photo above is from the 2002 Wayland Homecoming by the Wayland Historical Society.    I do not know the actual date of the most recent previous homecoming but it might have been this one in 2002 since it was on the cover of the Historical Society newsletter which announced the event.  We arrived about 11am, registered at the Historical Society, greeted a few people we knew, listened to some music being played on the Historical Society porch, and went inside to wait for two friends to arrive whom we knew were going to attend. As we registered, we received a small goodie bag with a nice Wayland mug and two Wayland coasters along with a thank you note to members of the Historical Society.  We  had previously visited the Kentucky Mountain Sports Hall of Fame and Museum on April 8, 2017, when a traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian was at the museum.  I have also done some research at the Wayland Historical Society and written a couple of other blog posts about information I have found in their files, in particular the large collection of Elkhorn Coal Company employee records which they had the good fortune to locate in a company building which was donated to either the city or the Historical Society.  

Here is one photo of me and my two friends of over fifty years, Judy Tufts Combs and Genia DeCoursey Hall.  I also know that I need to get back into my hardcore exercise and diet routine.  I'm too heavy again and this photograph proves it. We were all among the first hippies in Eastern Kentucky in our young days and most of our views about life and world have not changed.  Judy and I are actually cousins since her mother was  Hicks who was descended from the same line of Hicks' from the Mousie, Kentucky area in Knott County. 

While we waited for our friends, a couple approached us and sat at our table who, as it so happened, were a distant cousin of mine, Earnest Keen, and his wife Jane who had traveled from their home in Ohio for the event.  Earnest and I had never met and, in the course of the conversation, realized that we were cousins.  His grandfather Timothy Hicks was the brother of my father Ballard Hicks and it turned out that I had actually probably known Uncle Tim better than Earnest had.  We exchanged stories about family, our lives, and exchanged small talk until my friends Eugenia "Genia" DeCoursey Hall and Judy Tufts Combs arrived.  Judy introduced me to a cousin and uncle of hers. The uncle was 98 years old and had traveled with his son from their home in Tennessee to be at the Wayland Homecoming.  The uncle was the son of David Tufts who had been a barber in Wayland for many years and whom I had known.  Judy and I are actually also cousins since her mother was a Hicks before she married Judy's father.  Genia and I have known each other about 55 years and over the last several years have reinvigorated our friendship.  She has been on a bad streak lately and her husband Jimmy "Hippy" Hall is currently hospitalized in Cabell Huntington Hospital in Huntington, West Virginia, after having severely burned himself while using gasoline to ignite a pile of brush.  He has also recently had multiple cardiac bypasses performed and could be said to still be in recovery from that surgery.  Judy was volunteering in the Fountain Room at the Historical Society and was in and out of our conversations during the day.  Genia had intended to meet us there for lunch before leaving for Huntington to visit Jimmy.  Genia, Earnest, and I walked from the Historical Society building to the local fire department parking lot to purchase pinto bean dinners for all of our group while Candice and Jane waited for us in the Fountain Room.  The pinto bean dinners were great eating, with the beans cooked in a large cast iron kettle over a wood fire in the fire department parking lot and were a fund raiser for charitable work the department does each year.  The photograph below is of me and my second cousin Earnest Keen. 

 

After we ate, Candice, Earnest, and I all went to the Wayland High School Gymnasium which has been recently restored and is a beautiful piece of work.  The one flaw in that project is that the Kentucky Mountain Sports Hall of Fame and Museum exhibits have been moved from a separate building which was wheelchair accessible to the upstairs seating area in the gymnasium which is totally inaccessible to anyone with a mobility impairment.  I will take that up with the management in the near future.  But the restoration project in the gymnasium has added new scoreboards and several banners which laud past achievements of a few of the best high school basketball teams in the days when Wayland was a high school and fielded basketball teams.   The teams on the banners include the only two teams Wayland High School ever sent to the Kentucky Sweet Sixteen tournament, in the 1950's when Kelly Coleman was a star and set many still current Kentucky High School records, and a second trip by a team nearly twenty years later.  Kelly Coleman also set several records in regular season play which still stand.  While a recent player who will be playing at UK is credited with breaking Kelly's career individual scoring record, Kelly set his records in four seasons without the shot clock or three point shot.  The more recent player who is now given credit as the individual points career record holder actually played at least two years of high school varsity basketball while he was still in grade school,  and had the benefit of both the shot clock and the three point shot.  After we spent some time in the gymnasium, a member of the Kentucky Mountain Sports Hall of Fame and Museum board of directors volunteered to take a photograph of Candice and I beside the Kelly Coleman statue outside the gymnasium.  After the photograph, we left for home.  Altogether, it was a great day and we both enjoyed it a great deal.  This photograph below is of my wife Candice and was shot in the parking area as Candice was listening to the music from the porch of the historical society building. 

This photograph below is one of myself and Candice with the statue of Kelly Coleman which stands outside the entrance to the renovated Wayland Gym.  It was graciously shot by a board member of the Kentucky Mountain Sports Hall of Fame and Museum. 

"Birds' Eggs" by Michael Walters, A Great Little Reference Book For The Bird or Wildlife Watcher

 

I won't say that I am a "Bird Watcher" but I have fed birds on my property for years, own several bird related books, and can actually recognize and identify somewhere between 50 and 75 species.  I have owned this little book for about 20 years and received it when I was working in a facility for juvenile in the custody of the state and a charity gave enough copies of the book to the facility that every client and staff received a copy.  I have to admit that I have had few occasions to ever use it when I actually had a bird's nest or egg in sight to actually identify the bird.  But it is a fascinating book which is very dense in content and useful information.  It is published in a field guide size with water resistant pages and cover.  It would stand up to a lot of punishment in the field in the hands of a devoted bird watcher.  It was published in 1994 and sold at that time for $17.95 which was a stiff price for a book in those days 30 years ago.  It brags on the cover that it contains information about "500 bird species from around the world".  

