Mr. Trump and Veterans

#1762

July 24, 2015

Mr. Trump and Veterans

“From the Halls of Montezuma

To the shores of Tripoli

We fight our country’s battles

In the air, on land, and sea”

The Marine’s Hymn

America’s Veterans need to believe in Donald Trump, Our needs, to date, have been ignored by the power brokers in D.C. and elsewhere. 

Republicans thinking they might win in “16” have rolled out “16” wannabes, next expect NRC to magically produce Harold Stassen for another run. 

Veterans know that V.A. just wants them to commit suicide…Suicide is much cheaper than caring for them. 

This totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected medical officer veteran, and housebound at 85, living alone is supposed to get minimal care…someone from a local agency coming by twice a week.  It has been a month since the last pretender was in the house.

There are 2000 “so called” healthcare agencies in North Carolina. There are 5 supervisors to give oversight. It is my experience that the employees of these agencies have little or no training. It is a blind man’s house…like a candy store…stealing and doing nothing except talking on their cell phones.  I have been in a battle with cancer for many years, one stole my pain medicine, money, and food surely the agency that sent these people could come by and clean up behind them. 

Mr. Trump, my situation is no different from many others.  V.A. never gave me a white cane, not one minute of rehabilitation.

I refuse to be a victim but, the world should know this…before I leave it.  I was born in poverty on a dirt road, no power, no phone, no water lines.  From a small, poor, country school, 13 in my graduating class I went on to work my way through 8 years of professional training, jumping through all the hoops so I could serve as doctor in an army hospital. They took away my future, my security, now my dignity.  It is a cold-dark-lonely world. 

Mr. Trump, Having served on the staff of army hospitals, maneuvered through veteran’s hospitals it is all a matter of government controls without controls.  Most of the employees of the V.A., be V.A. and, indeed, government in general they simply don’t care. It is a matter of just going through the motions… just two things in mind for most employees how little can I get by with, and, retirement.   

Dr. T.R. Morris

Lt. Col USA Retired
Blind/Dictated

   

Problems & Solutions

#1760

"Open my eyes, that I may see. Glimpses of truth, thou hast for me."

Scatty, cold breath of mentality on the neck. We often project solutions before we understand the problem. Boundaries of all problems have solutions built on eternal values, values already established in Gods answer book, God's word, the holy Bible. One-third of early Americans landing on American soil died from Malaria. They did not know how to handle this disease caused by a small mosquito, Plasmodium Vivax. It is of historical note that most European missionaries seeking to bring Africa to the cross, died from malaria. Many died before they got off the ship, in which they were traveling from Europe to Africa... such a dreadful all consuming disease. Yet, twenty-first century, with a bottomless ocean of technology and chemicals (treatment and cures,) thousands of Africans still die every year from Malaria... when mosquito netting is so cheap, when pesticides are so available. After all, we are not living in a century when 50,000 in London died of the bubonic plague, simply because they didn't know how to handle the fleas on rats. After all, we are not living in a century such as the American Civil War, when 50% of all wounded soldiers died, simply because the doctors did not have sense enough to wash their hands. The greatest cause of disease distribution in the world, civilized or not, are the valuable instruments we find at the ends of our arms... hands with fingers. Hands which hold the dirtiest, germ infested,  much loved, fiat paper money, are holding next, food, which you are putting in your mouth and shaking hands with someone whose hands have been god knows where. We as mortal-mental human beings given by god the brain wiring to think and make decisions, do not have sense enough to control our hands, to wash and keep them clean, as germ free as possible. Microscopic hitch-hikers get into the bloodstream so easily. We have two thousand miles of blood vessels, nourishing every tissue, including the largest organ of the body... the skin. Those of us who study the human body, if we have enough intelligence to do so, marvel that any of us survive. Our institutions of biological sciences have become ivy towered cathedrals of gastrulating manipulation, a wonderland of investigation. Just enough human integrity to pick the pockets of endowment funds, foundations, government grants. Most medical scientists can not get their heads out of the clouds, of complex knowledge, to bring themselves and their patients to a level of common knowledge. When was the last time your doctor asked you about what you eat? The two things that determine health are nutrition and exercise. When was the last time your doctor actually touched you? Most of today's young health professionals can only use their fingers on a computer keyboard... without laboratory studies of your body, they know nothing. This writer has learned, personally, that going to a physicians assistant (PA) you get a better examination and concerned treatment, than you do from "the robber" in the white coat. Most old cemeteries are filled with graves of those who inherited European diseases. The true epidemics of yellow fever, influenza (the early 20th century,) erased entire families and communities from the earth. I'm old enough to remember my grandmothers description of the flu epidemic of 1918. When a family member would start coughing, others in the community still able to work, would start building a coffin. From the old sawmills, used to saw the lumber, for the building of homes and barns (put together with wood pegs.) Wide boards would be "seasoned" to use as coffins. This is what our ancestors endured to build this great nation, which atheists-liberal idea logs are so easily destroying. My progressive friends promote the idea of destroying America because of bad treatment to native Americans. They build hospitals for turtles, rehabilitation for birds, but do not even whimper at the destruction of millions of human babies. Then, to further verify their deity antagonism, they talk of the slaughter of the old testament. The seven civilizations in the "promised land," when the Jews crossed over the Jordan River on dry land, were pagan, sacrificing their own babies in fire to their pagan gods. Have things really changed? Would an aborted baby rather have life sucked from him, or quick immolation. Life and love are essential to healing. God is a great physician, "for I am the Lord who healeth thee..." (Exodus 15:26)

            The Christian should be so ready at the Lords table, to take bread for healing, wine for forgiving. Jews do not read Isaiah 53, it is a precious message for the Christian, written 700 years before the birth of Christ. If god does not choose to heal, "and by his stripes we were healed," (1 Peter 2:24) healed now or later, "Jesus paid it all." In my youth, everything was prosthetic, now I'm living in it. Many times I viewed the "awful" instruments used in surgery and obstetrics, on display in the medical library in chapel hill. It was hard for me to conceive the mental trauma involved, both from the doctor and patient. Yet, with all the advances in knowledge, seeking solutions, have we lost sight of the problem. There are still as many warriors killed from disease as are killed in battle, more soldiers die from suicide then die in battle. More young people die in car crashes and from "exciting" designer drugs, than live to make a better world for everyone. Knowing the value of life, knowing today's opportunities, why do young people seek destruction? If only this writer, from poverty-very poor preparation for anything, could have had a college grant, computer, good diet, maybe I could have made something of myself. No, it is not what we can do with self, as the great prince of preachers Spurgeon said, "anything that makes a man get down on his knees to god, is gain to him." There are those who live in virtual worlds, but we live in a very real world. Jesus, God-man, put on a tent of human flesh and dwelled among us... send us. "If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?" (John 3:12-17)

            In the countless years of my life, as I look at the political and spiritual condition of the world, man has been more interested in the politicians platform than the pastoral pool pit. More interested in what God can do for him, than what he can do for God. We, mortal men, want God in our image instead of our being in the image of God. Now, does the solution to the problem become more evident. We have tried to put the plow before the horse, solution before realizing the problem... same problem, same solution for thousands of years. 

