Go Set a Watchman

“Go Set a Watchman” seems like a peculiar title for a book, and it is - until you dig further into its meaning.

55 years after the publication of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel “To Kill a Mockingbird“ was released, Harper Lee’s sequel to “Mockingbird” was released to the public. Although “Go Set a Watchman” was actually written before the other more famous novel, it was only recently discovered. “Watchman” was actually the first draft for “Mockingbird” , and the original document found its way into Harper Lee’s safe deposit box in Monroeville, Alabama, where it was discovered in 2011.

The time period for “To Kill a Mockingbird” are the years 1933-1935, and the locale is the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, which bears a strong resemblance to Harper Lee’s hometown of Monroeville. In the novel, Atticus Finch was appointed by Judge Taylor to defend a young black man (Tom Robinson) who was accused of raping a white woman. Finch agrees to take the case because he is convinced of Robinson’s innocence, but the young black man was convicted by the jury. He was later shot and killed while trying to escape from prison.

The title of “To Kill a Mockingbird” refers to the loss of innocence found in the novel. The paragraph titled “loss of innocence” in the article posted below provides more details on that theme:

To Kill a Mockingbird

Virtually all of us have read “Mockingbird” at some point during our scholastic careers, and in 2006, British librarians ranked the book ahead of the Bible as one that every adult should read before they die. Since its publication in 1960, “To Kill a Mockingbird” has never been out of print, and has sold over 30 million copies. It has also been translated into more than 40 languages.

“Go Set a Watchmen” is set in the 1950’s, and follows Jean Louise Finch (Scout) for a few days as she returns to her home town from New York. The title is taken from a Biblical verse, Isaiah 21:6, which reads (in the King James version):

For thus had the Lord said unto me

Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth

In many ways, the adult Jean Louise Finch parallels the life of Harper Lee, who moved to New York in 1949. A month after she found an agent in November of 1956, she received a Christmas present of one year’s wages from several of her friends, who told her to take a year off and write whatever she pleased.

“Watchman” may be disturbing to some folks because it reveals the fact that Atticus Finch may not be the noble man that was evident in “To Kill a Mockingbird” . This is what he had to say in “Watchman”:

“Now think about this. What would happen if all the Negroes in the south were suddenly given full civil rights?. I’ll tell you. There’d be another reconstruction. Would you want your state governments run by people who don’t know how to run ‘em?”

Scout’s crazy uncle, Dr. Jack Finch, manages to tie the two books together with a quote toward the end of the latest novel:

“Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience”

Although Atticus Finch may have had the same feelings towards black people as his contemporaries, his conscience compelled him to defend a man who he firmly believed was innocent.

Bear in mind that the mid 1950’s saw the early beginnings of the civil rights era. Brown vs. the Board of Education was settled in 1954, and Rosa Parks’ action on a Montgomery bus, as well as the murder of Emmett Till, both occurred in 1955. Two years later, the “Little Rock 9”incident eventually caused President Eisenhower to federalize the Arkansas National Guard, taking control of the organization away from Governor Orval Faubus.

Starting with the integration of the Armed Services during WWII, the “civil rights era” also led to the third (and current) version of the Ku Klux Klan, which is now led by a Baptist minister.

The civil rights era has resulted in some very dramatic political changes in Southern states, which were solidly Democratic institutions almost since the end of the Civil War. Richard Nixon exploited the shift in attitude with his “southern strategy”, and the southern states have been solidly red ever since. The Tea Party movement has caused the Republican Party to move more towards extremism, which is very evident in the Republican Presidential candidates.

There are a lot or crazy politicians in office today, and there are also a lot of crazy voters, as evidenced by the fact that 23 million Republicans still believe that President Obama is actually a Muslim. However, the wisdom of both of Harper Lee’s novels should provide a ray of hope for our country, since there are still enough rational people in this country with a conscience who will prevent the truly crazy people from taking total control of the country.

I’m in the full agreement with President Obama when he recently said that Donald Trump would never be elected President because “he has faith in the American people”.

Although Jean Louise Finch may have been disappointed in her elderly father’s attitudes, she also would feel that the American people, despite our faults, will still make the right decision in November - because our watchmen are set in place.

(Editors note: The morning after this article was published, Harper Lee died in her sleep on the morning of February 19, 2016. I'm generally not a believer in coincidences, but her passing a day after this article was published seems a little eerie to me. At the time of her death, Ms. Lee was earning $3 million a year in royalties from "To Kill a Mockingbird", which gave her a net worth of $35 million. It is estimated that "Watchman" will increase that amount by $10 million).