It is well organized and beautifully illustrated with hundreds of photographs.  It has an introduction of about 25 pages which is broken into 8 or 9 short sections.  It is actually capable of turning an amateur into somewhat of an expert on the subject of bird eggs.  The first part of the introduction is labled "How This Book Works" which is a great way to start any reference book, and nowhere near enough reference books do that. Continuing the approach that the author knows he is dealing with probable amateurs, the next part of the introduction is labled, "What is an egg?"  How much more basic can you get?  The body of the book itself is broken into two major sections: "Non-passerines" and "Passerines" which will almost instantly provide many readers with a piece of information they did not have.  Passerine birds are those whose feet are adapted for perching on branches and other objects such as most song birds, raptors, etc.  Non-passerine birds are those arboreal birds such as pigeons, woodpeckers, and hummingbirds.  To be honest, it takes a bit of experience to distinguish instantly what the difference is between the two, but if you like birds and wildlife you will figure it out.   There is also a short glossary and a good index in the book which helps a great deal for the novice user.  

Each page of the book will have information about two or three birds and their eggs, and that information is clearly divided into separate sections on the page. 

These two pages are side by side (pages 94 and 95) and illustrate the varying number of birds and eggs which the book might have on a particular page.  The section for each bird contains a basic description of the bird, multiple photographs of their eggs, a short description of their breeding habits and a basic description of their range.  Yes, the book has information about numerous birds which the average reader will never see without going to a zoo where there will be no visible nests or eggs, or traveling the world with this and a general bird guide book in hand.  But it is an incredibly informative little book and fun to study, settle arguments with, and learn from for the person who believes like me that "there is no such thing as a useless piece of information...there is only information for which you do not currently have a use." 

I admit that the average reader who is not interested in knowing perhaps too much about birds might not be interested in this book.  But you can find it used on most used book websites for less than half of what it originally sold for and it is a fun toy for those days when you don't really want to "read" and just want to toy with an informative book with a lot of photographs. 

"The Keeping Quilt" by Patricia Polacco, A Great Children's Book For Multi-cultural Education

 

Several months ago, I bought a fairly large collection of books from the estate of a retired school principal and this book was in that pile.  It is actually the second book I have read and written about in that purchase.  The other was "The Play Pretty Book", an Appalachian children's book which was produced by a Kentucky based educational non-profit and illustrated by Appalachian artist Tom Whitaker.  I read many different genres of literature and high quality children's literature is one of them.  This book, "The Keeping Quilt" was a winner of the Sydney Taylor Book Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries.  It was also a Carnegie Medal Honor Book.  This book is about a Russian Jewish family which immigrated to the United States with a little girl named Anna who is the great-grandmother of the narrator.  Anna has a much beloved babushka and dress which, naturally, become too small for her in time.  Her mother decided to invite the neighbor women in to hold a quilting bee and make a quilt from the babushka and dress so that Anna can keep something made from her treasured items. The quilt gets passed down from one little girl to another through several generations of the family throughout the life of the book.  

Since my real academic specialty is Appalachian Studies, let me say that this is a wonderful book to be used with Appalachian children since quilts and quilting hold such a special place in Appalachian Culture.  I grew up sleeping under what is called a "tacked quilt" which, instead of being sewn in regular stitches, has yarn "tacks" all over the body of the quilt.  The creator of such a quilt uses a darning needle and a skein of yarn and at uniform distances of about 4 inches in each direction passes the needle through the quilt twice at about the distance of a regular stitch, cuts off the yarn at about 3 inches and ties the two ends in a knot to make a "tack".  As I fell asleep at night, I would doze off holding and playing with the "tacks" on my quilt.  I have known many other Appalachian children who grew up the same way with "tacked quilts".  Thousands of Appalachian children grew up sleeping under regular patchwork quilts also.  The story of a quilt in this book will make a connection in the hearts and minds of most Appalachian children.  It is a great book for use in teaching Multi-cultural Education and Tolerance to young Appalachian children.  

Yes, this book is a bit aged having been published in 1988.  But it is also a timeless book about family, cultural traditions, expressions of love by elders doing things for young children, and quietly makes the point that the family are Jewish.  The book is published in 8 1/2" x 11" format, both written and illustrated by the author who actually wrote more than 50 children's books, and is a wonderful illustrator.  Her illustration style is unique in that most of the page areas are in black and white with only key areas or items in color.  I have included a page or two from the book here to demonstrate the illustration style which serves to strongly emphasize the importance of the key item in each page of the book. If you are a parent or teacher of kindergarten or first grade children, this is an excellent book to begin the discussion of religious tolerance with.  

"The Portable World Bible" Edited by Robert O. Ballou, Observations On A Book To Help Settle Some Conflicts

 

Many years ago, I was blessed to take an Introduction To World History course at Alice Lloyd College in Pippa Passes, Kentucky, under a man named Dr. Billy Rojas, Ph. D., who had come to ALC from the Chicago area as I recall.  Billy, as he preferred to known by everyone he knew, required that students in all his history courses buy, and actually read sections of this book.  Billy taught history from a viewpoint which was strongly focused on how religion and, particularly how differences in religion had influenced the flow of history over time.  This book is edited by Robert O. Ballou, according to his publisher, Penguin Random House, brought to countless contemporary readers much of the world’s religious thought, which he selected, interpreted, and arranged in view of modern man’s quest for ultimate truths and values. His book, "The Portable World Bible" which has been in constant publication since its original publication in 1944, and is constantly relied on by students in many disciplines along with thousands of ministers, rabbis, imams, and priests.  The book is broken into seven sections with each being composed of many of the key scriptures from most of the world's leading religions.  It is an excellent resource for anyone who is interested in world religious beliefs, conflicts between believers in two or more of those beliefs, or simply anyone who wants to learn more about any particular major religion. 