Motives Matter

#1754

“A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others.”

-Charles Darwin

In other articles this writer has talked about the years of work involved getting his eight years of professional university education… working at night, going to class during the day. Now an old man, I remember how I would run from job to class.

During my years in Memphis, one of my jobs, selling pre-need burial plots in the large Forest Hills Cemetery (this is a large cemetery near Graceland where Elvis was placed before moving him to his home.)

After church, every Sunday, when I went to the cemetery to show property, I would notice one woman, rain or shine sitting on a bench near one tombstone. She was always there in the rain holding an umbrella. I finally went over to her and asked her if I could help her in some way. I saw the tombstone, a man’s name, his military rank, and the day he was killed in World War II. She said, “I come out and spend every Sunday with him.” I said, in my student activities in the VA hospital in Millington, “Why don’t you go out to Millington VA and tell them you would like to visit with the veteran there.” So many of them do not get visitors there and they would be so happy to see you.” I notice that I did not see her at the cemetery the next Sunday. The next time I was at Millington, I ran into her. She told me that she had never been so busy, all of her time from her job, volunteering with the veterans from that hospital. Most of us spend our lives wishing we had pure motives in dealing with others. There’s not much we can do for the dead, only the living. I have spent far too much time in my life wondering if god is keeping an account with those who had impure motives towards me. The fact that I know almost without hesitation that everyone wants a piece of the blind man… just how far they can get their hands down his pockets. It would be so good to have contact with a few who have pure motives.

For many years I would go to the local YMCA every day, for a workout. I needed the exercise as well as the contact with other people. It got to the place to where the YMCA did everything possible to keep the disabled away from the facility… made everything just as difficult as possible. For instance, they put push button security systems on every door. A blind person cannot operate these systems just as much as a blind person cannot operate a cell phone (AT&T and other cell phone corporations do not care about the blind people either.) I would have to wait for someone to go in and out of a door or beat on a door with my cane. As a local restaurant owner told me one time, “we don’t want disabled people, they make normal people feel uncomfortable.” One of the very few times I reported this discrimination-bigotry-injustice to the U.s justice department, Americans with Disabilities Act, they actually took action. They sent a lawyer down for a hearing. Totally blind, I did not know who was in the room besides me and the lawyer, but I do know that the “Y” was well represented. I heard one of the trustees (a political appointment) say, “If Dr. Morris will not go to the media about this, and we will make changes of our treatment of the disabled.” Of course, nothing was changed and I lost my membership. 

What I should have done was fix me a sign about the “Y’s” treatment of the disabled and protested out in front of the building, so the news media and everyone else could find out about it. You see, those good people “do-gooders,” who had established the YMCA had good motives… helping people. Now, the YMCA, hospitals, civic clubs, tax exempt charitable groups and much to my sorrow, I must say, most churches have become just concerned-MOTIVATED by their bottom line. They are no longer motivated by a god given desire to do good, for the sake of goodness. Our world is filled with people who cannot know the joy, an internal “neurology” which gives smiles and pleasures… the knowledge that you have done something good for someone without expecting anything in return. In that same room in the VA hospital in Millington, where four WW2 veterans who had lost their arms and their legs… All four were on special beds, just trunks with a head. Now, they could not ever in their remaining life, do anything for anyone. They had given their arms and legs for their country. I don’t know of a family who would be able to care for someone in that condition. One can easily understand why in their despondency-helplessness, they did not live very long. It is much the same way with our friends and family members who spend their last months on this earth in a nursing home. Most do not live very long after going to a nursing home and their government and their families are so afraid that they will live and continue to take precious money. Most people I have known reared in foster homes or children’s homes (one time called orphanages,) the children called inmates, have had a far different outlook on life. They felt there was very little love or genuine motivation in their care and development.

“Motives Matter,” teachers at the school house, church members at the church house, doctors/nurses/lawyers or even volunteers anywhere. Even at your job, you do what you do, with purity so that you can enjoy the words of noble thinking. 

Rainmaker of Liberty

(A Veteran's Day Tribute)

"Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." - Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

This old veteran, old warrior (84), was chosen by God, not only for salvation, but to see the world... a world for which men have fought and died.

Ancient pagans as well as terrorists of the 21st century, axis powers of evil (Nazi and Asian Armies of WW2), and even the progressive Atheist in America, all think that the smoke from warfare, the sounds from warfare, have put so much smoke in God's eyes that he cannot see the horrors of war, that he has not turned up his hearing aid so he can hear the horrors of war. Men have always lived in a world where breeds of badness move in. Explaining the horrors of war is like explaining red to someone who is colorblind. And yet, we expect our young, sensitive children to return from war unscathed after having seen their best friends picked up piece by piece on the battlefield. There are more suicides among veterans than any other group of Americans. Across America, more people die from suicide than from car crashes... most of these are veterans. In the state of Oregon, where suicide is legal, over 1,000 people buy the suicide packets of prescription drugs each year. The suicide promotion campaign in America is called "Compassionate Choices".

Studying the history of wars, I have found that most start because people and nations are trapped by acceptance, sometimes without question, of the value system of others. In warfare, we invest in the enemy, strengths which they do not possess: 

16 And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him; and his righteousness, it sustained him. - Isaiah 59:16 King James Version (KJV)

In warfare, as in daily life, we often forget the real, thinking only of appearance. Pride is the beginning of every sin, nation or individual. Satan laughs when we plan, trembles when we pray. As we find in this marvelous verse Isaiah 59:16, God must "WONDER" why mankind, especially believing Christians, do not use the awesome power of prayer. All of my long life, I have heard people talk about "they and us". We are so afraid of the "theys" of this world. The "theys" are the tears which God sowed amongst the wheat... the weeds, destructive sinful forces of the world. I still remember the day my Daddy showed me the root structure of a weed... how it would choke the good plant. Many of us saw the destruction of weeds-munitions of warfare. AND, many, those who did not give the supreme sacrifice, came back to live with warfare. 

My Daddy's brother, called to the war in WW2, left a young wife on their farm. I can still see she and her younger sister hitching up the mules, bringing in the harvest; corn, beans, cotton. He was gone to war, there was no one else to do it. After the war, as well as while he was in the war, she worked in a hospital. Coming home, he, a disabled veteran, laying at home, she would take her lunch hour from the hospital and go home to feed him... get him to the bathroom etc.

To the uninitiated, everything is obscure, even war, even the Democratic way of life. In one of Stalin's Five Year Plans, Joseph Stalin, who slaughtered 50 Million fellow Russians to establish Communism, was at a Farmer's house on one of his trips through Russia, the farmer complained of controls, government regulations. Stalin said to the farmer, "Bring me one of your chickens." He took the chicken, jerking out all the chicken's feathers, then threw the chicken on the floor. The dazed-bloody chicken began to wobble around. Stalin said to the farmer, "Watch." In his hands, Stalin offered the chicken some grains of corn. The chicken gratefully ate the corn from Stalin's hand. The Russians, Chinese, Cubans, others, have fought for this way of life! This writer was asked to speak at an old veteran's funeral, I had known this truck driver for many years, a committed Christian, who left Christian tracts, a printed Christian message of salvation, across the Nation. The funeral was at Saint's Delight Holiness Church, a very large white clapboard church in a tremendous grove of oak trees out in the country. The church and the yard were filled with a tremendous crowd. I remember saying, unlike the person in the Jefferson Starship song, popular on the radio at that time, "This fine veteran knew from where he came, what he was fighting for in the south pacific."