School days

Apart from the fact that being a substitute teacher pays pretty well, the BIG advantage in continuing to work after the “normal” retirement age of 65 is that I frequently learn some interesting facts that I was not aware of previously.

Lat Friday, I supervised a media/communication class at a local high school. One of the class assignments was to read a short poem called “hangman”, and write a few paragraphs about the story.

The poem in question was written by a man named Maurice Ogden in 1951, right near the peak of the McCarthy era. Although “tail gunner Joe” is not mentioned in the poem, it’s entirely possible that it was an attack on McCarthyism, since the first use of the term “McCarthyism” appeared about a year earlier.

The poem can be read in its entirely at the link below:

the hangman poem

When I was still in high school (a LONG time ago) Peter, Paul & Mary released an album titled “See What Tomorrow Brings”. “Hangman” was the first song on side two of the album (remember those?), and you can listen to it again by clicking on the link below:

Peter, Paul and Mary in their younger days

Mixed in with the copies of the poem on the teacher’s desk was a printed copy of a speech recently given by retired Air Force Col Tom Moe, and brought to us (oddly enough) by the campaign committee of Republican John Kasich. The speech is loosely based on an article by anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemoller in 1946.

When you listen to Col. Moe’s speech at the link below, you’ll realize that history is, indeed, repeating itself. I’m of the opinion that NONE of the Republican candidates for the Presidency are qualified for the job, but Donald J. Trump would be the absolute WORST choice.

Col. Tom Moe

Be sure to vote in November.

Happy New Year - again and again and again

Although it seems like we celebrated the start of the New Year of 2016 a long time ago, it’s only been a little more than a month since we rang in the New Year. We continued our tradition of NOT staying up long enough to see the ball drop in Times Square, but we started a NEW tradition of celebrating the New Year in Mesa with my wife’s sisters and their husbands.

As you are probably aware, our celebration on January 1 is merely the start of MANY New Year celebrations throughout the year. The link below will provide more details on what they are:

New Year celebrations throughout the year

Next Monday starts the celebration of the Chinese New Year. In China, 2016 is the year of the monkey, and the characteristics of folks who were born in the year of the monkey can be found in the link below:

the Chinese New Year

I’m not entirely comfortable with the fact that I was born during the year of the pig, but since pigs are “honorable, philanthropic, determined, optimistic, sincere, and sociable”, I guess that I really can’t complain.

One of the most popular articles that I have ever published (with nearly 5000 “hits” so far) is a story that I published 5 years ago - in Chinese. If you’d like to take a look, just click on the link below:

what Google Translate can do for you

If you’d like to say “Happy New Year” in Chinese, the video below can be of help:

speak like a native

All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten

Thirty years ago, Robert Fulghum published the delightful book that is listed above. It is a fairly short book (219 pages) that reminds us that all those things that we now reminisce about as adults are actually more important that we give them credit for. (Yes, the 1950’s were a pretty good time to be a kid).

Although I agree with the author’s basic premise, I could also add that all that I really need to know I learned from the comics.

When I was a kid, my favorite part of the paper was the comic strips, and that is still true today. The majority of them make us laugh or smile, but a select few also make us think.

Editorial cartoons have existed since the early part of the 18the century, when William Hogarth first published them in England. Despite rumors to the contrary, he did NOT live in Hogwart’s castle.

On occasion, the comic strip page would include a strip that included stories that might as well be called an editorial cartoon. The Pogo comic strip (written by Walt Kelly) first appeared in 1948, and was published until 1975 (2 years after Kelly’s death). Kelly’s best known strip included the phrase shown at the link below

Five years before Pogo faded away into history, Garry Trudeau published the first Doonesbuy cartoon, and it has been running ever since. Over the years, Trudeau has won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize foe Editorial Cartooning in 1975. Although the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartoon has been awarded since 1922, Trudeau’s award in 1975 was the first time that the Prize was given to a strip comic rather than to a comic that was printed on the editorial page. Trudeau was also nominated for the same prize in 1990, 2004, and 2005.

When we lived in the Chicago area, I thoroughly enjoyed the editorial cartoons of Jeff McNally, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartoon in 1972, 1978, and 1985. Now that we live in Arizona, I enjoy the cartoons of Steve Benson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartoon in 1993, He was also nominated for the Prize in 1984, 1989, 1992, and 1994. He has also served as the President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, and his cartoons have been collected in a number of books.