The sections are labeled The Hindu, The Buddhist, The Parsi, The Jew And The Christian, The Moslem, The Confucianist, and The Taoist.The book actually begins with a General Introduction and each of the sections begins with a specific introduction of about 10 to 15 pages.  While a detractor could make the arguments that the book is a bit aged for today's world, or that it omits a few religions which have significant numbers of adherents worldwide, it is still a wonderful book for anyone who wants to actually understand how the religions of the world interact, conflict, and, oftentimes, agree.  I have depended on it for some fast answers ever since the first time I ever read it in Billy Rojas' history class.  I also have a friend of twenty years who is a minister in a rather conservative form of Christianity and a graduate of a seminary who also depends on it.  For me, it is just as productive as any other book I can find when I need fast answers about key texts in any of the religions it discusses.  Rarely will anyone write or edit a book which will still be in print more than 75 years after its initial publication. And I believe that this book will still be in use and publication in another 75 years. It is especially useful when we consider the perpetual, and currently volatile conflicts in the Middle East which are rooted almost entirely in religious differences based on three major religions whose most sacred sites are in a markedly small geographic territory in which their claimed sites often overlap.  If you don't know about this book, at least look at a copy in a book store or library and decide if it is useful to you.                 

Search For Relatives of William Howard Cohen

 Dr. William Howard Cohen, Ph. D. 

Because of two previous blog posts (first post) I had published about Dr. William Howard Cohen, a former professor at Alice Lloyd College in Pippa Passes, Kentucky, I was recently contacted by a cousin of his, Dr. Paul Newman, Ph.D. chair emeritus of the Linguistics Department at Indiana University.  Dr. Newman would very much like to make contact with a niece and nephew of Dr. Cohen who had previously commented on the two earlier blog posts (second post) I had published about him and his influence on me.  If these relatives of Dr. Newman see this post and contact me at rchicks@mrtc.com and I will give them Dr. Newman's contact information.  Thanks!

Roger D. Hicks

"The Town And The City" by Jack Kerouac--Thoughts On A Rereading

 

"The Town And The City" was Jack Kerouac's first published novel and was released by Harcourt, Brace, and Company in 1950.  It began one of the greatest careers in American fiction for Kerouac and was the initial expression of what would become known as The Beat Writers.  I read it the first time in about 1974 after having been exposed to Kerouac by Robert "Bob" Snyder who was the Director of the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in Beckley, West Virginia.  Bob was a professor, mentor, and friend to me and dozens of other young Appalachian writers.  I had no exposure to Kerouac at all prior to that, especially in the public school system of Knott County Kentucky.  I might have heard his name but had never read a single thing he wrote until that time.  By the time I began to read him, he had published more than a dozen novels and was a household name in most of literate America.  I had slowly evolved from a young Appalachian boy who was deeply interested in literature, politics, and the arts into a more developed reader and writer and a hippy and opponent of the Vietnam War.  That metamorphosis was complete after my time at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in the company of Bob Snyder and the other faculty and students at what was a small, somewhat experimental campus Antioch had set up as an outreach to what they considered to be disadvantaged groups in several locations around the country.  I was immediately enthralled with Kerouac's writing and the first of his books I read was probably "Dharma Bums" or "On The Road".  I quickly went on to devour nearly every printed word the man ever wrote and regretted that he did not live to write that much more.  He is truly one of the 8 or 10 greatest writers America has ever produced and one of the few about whom it can be said that he actually established, along with several of his friends, a new school of writing.  

Recently, on one of my many trips to small "junk stores", I wandered into a first edition copy of "The Town And The City" which I had bought in a small pile of other older, less  important books in which I was also interested.  As I was going through the owner's small shelf of used books in what is essentially a small antique shop, now on its way out of business to be replaced by a booth in a Peddler's Mall, I saw the title on the spine of the book, pulled it off the shelf and was amazed to see that Kerouac and Harcourt, Brace, and Company had originally published the book under the name "John Kerouac".  I never said a word to the owner whom I like personally, but who knows little or nothing about books and writing.  I immediately laid the book in "my pile" and moved on, as I always do, to find what I want in such stores and then to negotiate a blanket price for the lot.  To say the least, I paid less for the lot than I would have to obtain this book alone which was published under his legal name instead of the pen name he had adopted later and which became how he will always be known to the world.    Admittedly, the book is an ex-library copy with typical library markings and some clinging evidence of a former library dust jacket, but it still well worth keeping forever to me.  

My wife had previously read only two of Kerouac's books and had liked those: "Visions of Gerard" and "The Subterraneans" which we had actually read together with me reading out loud while she washes dishes which I rinse and put away later.  She had tried one of his other more stream of consciousness novels previously and didn't like it at all.  So I had decided to try the softer, gentler, deeply loving pair of novels to attempt to hook her on Kerouac. It had worked and now we moved on to this unique copy of "The Town And The City".  This book is in most ways a very typical first novel by an American author who is deeply committed to getting himself published.  But is also a very good novel, not great, but quite good, well structured with a well developed group of central characters, the Martin family in a small town in Massachusetts and later in New York City.  It is about their lives as a family unit and as individuals and is quite long at 499 pages compared to most of Kerouac's later works.  It leads us through this large family's lives in the years preceding World War II and the War itself, shows the development of the individual children into unique adults, their individual departure from the family nest, a wonderful old farmhouse on the edge of a small, close knit town.  It also depicts the father's descent into gambling, drinking, and losing his small printing company, and eventually the home.  He becomes a printer in companies owned by others, and eventually moves with the wife and two youngest children to New York where he works the last of his career and dies old and broken down in a small apartment.  

The later sections of the book contain two interesting segments.  First, in an encounter on the streets of New York, one of the Martin sons who seems to most closely depict the author himself meets a small group of other young men who appear to depict the young Ginsberg and Burroughs or perhaps Gregory Corso.  Another of the characters in that small group is called "the young thug Jack" which is a fascinating way for Kerouac to have described himself.  To my knowledge, this is the first time America was exposed in literature to part of the group of people who would become known as The Beat Writers.  At the end of the book, the funeral of the father, George Martin, is set in the small New England town in which he and his wife grew up and were married.  The depiction in the conclusion of the novel is one which could have been typically been written about a funeral and visitation in almost any small, rural town in America.  It could have definitely been written about funerals in general in Eastern Kentucky where I grew up.  The entire town turns out to bring George Martin home, say goodbye to him, and bury him in the little country church yard.  A large collection of distant relatives from both sides of the family show up, many of whom the Martin children have never met.  But all of them seem to remember George Martin and his wife.  It is a wonderful depiction of a funeral in rural America and points out just how clearly Kerouac intended to contrast his character's lonely death in a small apartment in the largest city in America as opposed to the funeral which his native small town was willing to provide to one who had not lived there in many years.  It is the perfect ending to a long, complex, wonderful first novel by anyone's standards. 

"Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism" by Rachel Maddow, A Book Everyone Should Read

Over the past ten days, I have written two other blog posts which were prompted by a book which I have just completed this morning, August 23, 2023, "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism" by Rachel Maddow, the popular television host.  The first post, entitled "Fascism In America, Yesterday And Today", was written and posted on August 13, 2023.  The second post, entitled "TRAITOR Trump, Adolph Hitler, And The Big Lie", was written and posted just yesterday, August 22, 2023.  In general, I rarely write more than one blog post about any book I have read.  The two examples of such books I have written about more than once recently are "The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey" by Candice Millard, and Bob Deans excellent book,  "The River Where America Began: A Journey Along The James".  

Each of those books is important in their own way as historical writing.  But neither of them is as important as Rachel Maddow's book about the history of early twentieth century attempts to bring Fascism to America. This is a book which is fully loaded with multiple warnings and historical accounts of those attempts to turn the United States into a Fascist stronghold and is an incredibly important book for every concerned American to read before they ever step into a voting booth again.  It is an incredibly well researched and documented book whose only flaw is that the writing itself is not the kind that wins literary prizes or leaves the reader consistently spellbound But Dr. Maddow has done a beautiful job of digging through vast piles of dusty, and often obscure, records to document an earlier time when Facism was gravely endangering America. Yes, she is Dr. Maddow, and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Oxford University and her research proves she earned it honestly.  In this book, she also does a fine job of proving that Fascism still endangers America today, and is actually doing so in a far more terrifying  way than it did in the 1930's and 1940's.  Although she does not make that claim word for word in the book, any intelligent reader can easily decipher the intent of the book.  In my opinion, it is a precursor to a second upcoming book about the ongoing Fascist threat in America and a historically based warning about the imminence of that threat. 

I'd like to use a few choice excerpts from the book to prove the point I just made in the earlier sentence about the present danger to America which is posed by TRAITOR Trump and those who support him.  The first instance in which the book convinced me that Dr. Maddow was on the right track came in her discussion of the efforts of Senator Robert Rice Reynolds, a North Carolina Democrat who used immigrants as scapegoats for his efforts to support Facism just as TRAITOR Trump has been doing for the past 10 years or so.  Reynolds used these words: 

"...seeping into this country by the thousands every single month...to take the jobs which rightly belong" to Americans.  "I wish to say, and I say it without the slightest hesitation--that if I had my way about it at this hour, I would build a wall about the United States so high and so secure that not a single alien or foreign refugee from any country upon the face of the earth could possibly scale or ascend it." (Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism" by Rachel Maddow, page 220) 

As I said when I first wrote about this book, as soon as I read that quote the person who popped into my head was TRAITOR Trump.  Those words sound as if they probably came directly out of his mouth in some rambling rant in front of a crowd of a few thousand of his Fascist and TREASONOUS cult members. That moment is when I first began to realize just how important this book is as we face the most important election in the United States at least since 1860.  If we get this election wrong, this country and American Democracy will not survive the next four years.  On November 5, 2024, American voters are faced with the most clear cut choice in an election in the history of this country.  It is an election in which we are confronted with a choice between a Prosecutor and a Convicted Felon, a Patriot and a TRAITOR, a Skilled Supporter of Sexual Assault Victims and a Serial Rapist, Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, a Powerful Future and a Future Disaster which will not leave a single individual constitutional right intact.  It is purely a choice between Good and Evil.  As a nation and as individuals, we cannot get this choice wrong.  Our entire Democracy is at stake, nothing less!

The next quotation from Maddow's book which I have heard many times, but which struck me immediately in comparison to TRAITOR Trump was this one about Adolph Hitler's Big Lie and is a direct quote from his book, "Mein Kampf": 

 " The great masses, he wrote, "will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one, since they themselves perhaps also lie in little things, but would certainly still be too much ashamed of too great lies.  Thus, such an untruth will not at all enter their heads, and therefore they will be unable to believe in the impossibility of the enormous impudence of the most infamous distortion in others."  (Rachel Maddow, quoting from "Mein Kampf", in "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism", page 237. )

Let me also say, in clarification, that TRAITOR Trump's name is not even mentioned in this book.  But his grossly leering shadow is all through it.  His use of Adolph Hitler's Big Lie is the foundation on which his efforts to gain, abuse, misuse, misconstrue, misappropriate power, and destroy American is based.  He is first and foremost a pathological liar, and uses those lies to mislead, confuse, and control those members of his cult who are susceptible to them.  Just as Adolph Hitler did until the day of his death, TRAITOR Trump uses grandiose, unsupportable lies to gain power over people.  It is his favorite tool in his quest to destroy the world around him along with anyone who has sufficient courage to confront him.  While it is his favorite tool, it is not his only tool.  He also uses fear, intimidation, bribery, psychological manipulation, and a variety of other skills which he developed in his years as a juvenile delinquent son in the shadow of an enabling and destructive father.  If you doubt that statement, read his niece Mary Trump's Book, "Too Much And Never Enough: How My Family Created The World's Most Dangerous Man." You might also consider that 40 of 44 people who served him in his cabinet refuse to endorse him today.  And 40 lawyers who have all worked in the Department of Justice under Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush have all endorsed Kamala Harris.  One of those lawyers actually is previous Attorney General and numerous others were Deputy Attorneys General.  The people who know him and the danger he represents to America are trying desperately to tell the rest of the country the truth about his TREASON!