When our Blessed Lord was laid in a cold, dark tomb, the enemy rolled a great stone and placed a seal. They paid soldiers with money to guard, making sure he would not escape. You see, often unbelievers know more than believers. His disciples, even his friends, were surprised at his resurrection... that first Easter morning. Even after the large sums of money paid the guards, pessimists-Atheists have said that the guards were asleep, certain death awaited any Roman soldier who slept while on guard duty. 

Many of us remember how little soldiers were paid in historic wars. Many of us remember the "pounding" of preachers (church-members bringing food for the pastor). Defending our Christian-Democratic way of life today, too many preachers on the golf courses, too many warriors using robots... and we think we will stay free. God's greatest gift, our redemption through his son, REAL liberty.

Living close to my own beach house (Wrightsville Beach, NC), my accountant and his wife were dog-sitting for his sister in their beach home. My accountant, graduate of the Naval Academy, retired naval officer, one of the finest men I have ever known. The dog acted up, Jane took the dog outside, a distraught woman ran down their pier. A woman had fallen into the sound near the ocean from their boat. My accountant, Michael Brown, grabbed his flashlight, at age 67, ran down to his kayak and went paddling out into the water, searching. Law enforcement rescuers had not arrived. The tide was moving out. Michael, almost totally deaf, with his flashlight, spotted the floating body. He could not get her into his kayak, but jumped in the water and swum to the shore with her. After the rescuers got there, she was revived and is still alive. GOOD NEWS, THERE ARE STILL REAL MEN WHO MAKE REAL DECISIONS.

Drop the Rock

"Drop the Rock"

Matthew 5:44 - But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

            During my long years of training and education in Memphis, Tennessee, some of my work was at the veteran's hospital at Millington.  In one room was four WWII veterans without arms or legs... just human beings with trunks and heads.  Of course, they were on special beds with specially trained nurses caring for them.  Men in this condition do not live long. 

            Veterans who are amputees, cripple, deaf, blind, know what they have given to their country.  I get so sick when I hear the pabulum about care for veterans.  Most veterans know they receive very little care.  Patriotism, like Christianity, is mostly talk.  This old blind veteran never even received a white cane from the Veteran Administration. 

            One preacher, seminary professor, said he had his students go to the cemetery and preach to the tombstones.  By doing this they knew what it was all about.  Some of the most impoverished people I have ever known, in my world travels, were missionaries on the foreign fields.  Of course with electronics all over the world, missionary zeal is different from hundreds of years ago.  Yet, it takes real courage to give your life for the cause of Christ among people who hate you, who do not in any way understand you.  Only those who have endured criticism in a home church or home community, could ever endure what might happen on the mission field. 

            Perhaps my favorite Psalm is Psalm 84, when David speaks of mountains and valleys.  I have written at length about one verse in the Psalm which changed my life.  Psalm 84:5 "Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee."  The race is mine, but in no way could I have engaged in the trials of life without realizing my strength comes from God.

            In my car, often at traffic lights, a car will come near me with the radio blasting or someone will walk down the sidewalk with a boom box blaring.  We can understand people who have this much ferocious noise around them have no tranquility of spirit.  In my years of selling bibles, door-to-door, in the summer, windows open, babies and old people unable to escape the noise inside the building.  There was no mystery to me about the depletion of all joys in the lives of some.  How could they have joy, solitude in living amid the clang, clatter, awful words in music which was always too loud for man or beast?  Just imagine a young, newborn baby, growing up amid such violent noise.  We should be surprised that many young people from many of these ghetto homes turn out as well as they do.  Yet, I have heard adults say they forgive their parents and siblings for the turmoil of their surroundings. 

            The most ecstatically happy person in the room when a child is born is the mother of the newborn baby.  She knows the pain of childbirth.  It took me a long time to discover why so many evangelists became preachers.  They had experienced the pain which sin brings and want to celebrate their deliverance. 

            The only time we find Jesus writing anything, he was in the outer court of the temple.  Some male religionists brought a woman to him caught in the very act of adultery.  (John 8: 3-11)  Of course, mosaic law demanded she be stoned to death.  There were so many stones-rocks in the holy land.  On three of the times I was there, in Capernaum, still mostly rocks, I thought that surely Jesus must of sat on some of these rocks.  I remember rock piles near the Muslim homes.  They still throw rocks at the Jews and Christians.  In a day of cell phones, newsprint and news broadcasts, there is not much need for the throwing of rocks.  It is also strange the man caught with the woman in the adultery was never mentioned.  Jesus said to these religious people, just as he would say to many of us who have been judgmental and hypocritical in our evaluation of others, "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone."

            The greatest deliverance in Christianity, forgiveness.  We must forgive because our fellow human beings are made in the image of God.  We must forgive because our we do not realize the baggage that some fellow human beings carry around.  We must forgive because God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven us.  In the disciples' prayer, where Jesus taught us to pray, he said, "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. "  (Matthew 6:12)  How can we expect forgiveness if we can't forgive?  I truly believe Jesus should have added to this prayer, "we should not put trespasses or temptations into the paths of others."  It is so necessary to start out each day asking God to keep Satan and his temptations away from us.

            I still remember the day our school principal held up a white piece of paper with one small black dot on the paper.  He said, "What do you see?"  Everyone said, "A dot on a piece of paper."  He was trying to squelch a rumor going around the school about a certain student.  The popular student had a perfect record in every area of life.  Someone was attempting to make one dot soil that record.

            In a day where the best seller is the worst smeller, when it is politically correct to excuse all bad behavior, it is so necessary to applaud-rejoice in good behavior, especially forgiveness of sins.  (Philippians 3:20).  When we realize the truth of sins ruin and Christ's redemption we know the full joy of forgiveness, both the joy of our forgiving and the joy of others forgiveness.  Truth is truth whether anyone believes it or not.

Memorial Day 2011

My English guide and I were at the St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery, North London. We had become friends and he wanted to help me find one of my favorite poets, Francis Thompson's grave... best known for his famous line, “[love] is a many-splendored thing” from his poem The Kingdom of God. At that time, I had a shadow of vision in my left eye.

He said to me, “you will not believe what I see coming down the walk.” A cemetery employee was pulling a small three-wheeled cart on which was a coffin covered with a tattered American flag. Walking behind the cart was a Catholic priest, along with a very frail woman in a wheelchair, being pushed by,evidently, the driver of the vehicle which had brought them there. This was the extent of the funeral cortege.