The editorial comic that he published in this morning’s Arizona Republic highlighted a political problem that happens far too often in our country.

Lead pipes, like the ones found in Flint, are fairly common in this country. Since replacing all those lead pipes would be expensive, cities add chemicals to the water flowing through them to prevent the plumbing from corroding and leaching lead and other dangerous metals into drinking water. In order to save money, the officials in Flint ( a predominantly poor and black city of 100,000 people that prospered for a number of years from its association with the automotive industry) didn’t do that, and they also committed serious errors at ever level of government.

Although Flint had been getting its water from Detroit, the city started drawing water from the Flint River in 2014. The REASON that Flint needed to save money is that Governor Rick Snyder pushed through a large corporate tax break in 2011, Like many Republican governors, he operates under the assumption that tax breaks to corporations stimulate economic activity, despite overwhelming evidence that they don’t.

Flint’s switch to a different water supply quickly led to the poisoning of drinking water for 30,000 households, which includes 10,000 children under the age of 6, who are especially vulnerable to the effects of lead. The problems in Flint, of course, will be solved, and by a very familiar source - the Democrats.

Cher recently donated 180,000 bottles of water to the city, but a more permanent solution came from a higher level, when President Obama (who 23,000,000 Republicans still think is a Muslim) recently signed an emergency declaration for the state of Michigan, which will clear the way for federal aid to help resolve the water crisis.

The situation in Flint proves, once again, that black lives DO matter, but you’ve never going to hear that from Donald Trump and the other members of the Republican clown car. Remember that fact the next time you vote.

My dad was a farmer

He was born on a farm in the small farming community of Hastings, Minnesota in 1909. His dad, an Irish immigrant, was also a farmer, and so was his brother.

downtown Hastings

When dad was 11 years old, his mother passed away, which forced his father to raise his 2 sons and 5 daughters by himself.

When dad was 20 years old, his dad died of a heart attack, just a few months before the start of the Great Depression. Dad and his brother Clem bravely kept the farm going, but the bombing of Pearl Harbor inspired dad to join the Army in 1942, shortly after his 33rd birthday.

Clem and his young bride Miriam kept the farm going for another 20 years of so, before shifting into semi-retirement in the small town of Forest Lake, Minnesota.

The year that dad was born was considered to be the Golden Era of farming in the United States. The vast majority of the workers in America earned their living as farmers, and most of them were considered prosperous. The number of family farms in America peaked at 6.4 million in 1910, but has dropped dramatically since that time. Today, there are only about 2,000,000 farms in America, and many of them are no longer family farms.

An article in this morning’s Chicago Tribune highlighted the problems facing a particular type of farmer, the cranberry farmer of the Midwest, primarily those in Wisconsin.

Cranberry prices, due in part to over-production, are now at their lowest level since 1959, the year of the “great cranberry scare” . It costs about $30 to produce a 100 pound barrel of cranberries, but retail prices are now hovering around $8 a barrel, a steep drop from the $40 a barrel they were selling for just 5 years ago.

The salvation of the cranberry farms lies in two unlikely sources: insurance companies and exports.

Large life insurance companies (like John Hancock of Boston) have agricultural investment groups. The returns from those agricultural groups have averaged 14 percent over the last decade, nearly twice the return on investments in the Standard and Poor 500 list.

The average American eats about 2 pounds of cranberries a year, primarily during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. That amount has remained unchanged for more than a decade. However, more than 30% of our cranberry production is now exported, and China is now the fasting growing market for our cranberries.

Roughly 4 years after his death, Paul Harvey reminded us (in a 2013 Dodge Superbowl commercial) that God made a farmer. It’s worth watching again, and it may bring a tear to your eye.

Paul Harvey's News & Comment - So God Made a Farmer (The original story) - Bing video

 Best 2013 SuperBowl Commercial: God Made A Farmer Dodge Trucks - Bing video



Farming is not an easy life, but the blood, sweat and tears that are needed to sustain a farm also enable the folks that “bust the sod” to lead long lives. My dad lived to be 85 years old, and his younger brother lived to be 87. My dad never had any buildings named after him, he never held political office, and he really never made a pile of money. Although he was known for a lot of years simply as “Larry the mailman”, deep down he never really changed, and I’m proud to say what he was.

My dad was a farmer.