But as the book progresses in telling the story of early Fascist attempts in America, it becomes a genuine historical biography of one of the worst crime schemes ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting nation, its government, and its people.  Hitler's propaganda machine in America was under the charge of one George Sylvester Viereck who was able to engage the support of the great American flyer Charles Lindbergh and several members of the United States Congress.  They jointly established a scheme in which congress members who had the incredible power of "franking" which allowed them to mail nearly any written matter they chose to as many people as they chose in the country with the bill for the postage being paid by the United States government.  Maddow documents a top secret telegram from the German Charge' D'affaires in Washington to his superior in Berlin in which he said:

"These speeches, whose aim is to prevent America's entry into the war and to ward off all attacks from interventionist politicians, will be printed each time in the American parliamentary publication, the Congressional Record, by these Senators and Congressmen, and then an edition of 50,000 to 1 million copies will be sent by them to specially chosen persons.  In this manner, German influence is not visible to the outside, and, thanks to the privilege of free postage enjoyed by American Congressmen, the cost of this large scale propaganda can be kept disproportionately low..." ("Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism", by Rachel Maddow, page 242)

Later in the book, Maddow points out that the Justice Department official O. John Rogge was able to document at least 24 members of congress who willingly assisted Viereck in his scheme to use "franking" to distribute Nazi propaganda to the citizens of the country at taxpayer expense.  Ask yourself this question and answer it honestly: "If 24 members of congress were induced by Germany in the 1930's and 1940's to support the German propaganda effort, in today's world with much more technically advanced means of communication and concealment of the transfer of monetary funds worldwide, and with Right Wing Radical Repugnican people in congress such as Marjorie Taylor Green, George Santos, Ted Cruz,  James Comer, Josh Hawley, Jim Jordan, Thomas Massie, Louie Gomert, and Matt Gaetz, just how difficult would it be for Russia and Putin to construct just as destructive and treasonous operation in congress?" Be honest with yourself when you answer that question!

 

O. John Rogge, the Assistant Attorney General who had uncovered Viereck's scheme as well as the identities of his congressional coconspirators, went to the Attorney General as he was about to depart from the Department of Justice on a speaking tour about his findings, was denied that permission and, bravely stated that he intended to do so anyway, He began his speaking tour and, after his first night's speech was delivered the message by an FBI agent that he had been fired as he sat in a Washington State airport waiting out a weather delay to proceed to another city for another such speech.

In the conclusion of the book, Maddow talks about the fact that the subject(s) of this book, attempted Fascism and those who perpetrated and supported it are still being followed by others who are just as dangerous to democracy and America.  She says this in conclusion: 

"If we're willing to take the harder look at our American history with Fascism, the truth is that our own story in this wild, uncertain twenty-first century has not an echo in the past but a prequel.  For our turn in history--and for the next time this comes around too--we have the advantage of knowing what preceded us.  The story of what it took, inside and outside the government, to stop the violent American ultra-right in the run up to World War II--that's a gift from the smart, brave, determined, resourceful, self-sacrificing Americans who went before us.  If we learn it, and we choose it, we can inherit their work."  (Rachel Maddow, "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism", Page 326) 

That concluding paragraph from the book tells us all we need to know in order to what we should have been doing all along, "If we learn it, and we choose it, we can inherit their work."  That should the goal and the daily effort of every patriotic American in today's world, to inherit the work of those same "...smart, brave determined, resourceful, self-sacrificing Americans who went before us."  in the perpetual fight against Fascism, Nazism, Communism, TREASON, Insurrection, Desertion, and the generalized abandonment of the values which motivated the Founding Fathers to build the greatest democracy on the face of the earth. 

 

 

 

   

TRAITOR Trump, Adolph Hitler, And The Big Lie

 

Adolph Hitler

I am in the process of reading Rachel Maddow's book, "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism", which  I have already written one blog post that was prompted by information contained in her book. She discusses in several places in the book the work done by the infamous Joseph Goebbels who ran Hitler's propaganda efforts worldwide.  She also includes the following quotation from Adolph Hitler's book which served as a major building board on which his attempt to conquer and subjugate the entire world was built,  "Mein Kampf":

" The great masses, he wrote, "will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one, since they themselves perhaps also lie in little things, but would certainly still be too much ashamed of too great lies.  Thus, such an untruth will not at all enter their heads, and therefore they will be unable to believe in the impossibility of the enormous impudence of the most infamous distortion in others."  (Rachel Maddow, quoting from "Mein Kampf", in "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism", page 237. )

That quote from the book is the basis of what we know today as The Big Lie, especially as it has been practiced by TRAITOR Trump.   To simplify what The Big Lie actually means, it boils down to this: If you tell most people a lie so grand and extravagant, they will believe it easier than they would a relatively mild mannered and simple lie. TRAITOR Trump is not the first would be dictator, despot, or cult leader to use The Big Lie.  But no one on earth has perfected The Big Lie to the point that TRAITOR Trump has.  We see and hear repeatedly of incidents, both public and private, in which TRAITOR Trump is using The Big Lie or making references to issues which he wishes to portray as destructive to America or to support other lesser, but still markedly dangerous, lies he is telling nearly every time he opens his mouth.  This link discusses his half-hearted denial of a frequently seen allegation that  he kept a book of Hitler's speeches at his bedside for much of his life.   The quotation below comes from an article written by Kevin Arceneaux and Rory Truex and discusses his dependence on The Big Lie with well researched and documented proof of that fact:

"Our study systematically documents a new feature of
American political life: roughly one- fourth of the country
and half of the Republican Party rank and file say that they
buy into the idea that the election was stolen from
President Trump. Across the 40 days of our study  
acceptance of this big lie was pervasive, sticky, and consequential.This echoes a dynamic typically observed in
authoritarian regimes, in which a charismatic leader creates
blatant falsehoods to justify his hold on power and requires
everyone to behave as if those lies are true. Donald Trump
eschewed the long democratic tradition of stepping aside
and pledging support to his opponent once the results
were no longer in doubt to any reasonable observer."  ( "Donald Trump and The Lie", by Kevin Arceneaux and Rory Truex, page 17, available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/A438DF5A45FE78CB2BC887859EFAB587/S1537592722000901a.pdf/donald_trump_and_the_lie.pdf) 