Earlier, we had almost walked into a freshly dug grave, and I spoke of the danger of such for a blind person. They stopped at the open grave and two other cemetery workers put the casket in the ground and began to fill the grave with dirt. The priest was saying some words as we walked up, he turned to us and said, “she is not very cognitive, but will appreciate your being here.” She looked at me and reached out a gloved hand, which I squeezed. I told her that I was American. She handed me the folded American flag.

The priest said they were in separate nursing homes, but had been married 50 years, he was an American veteran. You note that I said to her, “I am American.” It is like saying, “I believe God.” Many say, “I am an American” like those who say, “I believe in God.” All sorts of people believe in God, even the devil; many American citizens, traitors, say “I am an American”, but when you say “I am American”, you believe this country, just as you believe God. When you believe this country, you believe all the history, the patriots who made this country.

I sold that old, tattered flag many years ago, along with several other 48-star flags I owned. I do remember that on the hoist edge of the flag was written these words, “Battle Flag, December 1944”. This flag was possibly flown during the Battle of the Bulge. You will note that there was nothing pertaining to veterans or the military at this grave service. Like so many WWII veterans, they had probably met in London after the war, and he stayed there. But, he probably wanted his casket covered with the American flag, it still meant something to him (and her).

On this Memorial Day, we think of the 126,000 buried on foreign soil (not in a casket, just wrapped in an American flag), the thousands buried in Arlington and other national cemeteries. They believed America and would be dumbfounded to see what has happened to their country. Until Korea, most of the fallen were buried on foreign soil. I stood at the great national cemetery in Manila where 18,000 are buried, and on the 25^th anniversary of D-Day, I stood at Normandy at that great cemetery there. What a waste! What a expenditure of life: 50,000 in Korea, frozen bodies stacked like cord wood; 58,000 killed in Vietnam.

I was still in the hospital from the Korean era, when the Vietnam tragedy was going on, I still remember the screams of the woman across the street from me when her son's casket was brought into her home on his “return” from Vietnam. We have a tendency to forget the civilian tragedy of war, on both sides. Even today, while several wars are going on, drones overhead dropping bombs, missiles being fired from oceans as well as from “the enemy's” homeland...do not forget the children who will never recover from the sights and sounds of warfare, children on both sides, in the clutches of man's inhumanity to man.

Never forget that many prosper from the greed of war, fortunes have been made from war. The veteran caught in the dilemma of warfare, the one who survives...blind, crippled, sown back together, is the blessed survivor; those in the soil are the heroes. Many of us worked very hard, while others were having a good time, to get the schooling necessary to sufficiently serve our country...doctors, engineers, weapons/utilities experts. Disabled, we give up everything, accept the patriot's zeal.

The tumult and the shouting dies—
The Captains and the Kings depart—
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
Recessional – Rudyard Kipling (1897)

Edward Pedigo, Veteran

Over the years, I have written many articles about veterans, have written many letters to government officials, Congress, etc. about veterans. As a well-known veteran, Dick Carter, said to me before he died, “Tom, you are just wasting your time. People don't care.” I may be wasting my time, writing and speaking, trying to change the world, but I refuse to let the world change me.

Nelle Harper Lee only wrote one published book, To Kill A Mockingbird, but it has had a greater influence on American society than perhaps any other book written in America. The most memorable line in the book, to this writer, said by an old black man sitting outside of the courthouse, “we have reached the place that only children cry.”

This 100% disabled, service-connected, totally blind veteran's eyes often weep in the middle of the night when realizing that the country for which so many gave so much, both military and civilian, has totally changed in my lifetime. A country that became great because it was good, now has become perverse.

On this Veteran's day, I could write about the time I was at Duke University hospital directly across the street from the veteran's hospital, undergoing eye surgery after many others. It was during the Vietnam conflict, battle lines had been drawn between those who supported and those who opposed the war, particularly in the university communities of Duke and Chapel Hill. A black female nurse came into my room, told me how much she despised the military and spit in my face. Of course the Veteran's Administration did nothing, and neither did Duke University hospital. Dr. Banks Anderson Jr. assured me and my mother that it would not happen again.

I could talk about the one friend I knew who survived the Bataan Death March, the 60 mile march in 1942, in which the Japanese with brutality killed 10,000 of the 75,000 Americans and Filipinos. These prisoners of war were forced march with extreme brutality, beheading, throat-cutting, starvation were just some of the atrocities used. He told me he survived because he felt that God wanted him to have a child to leave behind in this world, and he and his wife had never had children. Later, he had two fine sons. I would be at a medical meeting, (I believe every bone in the man's body had been broken) as he would enter the meeting room, everyone knew it was him, because he always dragged his feet, trying to get around. Immediately, everyone in the room would stand, every proceeding would come to a halt, everyone knew a hero had entered the room.

In the attached commentary (#469 – Mamie) about my neighbor Mamie Pedigo, I briefly mention that her husband Edward was a veteran of WWI. I never knew him, he lived a few years after his return from the war. Mamie had given me an article which he had written from Europe to the News & Observer, Raleigh, but like many things in my house, it has evidently disappeared. Anyway, in the article, I remember that he wrote a poem in which he said that if he ever returned to the “tar heel state”, he would have to be pried from a pine tree, because he would hold onto an NC tar heel pine trees as long as he could.

Mamie gave me Ed's dictionary, picture enclosed, along with his signature. After he returned from WWI, he seldom went out of the house. A mental cripple from the war, although he never receive a dime in disability, he spent his time working in the flowerbeds in the backyard, or writing on an old type writer, stories about the war. Of course, as is the case with this writer, people do not want to know the truth. He had been in the thick of battle in France, had witnessed the horrors and devastation of war.

She said, “he has never forgiven himself for not being able to do more for the victims.” He worked for a field hospital, which at that time in history, were mostly located in shell-destroyed buildings. He spent much of his time in the basement of a large building which they had converted into a hospital, trying to patch up women and children. She said, “he has an animosity toward the neighbors and others in this town who have no idea about the horrors of war. Who, were willing to send young men to such a cauldron, horror-pit of destruction, while remaining comfortable at home, themselves. Limited by drugs and equipment, doctors and nurses, the technicians did what they could for the suffering humanity brought into the place, along with their fallen comrades.

Ed and Mamie did not have children, both were the only children of their parents, themselves. She told me that she had his casket brought back to house for the funeral, a handful of neighbors were there, a veterans groups sent some pallbearers. She was convinced, as most of us were convinced that flag-waving Americans are only affected by war if it affected them.

Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg said, “the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.” One of my uncles, WWII veteran, leaving home for the war as a child, never having been away from home before, told me of his homesickness, so many thousands of miles away. He told his commanding officer, “I will die if I cannot go home.” He was told that he could not go home, he, nor anyone else.

On this veteran's day, we remember what those living and dead have given, not only the veteran, but the family of the veteran, as I have stumbled around as a blind veteran, my attitude has been colored by remembering my old grandparents, my mother's parents, who tried to keep the family farm going while their only son was in combat in the South Pacific during WWII. There are not words on this day, or any day, that could give sufficient gratitude for this type service.

A Surprising Vision

#10

A special message from this old 100% blind veteran, who has, his entire life, lived as frugally and worked as hard, in spite of conditions, as anyone possibly could have. Yet, while the news people and the general public are celebrating all around me about the last election, and while I was working on Veteran's Day, the politicians and children are on vacation, I am guarding against the greed and and those who would take my holdings.