It came upon the midnight clear

Christmas is traditionally a season of joy, which we are constantly reminded of by several dozen well known songs that we hear every year - over and over again.

One of the songs that many people call their favorite is a poem that was first published in the Christian Register in Boston on December 29, 1849. It was composed by a Unitarian minister named Edmund Sears, not long after he suffered a nervous breakdown from overwork.

The year before he wrote the song, a “people’s revolution” racked Europe, fueled by some of the same issues that caused the Arab Spring revolution in 2011. Early in the same year (1848) the United States concluded its war with Mexico, which greatly expanded the borders of the United States.

Due to his personal problems, as well as his concerns about he felt was general chaos in the world, Edmund Sears was a very melancholy man, since he felt that the world was no longer hearing the Christmas message.

Over the years, the song has been performed by hundreds of performers, and it’s been paired with two different melodies, either “Carol” in the Untied States or “Noel” in the United Kingdom. One of my favorites is the version that was performed by Bing Crosby many years ago:

let’s listen to Bing again

If you’ve ever watched “The Newsroom”, starring Jeff Daniels (as Will McAvoy) you may remember his rant where he reminds us that America only leads the world in 3 areas - number of incarcerated citizens per capita, defense spending, and number of adults who believe that angels are real.

As usual, “Will McAvoy” is right on the money, since a recent Associated Press poll found that 77 percent of the adults in our country believe that angels are real. Surprisingly, even a healthy percentage of the people who don’t consider themselves religious still believe that angels are real.

Despite his melancholy, Edmund Sears ended his poem on a note of optimism, as evidenced by the last paragraph in the original version:

For Lo! , the days are hastening on

By prophet bards foretold

When with the ever-encircling years

Comes round the age of gold

When peace shall over all the earth

Its ancient splendors fling

And the whole world give back the song

Which now the angels sing

Edmund Sears was absolutely correct in his belief that the world is no longer hearing the Christmas message. Most of us have long felt that Christmas has been too focused on the commercial side of the holiday, and we look with horror at the ever expanding “Black Friday” shopping hours. For once, let’s tune out all the holiday madness, and let’s just listen to the angels sing.

Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn

When “Gone With The Wind” was released on December 15, 1939, Clark Gable shocked theater audiences when he uttered the phrase above to co-star Vivian Leigh, just before he turned and walked into the mist in Atlanta.

closing scene to Gone With the Wind

The film earned 12 Academy Awards at the 12th Academy Awards, and when adjusted for monetary inflation, it is STILL the most successful film in movie history.

Since “Gone With The Wind” was released, public conversation has become significantly courser, both in real life, and in the movies. It’s difficult to watch a movie, or walk through a modern high school, without hearing the “f bomb” dropped on a regular basis. I’ve occasionally reminded some of the students that I teach that really, really stupid people use a lot of profanity, and intelligent people don’t.

My mother-in-law was always concerned about what people thought of her, a mid-1950’’s mindset that contributed greatly to the idea of “keeping up with the Joneses”, and is still very prevalent today among the more conservative members of our society (some of whom sincerely believe that gay marriage causes hurricanes).

In order to remain calm and un-stressed, it’s important to not be overly concerned about what people think about you, or to worry too much about things that are difficult to control (like trying to keep high school students off their phones during class time.)

The best way to do that is to adopt the elegant art of not giving a s**t, and the link below provides more information on that very important attitude.

how to stay calm

There IS a time for profanity in our lives, as long as it is used appropriately. Few of us would hit your thumb with a hammer and just say “darn”, since a stronger word would be more appropriate.

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was no stranger to cuss words, and he actually used the word “nigger” more than 200 times in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. However, he also was aware of the need to use profanity sparingly, and only in appropriate situations.

His wife, (born Olivia Langdon) came from a wealthy East Coast family, who raised her to be a prim and proper lady. On occasion, she would let loose with a string of profanity after her marriage to Samuel Clemens, who would usually remind her that she “might have the words, but doesn’t have the music”.

When it was virtually unheard of to use profanity on the screen, Gable’s use of the word “damn” on the screen provided a perfect ending to a movie that carefully documented the horrors of the Civil War. If the movie were remade today, and Gable used the slightly stronger, “frankly, my dear, I don’t give a s**t”, the ending would actually seem a little silly.

In many ways, “the good old days” WERE better in at least some ways. However, as we are reminded almost daily by our chief buffoon, Donald Trump, the days of polite public conversation have, quire literally, gone with the wind.