Arcenaux and Truex go on to say this about support for The Big Lie even from Republicans who don't actually believe the election was stolen from Trump.  They state that " The results from the conjoint experiment illustrate that  whether Republicans really believe that the election was  not stolen from Trump, many will reward Republican candidates who claim that it was."  That kind of deceptive acceptance of The Big Lie even when those who are accepting of it know better is a truly fearful response and identical to what happened among German citizens after Adolph Hitler rose to power and his Fascism spread across the country.  As we grow daily closer to the November election, we also grow closer to the day when each of us who steps into a voting booth must make a personal decision concerning for whom and what future for America we will choose to support.  My personal decision about this election was made at least as soon as that fateful day on June 16, 2015, when TRAITOR Trump came down that garish escalator and espoused the lie that he was fit to lead the greatest democracy in the world.  He was never fit to do that job and, if he lived to be a thousand, he will never be fit.  This election is beautifully and simply bifurcated into two clear cut existential opposites.  It is about Democracy versus Fascism, Patriotism versus TREASON, Freedom versus Tyranny, Prosecutor versus Convicted Felon, Right versus Wrong, and Good versus Evil.  The answer is simple.  Do what you should have been doing all along, VOTE STRAIGHT DEMOCRATIC, Every Election, Every Race!  Then the country will be fine! 

Fascism In America, Yesterday And Today!

 

Let's begin this blog post with a brief quotation from a book I am currently reading.  

"...seeping into this country by the thousands every single month...to take the jobs which rightly belong" to Americans.  "I wish to say, and I say it without the slightest hesitation--that if I had my way about it at this hour, I would build a wall about the United States so high and so secure that not a single alien or foreign refugee from any country upon the face of the earth could possibly scale or ascend it." 

Like you, as soon as I read that quote the person who popped into my head was TRAITOR Trump.  Those words sound as if they probably came directly out of his mouth in some rambling rant in front of a crowd of a few thousand of his Fascist and TREASONOUS cult members.  But that is not who said it, and it contains one major clue that it did not and could not have come out of TRAITOR Trump's mouth.  I had spotted that clue when I read it and, thankfully, so did my sister-in-law in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, when I read it to her and her husband yesterday, August 10, 2024, during a Google Meet which my wife and I do with them every two weeks.  So, the question becomes "Who said it?  Where did it come from?  When?"  The answer to those questions is both surprising and not surprising at all.  Those words come from page 220 of the book "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism" by Rachel Maddow, and they came from the mouth of Democratic United States Senator Robert Rice Reynolds in 1941.  Maddow's book was published in 2023 and, based on her title, I hope it is intended to be a precursor to  another book about Fascism as it is currently being practiced in America.  The clue which both my sister-in-law and  I saw in the words of that quote involves the language used.  There is phrasing and there are words in that quote which would never and could never come from the mouth of TRAITOR Trump.  The sentence structure is good, solid, complete sentences. Those sentences are sometimes complex, far more complex than TRAITOR Trump could ever construct on his best day.  And TRAITOR Trump never uses complete, structured, rational sentences, and would never use words like "ascend" or "scale". He also has no ability to construct complex sentences. Those words, "ascend" and "scale" are far too abstract for his diminished intelligence and grade school vocabulary. Those words are synonyms for others such as "climb", and "top" or "mount".  TRAITOR Trump is not as intelligent or highly verbal as Senator Reynolds was in 1941.  But he is just as ignorant and just as evil. His intentions are just as destructive, potentially damaging to America, and just as unfounded as the words of Senator Reynolds in 1941. So what happened to Senator Robert Rice Reynolds?  

Since reading that highly dangerous quote from Senator Reynolds, I have done a little research on him and found this enlightening article online from Vox which, says as I did above "those words could have come straight from Donald Trump".  Vox was mild mannered and non-confrontational enough to not use my favorite and most often used adjective of "TRAITOR" to refer to TRAITOR Trump.  The Vox article also gives us an actual date of June 5, 1941, for the date of Reynolds' statement and a location for it, the floor of the United States Senate.  The Vox article goes on to say this about Reynolds: 

"Reynolds never really expected a wall to be built, however much he might have dreamed of such a barrier. And his ideas about refugees never took hold with the broader American public. Today he is all but forgotten, even in his home state of North Carolina." (Vox, "Meet Robert Reynolds, the senator who wanted to build a wall 70 years before Trump." Available at the link above on August 12, 2024.) 

The Vox article goes on to say this about Reynolds: 

 "...his story is worth retelling. It serves as a reminder of the heights American hypernationalism, anti-interventionism, and nativism reached in the not-too-distant past.It shows, too, that these are strains of American political thinking that are recycled again and again, and are often ushered in by politicians who capture America’s attention with flash over substance. Trump isn’t the first showman known nearly as much for his marital lives as for his tendency toward oratorical extremes about refugees and “criminal” immigrants. The question is whether he will be the last — or whether his legacy will inspire other political progeny."  (Vox, Same Link Above) 

I agree completely with what the Vox writer had to say about Reynolds in that second quote above.  His story is worth retelling and, most importantly, it is worth retelling because Reynolds never succeeded in building his wall.  He fell out of favor with the voters of North Carolina and only served two destructive terms in the United States Senate. He was also serving, if that is the correct word, in the senate at a time (1932-1944) when America was led by a president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had strong support from a majority of America, control of the congress, and the acumen and courage to openly confront and control radicals like Senator Reynolds  Vox goes on to give us this description of the political demise of Robert Reynolds: 

Reynolds’s aggressive stance on immigration and deportation — and, later, his reluctance to criticize the rise of fascist dictators overseas and fascist sympathizers at home — sank his political career and erased any legacy he might have left behind.(Vox, Same Link Above)