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” - Thomas Jefferson (1802)

Grave Robbers

#538

Grave Robbers

As a university student, I worked during the school year, in Memphis, selling pre-need cemetery property. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about death and cemeteries at this job, at one of the South's largest cemeteries. The cemetery in whose mausoleum, Elvis was interred before being moved to Graceland. Often, because of family disputes, a body was kept out at the mausoleum for a long time before burial...such was the case with Judy Garland and Kate Smith.

Cemeteries are a source of intrigue to the living. In Charles Dickens, Tale of Two Cities, Jerry Cruncher was a grave robber. None of these events in the past, compare to present day grave robbers.

The most shameful inept agency in all history is the United States Veterans Administration. It is so large and obviously so out of control. There are sixty thousand veterans living in south eastern north Carolina alone. Several Veterans Administration lawyers have been sent to prison in recent months for their part in the fraud of dead veterans families, getting their hands on the proceeds due veterans families at their death. Connie Hanson got almost five years in prison for stealing one million dollars from thirty three veterans. A patient care group has defrauded veterans out of prescriptions claiming to represent the VA, getting private information such as credit card numbers. Congressmen and Senators can act so indignant about the treatment of Americas veterans, but they do nothing to change the system. Not one penny of interest has ever been payed to a veteran when his benefits were not correct. I can speak with certainty this totally blind, 100% disabled service connected veteran, medical officer with field rank has never received anything but a hard time from the VA. Delay, deny, and hope for you to die, is the montre for this organization. And even in death, you cannot expect fair treatment. In the American experience, next to slavery, the greatest shame of this nation is its treatment of disabled veterans and handicapped citizens, and as the case anytime you appeal to any government agency, you always get back the same letter in which anyone can dictate written on expensive paper by an expensive computer and an over payed bureaucrat, “we cannot handle your particular problem, we advise you to get an attorney.”

Not until recent years, has a veteran been able to appeal to the VA with his own personal attorney.

Americans voluntarily pay their taxes...it is a voluntary tax system...you voluntarily fill out the forms and make payment. Of course, you always know that IRS has the clout and the jail cells awaiting if you do not dance to the tune in which they play. America has always depended on the patriotism of its citizens to fill the ranks of the military. More than ever, particularly for those who have served, particularly for the families of those who are buried, American young men and women are becoming less willing to put everything on line for their country...knowing full well, how little it is appreciated. Talk is cheap, and we all hear the chatter from advertisements telling how much veterans are loved.

A friend of mine, who I payed to drive me to a veterans hospital, and who witnessed my treatment at the hospital spoke of the big sign hanging in the hospital which read, “our veterans come first.” He knew what I had given up going through so many years of school so I could give care in a military hospital. He knew I had waited thirty years for a VA housing adaptation allowance. He knew that my pension had never been correct. He knew that I had been scorned by the Chief of Staff of the hospital for making a suggestion (“we are just waiting for you to die”). Over and over again, on talk radio and every other form of media the VA is scorned for ineptness. It is evident that they simply do not care...that there is no congressional oversight.

Our nation has a fascination with stars, movie stars, ball-team stars, even media stars. Millionaires who just run up and down a ball court, or who can hit a ball with a stick or club. Does the public not realize that if it were not for the men and women, mostly from poor or minority homes, who have met the challenge, and have defended this nation, there would be no room for their great financial gain and notoriety and celebrity of stars.

Do not ever confuse celebrity with accomplishment. In my long life, I have known many accomplished people whose names were never in the headlines, who were payed very little for their work. In the movie, Diary of a Country Priest, we find such a person. A priest whose frugal lifestyle and simple commitment was a matter of amusement to young people. One of my greatest heroes, was a WWII Army nurse who came back from the war with an illness that could not be diagnosed according to military nomenclature numbers. She went before many appeals boards, many claims lawyers, but never could establish a pension for this non-descript harassing medical involvement. She died, still working a mediocre job as a private nurse in private homes never having been recognized in any way for her service on foreign battlefields. There is no chip in the computer that will recognize the fight that this writer starves himself through eight years of university education to come out, immediately commissioned and wound up as a totally blind veteran unable to practice his profession. But the nurse and I are the fortunate ones, we came back alive. Think of the millions who lie buried, 126,000 on foreign soil, and then the VA lawyers, such as happened recently, go to prison for banking to their personal accounts money due to dead veterans families.

None of us, stars or the insignificant, are role models for the world. It just takes one man plus God and anything can be accomplished. George Muller of England, cared for 9,720 orphans living day to day by faith. Faith that the money would come in that he could care for these children. Thomas A Kempis, just one man, plus God, wrote the book that has thrilled millions, “Imitation of Christ.”

A newspaper headline in WWI read, “Great Battle Won, Only One Man Killed.” For the family of this one man, his life was over and theirs would never be the same again. How easily we forget the horrors of war. Vietnam is now in its third generation from the horrors of agent orange. Still there are mutations, children born without an arm, a leg, an eye. It will take a long time for the people of Iraq to recover from depleted uranium. I have traveled through Afghanistan several times. The first day of the war, I said on radio, “I don't believe the people in the Pentagon have seen the Hindu Kush...some of the worlds most vicious mountains, difficult even for helicopters.” I remember the people riding on donkeys, herding goats. I have photographs, taken thirty years ago at the boarders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, showing migration from one country to the other poverty stricken peasants, all their belongings and sacks on their shoulders, barefoot with barefooted children. Dale Carnegie, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” would never recommend bombing with drones.

The first time I was in Russia, I noticed so many people were drunk from vodka. I said to my friend, a newsman with WOR, NYC, “if I lived here I would stay drunk too.” I believe people everywhere are looking to escape. This week, in Connecticut, the Eli Lilly Warehouse was robbed from the roof of 35 million drugs. I believe many young people are just swallowing anything to escape. We try to put the well worn cloak of impunity on everything. Veterans, Boards of Appeals uncertain reasons for warfare, agnosticism about country and church. Church members are much more interested in changing God, than in God changing them. Mans will and Gods will does not coincide. Perhaps the greatest robbery of all, even more depressing than the robbery of a grave, is the robbery our children experience in not having hope for the future.

A Veterans Salute to D-Day

On June 6, patriotic Americans will remember those brave young men who gave their last measure of devotion to this country.  This is the day which began the Normandy Landing initiating the Western Allied effort to liberate mainland Europe from Nazi occupation during World War II. However, many other invasions and operations had a designated D-Day, both before and after that operation.

I was in Europe for the 25th anniversary for the Normandy invasion.  Like most Americans attending the memorial we visited the cemeteries, the largest of which contains the remains of 9,387 American military dead. At that time, I had a shadow of vision in one eye and it was interesting to see older couples and some mothers and children being led by a military escort with a map to a grave in the cemetery, where most of them fell down beside the grave weeping.  This was their first contact with the fallen hero since being notified of his death. FREEDOM IS NOT FREE.

My most remarkable memory of recent wars, even more acute than my own personal experience, I was asked by the governor of the state and the state adjutant general, General Kapus Waynick (former ambassador to Guatemala) to attend a veterans meeting in San Antonio, Texas.  There were four 100% disabled veterans flying down in the governors plane (a propeller WWII relic) piloted by a retired Air Force colonel.  I remember very well the storms we encountered on the trip to Texas.  We stayed in a hotel near the Alamo and I shared a room with a most remarkable veteran.  He was a very devote Christian gentleman and one night after our prayer together he said, “I am going to share something with you that I have never shared with another living human being.”  I had already determined from his posture and movements that he was in constant pain and a very sick man.  He said, after the Normandy invasion, “I was subjected to an explosion which left me just a mass of physical and neurological metabolism.  Kept alive in a field hospital, until transferred to an American army facility, no one kept from me the fact that I was going to die.  My parents were too old and depleted in health to come to the hospital.  There was no other family member alive who could come and give any comfort.”

He said one night, he knew that death was near, because all of a sudden, his body became enveloped in an extreme coldness.  He said, “I DIED.”  He said, “Instantly there was a warmth, peace, happiness, and a beauty which no mind can describe.  My soul was blessed with the splendor of heaven. I saw the beauty beyond compare and the face of our blessed Lord, but all of a sudden deep in my soul came the thought, not yet, not yet.  And I was restored back to life.” He said, “I have seen it, I know it is real.  In a few weeks, the army arranged for me to be transported to my home several hundred miles away and I had the satisfaction of seeing the happiness of my parents.”  FREEDOM IS NOT FREE.

At the beginning of WWII, I was with my parents when they visited a distant cousin who, the young son of their old age, had just died in Europe.  The father, a cousin of my father, a former banker, had lost everything in the Great Depression.  He was in his mid 60’s but his second wife was in her early 40’s and they had one son.  The only time I ever saw the son was just before he left for Europe after a few weeks of basic training.  He was “sweet on” one of my cousins (my cousin Rose, now buried with her Air Force colonel husband in Arlington), went to our church before he left, he was only 17, very good looking, blond, in his uniform, he lasted 2 weeks after he arrived in Europe and is buried on that foreign soil.  I was with my parents when they visited this old couple, I remember, because I was always fascinated by beautiful wood and the wood in their old house staircase etc, was beautiful beyond words.  But, my parents said, they had never seen such grief.  FREEDOM IS NOT FREE.


There are several military cemeteries in Europe. The one I visited had 9,387 graves and I also visited the American military cemetery in the Philippians where nearly 18,000 are buried.  Arlington of course has 250,000.  One is never the same after visiting a military cemetery, after visiting a VA hospital, after visiting a family where photographs and a casket flag dominate the walls because even though “life goes on”, families of veterans know that the veteran only had one life also.  FREEDOM IS NOT FREE.

Preachers and churches are important.  The gospel of salvation, good works of faith and Christian endeavor, the teachings of absolutes of right and wrong, the very fabric that has kept this country together and made it great are important.  But not as important as veterans.

Teachers in our schools, professors in our colleges, research fellows in great institutions give us a better life, a more healthy existence. But not as important a veterans.

Laborers who build the barracks, manufacture the weapons, build the ships for christening and the planes for transportation, who are the back-bone of our economy on every level. But not as important as veterans.

Commentators who keep us informed, who try to expose and synthesize every action of government, shed light on the politicians and bureaucrat who have taken an oath for integrity. But not as important as veterans.

Entertainers, celebrities, TV personalities, comedians who can make you laugh, risk their lives and their possessions visiting the front lines on battlefronts all over the world attempting to bring some laughter, some memories of home, some appreciation for their gallantry, to those who made this sacrifice of time and talent. But not as important as veterans.

The contentment, the splendor, whatever joy you have in your existence has been paid for by those willing to defend YOUR country.  The American lifestyle, any enjoyment in your existence did not just happen, it has a costly history.  Only those who have seen the frozen bodies of their comrades stacked like cord wood, as was the case around the Chosin Reservoir in South Korea, know the true meaning of war.  Only a medical officer who has heard the screams of burn victims in an army hospital knows the true meaning of war.  Only when you have seen the destruction of a city, the cries of a family after their home and possessions were destroyed, will you realize the importance of peace. 

“There is a peace that thrills the heart,
the veterans knowledge that he has done his part. 
The country is waning, may slip and fall,
at the poles, at the plow, uniform in the closet still ready for the call.”
- Dr. Morris

Money in the Bank

This week, President Obama spoke before the AMA holding their annual convention in Chicago. The AMA represents only about a third of the practicing doctors in the United States. Most of this third are liberal democrats, medical school faculty members, and those who have for many years promoted the idea of social medical care, rather than personal medical care. The esteem with which most doctors are held by the public results from the grandeur of personal medical care. A care which has given the profession gratuity of the public, bordering on righteousness. In fact, some doctors have been treated like god to the extent that they believe they are god. The problem is that all this self adornment in no way relieves suffering.

It was not until I opened my practice, and I did practice for a while, in spite of my military disability, because with that...as with everything else in my life... I had the determination that I could accomplish things beyond the realm of possibility. When it reached the place that it was necessary for a nurse to stand over me constantly and watch everything I did, just in case I made a wrong move, I knew it was time to “hang up the shingle” and do other things. I had a large practice, and have already forgotten more than most doctors know. For a period of time, I was just there training others to do the work, while giving these patients who had built this large practice, the assurance that I was around.

One young doctor practicing with me said one time, “I wish these people thought as much of me as they do of you.” I said, “When you have been as good to them as I have been, they will think the sun rises in your backyard also.” Eighty percent of health care is psychological, and your attitude, your genuineness in each regardless of their station in life always is a predictor of progress. I am sorry to report to you that most of the stability of love between doctor and patient has disappeared in this time of assembly line care. When the entire system revolves around seeing as many, as quickly as possible, and depending mostly on technicians to do the actual work. I am sorry to report to you that the Veteran's Administration is the most inept health care system in the nation, and if the socialized health care system is built on the model of the VA system, there will be more problems than one can even imagine.

I am sorry to report to you that most government agencies and commissions responsible for health care are negligent and unreliable. I speak from a variety of experiences, both as a practitioner and as a patient. For instance, as a totally blind, 100% disabled service-connected veteran of the Korean Conflict for over forty years, I challenge anyone to prove that the North Carolina State Commission for the Blind has ever been to my house, but once, and has never done anything for me as of this date. On talk radio, I have offered one thousand dollars to anyone who can show that this commission, or any church, any civic club, any veteran's group, has ever done anything for this veteran.

After thirty years, at a VA hospital, I was given a “talking watch.” (Julia Roberts, not the movie star, a representative for the blind was amazed that I did not have such a utilitarian help or a security system including fire control for my house) For thirty years, I had placed cement blocks at the exit doors of my house to assist the locks, in case of break-ins. This would at least give me time to get help by phone. Now, if the VA, the Blind Commission, Social Services, Lion's Club, or any of these other “do-gooder” organizations had made any attempt to assist this one citizen, such would have been discovered.