That summation of Reynolds' fall from grace with the voters of North Carolina is a well justified end to the political machinations of such a man.  But it also points out that fact that, so far in America, a large portion of the nation has failed to reach the same accurate conclusions about TRAITOR Trump. His cult still lives and supports him. He is, totally unjustifiably, the face and the hate blackened soul of the Right Wing Radical Repugnican party in America.  He is once again trying to gain access to the White House and the power its occupancy brings to even a convicted felon, career criminal, rapist, and TRAITOR like TRAITOR Trump.   America is faced today with a pending election, just as important as the last two in 2016 and 2020, in which we can choose to vote in support of America, American Democracy, rational governmental decision making, and the preservation of constitutional freedoms or we can vote for TREASON, Fascism as practiced by TRAITOR Trump, completely irrational decision making, the continued destruction of constitutional freedoms as has happened in many states across America over the last 12 years, and the continued spread of Fascism, Racism, Hatred, and the perpetual courting of dictators, despots, tyrants, and criminals.  It is a simple decision to a rational person.  America must, once again, defeat TRAITOR Trump, pursue his criminal convictions and assure that they happen, and see him convicted, sentenced, incarcerated for the rest of his natural life in the supermax prison in Colorado with the other enemies of the country, and forgotten for all eternity except as a perpetual reminder of the damage such a worthless human can inflict on a compliant and complacent nation.  He must not be allowed to return to occupy the White House.  He must not be allowed to further damage this nation. He must be defeated and he must be proven to be the TRAITOR he is to all that is good and just in this country.  

But regressing momentarily to further discuss the Vox statement about the political demise of Senator Reynolds, let's look at the statement that  Reynolds "...is all but forgotten, even in his home state of North Carolina." That statement is not totally accurate.  In my research on Senator Reynolds, I found a page on the webpage of the North Carolina History Project which is a somewhat whitewashed biography of the senator.  While it does point out his notorious womanizing and five marriages...(And) flamboyant actions), it describes him as "A genuine believer in democracy".    A second page on the North Carolina History Project written by Will Schultz is more directly honest about Senator Reynolds and concludes by describing him as

"...controversial. Some regard him as a proto-fascist, a would-be American Hitler. Others consider him a radical populist along the lines of Huey P. Long of Louisiana. Still others dismiss him as a harmless buffoon. In Buncombe Bob, the authoritative biography on Reynolds, Julian Pleasants summed up the senator: “In short, he was a unique southern demagogue."  (North Carolina History Project, "Robert Rice Reynolds, (1884-1963)".  Available on August 13, 2024 at https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/robert-rice-reynolds-1884-1963/). 

While Rachel Maddow in her book does not clearly claim that Senator Reynolds was a Fascist or that he had direct ties to Hitler's Nazi propaganda experts in America, she does make that connection about other subjects of her meticulous research and actually discusses how several "privately owned" or "nonprofit" agencies or entities were created in the United States in the 1930's and 1940's and were financed directly by Adolph Hitler's propaganda machine.  She discusses in several places in the book the work done by the infamous Joseph Goebbels who ran Hitler's propaganda efforts worldwide.  She also includes the following quotation from "Mein Kampf":

" The great masses, he wrote, "will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one, since they themselves perhaps also lie in little things, but would certainly still be too much ashamed of too great lies.  Thus, such an untruth will not at all enter their heads, and therefore they will be unable to believe in the impossibility of the enormous impudence of the most infamous distortion in others."  (Rachel Maddow, quoting from "Mein Kampf", in "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism", page 237. )

We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Adolph Hitler and his propaganda machine worked diligently in the United States of America during the 1930's and 1940's to control and/or influence the reaction of the general American public toward the war of aggression which Germany was waging all over Europe.  We know that they worked closely with many members of congress such as Senator Reynolds to gain publicly credible routes to the American psyche.  We have also been warned repeatedly by many sources about the highly probable connections between TRAITOR Trump and Putin's Russia. Perhaps the best source of that collusion is presented by the great historian and author Timothy Snyder in his book, "The Road To Unfreedom" on page 220, and on his account on the social media website "X", formerly known as "Twitter".   On that website, Dr. Snyder, who is a distinguished professor history at Yale University, has posted a Thread under this title 0/50 Why we do think that Mr. Trump owes a debt to Mr. Putin? Here are fifty reasons. All of the facts are a matter of public record, and all of the sources can be found in my book The Road to Unfreedom.  At that link, you will find Dr. Snyder's list of 50 incidents, all documented in the public record, in which TRAITOR Trump has had interactions with Russia in which either money or influence changed hands in a manner to indicate that there exists serious, and seriously TREASONOUS relationships between TRAITOR Trump and numerous representatives of Russia including Vladimir Putin and several other Russian oligarchs.  If we know that Hitler's Nazis were able to develop mutually beneficial relationships with several members of congress during the Third Reich, why should we doubt that in this time of much more means of surreptitious communication and transfer of money such similar relationships don't exist with numerous individuals, including TRAITOR Trump, and Russia. Also, as you consider this possibility, keep in mind that TRAITOR Trump has made several trips to Russia in his life, took an international beauty pageant to Russia, has met with Putin face to face on a few occasions, and has had numerous Russian citizens living in his residential properties.  Don' ever doubt the possibility that TRAITOR Trump is a Russian agent as alleged by a retired Russian intelligence agent in this article from "The Guardian" on January 29, 2021.  TRAITOR Trump must not be allowed anywhere near the White House again to repeat the many crimes for which he has already been indicted on numerous charges.  

Some Thoughts About Separation Of Church And State!

 

Several events, incidents, occurrences, and news articles over the last 5 or so years, and especially the last 16 months have prompted me to write on this blog about something which, so far as I remember I have never done, interactions on social media, only one kind of which I ever use or ever have.  That one type of social media is Facebook and I have been induced twice to leave it for extended periods of time, one in 2017 for the entire month of October.  Admittedly, I was on a long road trip then and didn't want the distraction.  And in the last several months, I took another month off, without ever signing on to Facebook, simply because I was sick of all their targeted and unblockable ads.  But this post is actually prompted by one little interaction I had on Facebook this morning and the recent trend in quite a few conservative churches in America, and especially in the south, to support Vladimir Putin's invasion of the totally innocent country of Ukraine.  I had noticed some of it myself and got into a series of messages with a Facebook friend in Western North Carolina who has also been very concerned about the amount of this insanity he has seen in his own area.  He sent me a link to this article about so-called "Christian" groups which have been praising Vladimir Putin.  The article talks about Franklin Graham and the Billy Graham Evangelical Association, which he now controls, and his contacts with and praise for Putin.  The article also addresses the World Congress of Families, another fairly right wing "Christian" organization which has actually partnered with Russian officials who have been sanctioned by the US government.  Please note that if you want to go to these two groups' websites to see what they believe you are free to do so.  But I have not and will not add links to those groups on this blog because of their works with or in praise of Putin and Russia which are helping him in his ultimate goal of destroying America, American Democracy, and general worldwide Democracy.  If you want to know what they think, find it yourself.  