If iron rusts what do you expect gold to do? If these highly paid bureaucrats and political appointees to these commissions are not capable of such care for a ranking officer and one of my profession, what happens to those who are more “meek”? Many blind and disabled, having heard me on national radio talk shows as an advocate of veterans and the disabled, have told me that they resist making any complaint because they and their family depend on the small pension and other aid given, and are afraid such will be cut off, and they will be left even more destitute.

For eight years, as a struggling,poor university student from the depths of poverty, I not only worked at night while in school, but sold books door-to-door in the summer, covering all of eastern North Carolina. I have written about these experiences (The Life of a Bible Salesman) in many publications. The education I received in learning to deal with God's greatest creation, the “salt-of-the-earth” people in their homes, and in their fields.

In Bladen County, near White Lake, the very area where John Henry White, black republican Congressmen who represented this area of eastern NC in Washington until 1900, was born on a turpentine plantation. I came upon a small white house with the usual front porch and on the porch was a black man who I learned was a WW2 veteran bilaterally paralyzed (one side totally paralyzed). The wounds received in battle, the paralytic condition, had led to blindness in one eye and because of the “sympathizing disease” crossed into the other, had become totally blind...both paralyzed and blind.

As he told me, his wife had deserted him for another man during the war, leaving his mother, with whom he now lived, with two daughters. The two daughters were now in the child-bearing age, and indeed several children were playing around the yard (his grandchildren). He said, “I get a VA disability check every month, but I never see any of the money because my mother and two daughters live off the money, and they feel I am 'blessed just to have a roof over my head', and whatever 'crumbs' they will feed me. My mother and two daughters do not work at all, except some housekeeping jobs at White Lake during the summer. It is my disability check which keeps them in food, “booze”, and puts gasoline in their cars. When I get so sick I am almost dead, they may take me to the VA hospital in Fayetteville. I sit here on the porch day after day, just praying for death knowing that my country has deserted me even though I was willing to defend it.”

Years later, having become more acquainted with warfare, veteran's activity, government responsibilities, and even being a victim of such myself, I wrote to Judge Cathey, Chairman of the State Blind Commission, whom I had met at one time, remembering this man on that porch in that county. I do not know whether anything was done about the condition or not. Some years ago, I brought these same conditions, as well as my personal experience, and the conditions of the blind and veterans to the attention of a current Commission Chairman, a man by the name of Deluca, who is reportedly a lawyer.

He became quite irate that I would challenge him about the work of the Commission and the fact that I had written many letters to legislators. I am sad to report to you that my letters to members of the legislature, my attempts to clarify and rectify problems affecting the blind and the disabled in this state have not been well-received. To the best of my knowledge, nothing has improved. The question is, a tremendous amount of money is appropriated, but what happens to it?

Some years ago on the radio, a woman, Cathryn Vasalou, now dead, blind from birth, spending her early life at the School for the Blind in Raleigh, told about the blind children from the Black School for the Blind, located in Garner. They would be taken to the White School for the Blind to rake the leaves on the grounds and do the cleaning around the school, instead of the white blind children doing their own. The hostess for the radio talk show could not believe these words, but a blind lady (Katie) who I understand is a retired school teacher called and said that she was a blind student at the Garner facility at the time and that the situation was certainly true.

In the American Experience, next to slavery, the greatest shame of this nation is its treatment of disabled veterans and handicapped citizens.

Supposedly, THE MONEY HAS ALWAYS BEEN IN THE BANK FOR THIS GREAT NATION to pay the social workers, veteran's administration (particularly the Blind Veteran's Administration) the State Commission for the Blind, charities such as civic clubs (Lions, whose mission is blindness), churches, philanthropists, and even concerned citizens to make life a little easier or at least livable for those who in most instances from no fault of their own find themselves, chosen of God, “to share in the fellowship of His suffering.” (Philippians 3:10)

Profits and Losses

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home!

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For though from out our bourn of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
Crossing the Bar- Lord Alfred Tennyson

It was on a Christmas Eve, that my grandfather went into his bedroom and went to bed. When my grandmother went into the bedroom, she found just that quickly, he had died; he had not even disturbed the covers.

I remember my mother and I were with my grandmother when she looked at him in his casket and she said, “He is finally at peace.” He had lived a long and good life and had left us just the way most of us would like to go. I'm very tired of it all, the daily market tape of profits and losses. No matter how hard you have worked, no matter how difficult has been the “path less traveled”, your passport has been stamped (saved by grace) and I AM ready to go. Please don't ask me to explain why some people are blessed with such smooth rides, while others have the turbulence, an enforcement of seat belts for the entire flight.

On this Memorial Day, when we honor the millions of our very finest who lie buried where they fell, in military cemeteries around the world (they had only one life too) and many of us on this day are working to pay the high taxation, which supports those in and out of prison who chose the 'low road' of life, and even those who came back from the wars disabled are largely ignored, the families of the fallen are largely ignored. Most of the vacationers who are enjoying the good life today are the bureaucrats and politicians, whose lives now and in retirement, are at the top of the list; We are tempted to say, “What is the use?” I'm ready to disembark if only I could go as peacefully as did my grandfather.

I'm tired of the blackness and isolation of blindness, I'm ready for the bright lights of eternity. There will be no formal services; I have been around all the hypocrisy I can tolerate while alive, none should follow in death. I just want an easy transition, no inconvenience to anyone.


We are witnessing the last chapters in an incongruent book. With all our knowledge, we have so much incompetence. The basic facts of economic survival were forgotten as we saw the dot com bubble, securities growing to the clouds, the housing bubble, construction growing without limit; then, when the bubble burst, as it usually does, it's not just the gamblers who are affected; the bystanders are even more affected! Just as in war, it is the sons and daughters of the poor and minority families who go to the front lines. When did you hear of a wealthy family's son being killed or maimed in warfare? When did you hear of the son of the one with enough political pull to go to a military academy being ravaged by war? It continues to be an unlevel playing field, regardless of the national and international news.

In a depression, as in warfare, the poor and minorities are the ones who suffer. The disabled and the disenfranchised are always told to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps, but usually, they have no boots. Like the Chinese proverb, stating that the man with no shoes would feel better when he found a man without feet, we can always find those in worse condition than ourselves. Every time I feel sorry for myself, I think about the room at the Millington, TN, VA Hospital where, as an intern I found 4 young soldiers who had returned from WWII without arms or legs, on special beds in that facility.

The fact of the matter is, those who have the best profit and loss statement in good times usually have the best profit and loss statement in bad times. While most of us have scrounged for food at home in good and bad times, the average 'upper income' family spent $2,500 a year just eating out. Although spending now is the slowest it has been since 1961, the spending that is done is by the upper income bracket, the bureaucrats and politicians whose incomes are not affected by the profits and losses affecting all other Americans. The inequities in the economic system of the country, the inequities in the military defense of the country, closely resemble the inequities in the voting dilemma of the country. Seventy percent of all voters are Roman Catholic. These Christians, if they voted according to moral dictates of their church, could control the evils of same sex marriage, abortion and pornography. There are enough Christians (mostly Catholic) in the Congress (House of Representatives and Senate) to limit the country's moral degradation and economic decline.

I saw a sign once that read “Perception is Reality”. We have the perception that things will always improve. The economy did improve after 1980, we have recovered from every recession. The reality is that we may be a long time recovering from this recession. Japan has been in a recession for many years and it is getting worse. Our arms are too short to 'box with God', how long will it take those in the ring to realize this fact?

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (Mark 8:36-37)
This is the most revealing profit and loss statement ever made, if only business people, politicians, Christians realized the importance of these words. We think, just by changing political power, we can rectify things.
You you remember that when Republicans were in power for eight years, just prior to Obama, little happened. We have too many imposters in seats of political power, in pulpits, in places of parental responsibility who have not realized the intransigence of the soul.

Malachi

I first met Malachi as a teenager during WWII. My father, mostly away during the war, had returned to the family farm which my mother and I had kept going while he worked at Camp Davis and Ft. Bragg.

Malachi, a young, black, intelligent, enthused soldier of the South Pacific, had just returned to his mother and father, who still lived very much as slaves on one of the Brady farms outside Kenly, NC.

In the effort to prepare returning veterans to earn a living, the government had set up schools for practical education at many of the high schools. My great uncle Silas, brother of my grandmother, an accomplished carpenter, was teaching carpentry at a local high school. My father, already an accomplished carpenter, was assisting him and there he had met Malachi.

My first experience with Malachi was in assisting my father in the trimming of the mules' feet on the farm. It may sound strange to the uninitiated but the hooves of horses and mules must be trimmed like toenails and fingernails, they grow and in order for the animals to work their feet must be kept in repair. My father was teaching Malachi about the various tools in this craft. It was my job to hold the “twist”. The “twist” was a mechanism that fitted on the lip of the mule in order to control the mule. Naturally, these dumb animals did not want anyone “messing around” with their feet. They had the ability to stand on three feet while one hoof was being trimmed. In other writings, in speaking, I have often referred to the twist as a wonderful way to control homo sapiens. We had a large tobacco farm and I “cropped” the leaves off the stalks of tobacco side by side with Malachi and several others whom my father hired to do this work.

This involves a young black man, the only child of a black couple who lived enslaved on one of Dr. James Calhoun Brady's farms. He owned much land and there was approximately 50 tenant families living on his land. Mostly black, some white, all in complete enslavement because not one of the families ever ceased to be in debt to this landlord.

The small town, small population, one main street and at the end of the street, as one can well imagine: Tara and Heaven. The great white house with the six great white columns in the front, manicured lawns and large cars in the driveway. This is the old type aristocracy of the old south, first half of the 20^th century. Dr. Brady was a physician and, of course, as always, the richest, most prominent man in the area, a member of the democrat legislature. Blacks did not vote and the whites were so intimidated by his influence since he controlled everything in the area (banks, drugstore, only doctor) that his election was always just a matter of formality.

On a side street, near the mansion, was his office for his medical practice and next to it, an office for his farming operations. He had overseers who kept the tenants in abject poverty and subjection, making sure they never got out of debt to the Senator who controlled their lives totally. Of course, law enforcement was at the command of the Senator. My grandfather, who lived in this small town, once showed me the jail. Hollywood would be unable to duplicate the horrendous appearance of this small building with its bars and no chemical company would be able to duplicate the smell from the building because the toilet facilities consisted of a hole in the rear of the one room structure. If the jailed inmate received any water or food, someone in the family had to bring it to him.

The thing I will never forget is Malachi's description of what happened to any one of the enslaved tenant farmers who rebelled in any way against the treatment, or the cheating from the crop sales, the usury involved in ludicrous charges for everything in keeping the farm families in total submission to the Senator.

Along with tobacco, grain crops such as corn and soybeans, much cotton was produced. Of course, at that time, all agriculture farming was done by hand plows with mules. Fertilizer bags were used in the picking of the cotton (I know because I have used such myself). Four of the bags were sewn together to make “cotton sheets”, sheets where you emptied the bags of cotton, kept until they were taken to the cotton gin, where baled. One of the most horrible examples ...use your own words...bigotry, racial hatred, discrimination...two overseers throwing one of these cotton sheets over a man, dragging him off to a deserted area and beating him half to death simply for not complying with one of the Senator's dictums. WE THOUGHT SLAVERY WAS OVER IN 1865. Slavery persisted in North Carolina among the tenant farmers, cotton mill workers, right on through most of my lifetime.

Malachi had come back from the war, his only clothing still his U.S. Army uniform, having participated in the battle of Guadalcanal. Little did I know then that eventually I would visit Guadalcanal, where some of those great US ships are still sticking up out of the water in the bay. Malachi was determined that he would not become a victim of the Doctor/Senator, as had been his father and mother. Alma, his mother, had been a cook in the great old house until her health kept her at home most of the time. But she had witnessed what this doctor, a descendant of one of N.C.'s greatest families, had done to his wife. Keeping her drugged so that, to the people in the community, she appeared a total alcoholic.

This legislator, so enjoying his prestige in Raleigh and elsewhere, believed himself to be so much better than anyone else in the community, he would even go to a large city nearby to get his hair cut. This family would not think of buying their groceries or clothing in the town which they had exploited their entire life. One would think that a physician, one duty-bound by every moral and ethical constraint of medical history, would have some empathy for patients. He was, from what I can learn, more or less an educated, rich drug pusher.

I knew physicians of his historical era who believed in preventative medicine, who used food as treatment, who counseled every age group in homeopathy methods of treatment and prevention. So easy in a rural setting. I never heard of that coming from him because I believe he had too much financial interest in the drugstore. Later, when another younger doctor came to the town, things changed. The old Senator just became an old politician, an old “land hog”, an old hypocrite astounded to see the black and white children going to school together. Probably looking at the church down the street and thinking how he had disgraced the very building by his presence in it.

Once, an elitist fraternity man, with whom I had classes, introduced me to his fellow fraternity brother, the old Senator's grandson. I told him that I was raised a few miles from the home, that my grandparents lived in Kenly, etc. He looked at me as if I had been the biggest pile of trash he had ever seen. Remember, this is the old south, the way it has been most of my life. There is nothing peculiar to this one little town. Most eastern North Carolina towns could tell this same story. The big house in town, where the controlling family lived, who tried to keep an absolute authoritarian control over everything and everyone in the town, particularly if a cotton mill were involved and certainly the tenant farmers on lands surrounding the town where God-fearing, humble, American citizens were just trying to eke out a living in spite of the extortion and oppression of the late 19^th century and early 20^th century slave masters.

I don't know whatever happened to Malachi, I have a feeling that Malachi became successful but, it goes to show again the disdain with which America's elitist hold those of us who have been willing to defend their country and their greed.

It gnaws at me every day of my life, the hypocrisy of our nation, the south, eastern North Carolina, the fact--and it is a fact--that for political and financial gain, Baptist pastors, lawyers who attended church, those fortunate enough to have an education permitted or turned a blind eye to this profane lifestyle, even to this day...so- called Christians voting for the Democrat lie.