 But, the incident on Facebook this morning involved a woman on my Facebook friends list who made a statement that she was unfriending and blocking people she referred to as "atheists" because of their beliefs.  Her actual statement was:  "unfriending multiple atheists who insist on being rude and insulting to those who believe. Not putting up with it."  I was instantly reminded of a Bible quote which I admit I had to find through a joint Google search and a search of Bible Gateway in the King James Version which is the only translation of the Bible I ever bother to read since I firmly believe that the more translations away from the KJV you get the farther you simultaneously get from the original intent of the writers of the particular book of the Bible you are reading. 

 

In the interest of honesty, I will say that I am not particularly religious although I firmly believe in some form of creation by a power greater than the ordinary humans who attempt to be the self-appointed mouthpieces of whichever "God" they believe in. I will also say, for the sake of honesty, that I have actually read the Bible thirteen times "kiver to kiver"  as the Old Regular Baptist preachers I knew in my youth used to recommend. Additionally, I have read major sections of the basic texts of several other world religions and was blessed to know a man named Dr. Billy Rojas, Ph. D. in my youth who was a history professor at Alice Lloyd College and used "The Portable World Bible" as a supplementary text in every course he taught in order to help his students understand that various religions have greatly influenced world  history over the centuries and that in many cases that influence was markedly negative just as it is in America today. 

 Now that I have prefaced what else I am about to say  the remainder of what I have to say about the adverse influence a few million people like the woman who partially prompted this writing have on the general public, let's get back to the gist of what I have to say. You will also find, if you do an honest comparison of many modern translations of the Bible, that quite often those modern translations have inserted words, phrases, and meanings into the text which are in direct conflict with the older translations and the actual meaning of the original wording of the various ancient texts on which the Bible is based. As a result, it is always best to read the Bible, any version of the Bible, with a copy of "Strong's Exhaustive Concordance" nearby. And you should always recognize, admit, and accept that there were numerous writers of the individual books of the Bible in at least three languages, on at least two continents, and at least a few hundred years apart.  The particular quote I was thinking of in regard to the aforementioned type of deliberate alteration of the Bible is:

Second Timothy KJV 2:24-26- 24 And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, 25 In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;26 And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.

I appended that quotation to her post along with this comment "I suspect that if you are really seriously religious you should actually do what the Bible tells you to do which seems pretty rare today from most self-described "Christians". And I'm not religious at all, but I have read the Bible and understand it well enough to confront those who claim to know but don't. Actually as I said previoiusly, I have read the entire Bible, "kiver to kiver" as my ancestors used to say thirteen times but not lately, hence the need to look those verses up.  The willingness of people today to use whatever interpretation of the Bible they like (generally their own or that of someone they like better than the Bible), can be traced to TRAITOR Trump and whatever most recent bizarre, illogical, and total unsupported by fact things he has said. Over the last 9 years especially since June 16, 2015, when TRAITOR Trump announced his delusion that he believed he was fit to become the president of the United States our country has steadily deteriorated morally and ethically while the people in the forefront of that deterioration claim they are doing what they do because of their religion which they can never seem to support with the actual words of the Bible. These self-described "Christians" have become more and more influenced by the Big Lie, actually thousands of Big Lies, from TRAITOR Trump to the degree that they believe a country and a leader, in the case of Putin and Russia, which have murdered, isolated, imprisoned, and endlessly sought to destroy Christianity is actually working to help them restore Christianity all over the world.  They also deny the fact that Putin actually stole the 2016 US election in order to install his stool pigeon, the TRAITOR Trump in the White House in order to destroy America. They also claim to believe that it will happen again in 2024.  The level of willful ignorance and willful blindness on the part of these people is astonishing to me.  I have written about that aspect of it on this blog many times but this effort to aggrandize two of the most evil men on earth despite their public crimes, violation of all ten commandments, and outright murder of at least a dozen former KGB/FSB agents who were involved in the contacts between Putin and TRAITOR Trump absolutely astounds me.  

 Anyone on earth, when confronted by some self-appointed spokesperson for "God", their individual "God", should listen to that person's arguments very closely, examine them even more closely, and never accept any of their quotes and misquotes of the Bible, or any other religious text, as "Gospel" until you have verified it with a close examination of the Bible,preferably the King James Version, since it is the oldest version  currently in widespread use in America today.  And do that examination with a jaundiced eye and "Strong's Exhaustive Concordance" in hand.  probably refer to this famous quotation from the Bible, which almost no one seems to remember today,  before shooting off your mouth:  

 5And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. ⁶ But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. ⁷ But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. ⁸ Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.  (Matthew 6:5-8, KJV)

And, all of these people who claim to want to turn the United States into a "Christian Nation", especially those who claim they want to do so "because that is how it was founded" need to read some history also, accurate, factual, American History as close to the Founding Fathers as possible and realize that one of the primary reasons Americans fought for independence in the American Revolution was to end the domination of their lives by the Anglican Church, more commonly known as the Church of England, and to create a country where the practice, or lack of practice of religion of any or all kinds was solely up to the practitioner and not connected in any way to the government.  That is what is called Separation of Church and State and it was, and still is, one of the most important building blocks on which this country was built.  The fastest way to destroy democracy in America would be to allow churches, any churches, to dominate life and the government.  As soon as we force all to practice one religion over all others, or we refuse to allow anyone to practice their religion of choice, whatever that religion may be, we have begun to destroy democracy.