History: Some Points to Ponder

     “History is not made only by kings and parliaments, presidents, wars, and generals. It is the story of people, of their love, honor, faith, hope and suffering; of birth and death, of hunger, thirst and cold, of loneliness and sorrow.”— Louis L’Amour.

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    “What is history but a fable agreed upon?”                             

                                                             --Napoleon Bonaparte

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On Becoming “Slightly” Addicted to Facebook

    A confession.

  

  I’ve become “slightly” addicted to Facebook. A few years ago, long after the young folks had discovered and embraced this new form of social media and after a number of older, more hip, computer-savvy users had realized this platform offered a great way to share photos and otherwise keep up with distant family and friends, I wandered in and set up an account.

A Few Thoughts on the Michigan Presidential Primary

   I don’t consider myself particularly qualified to be a political pundit, mainly because I get most of my information the same way the rest of the public does—reading newspapers, watching news on TV, and listening to interview shows on the radio. However, the guys and gals who are regarded as knowledgeable in this field, who earn the big bucks offering their learned prognostications for public consumption, haven’t exactly been setting the world on fire.

  Conventional wisdom, it seems, has been taking its lumps.

The Presidential Campaign: What Say I?

It All Happened So Fast Back Then—Part 1

    It all happened so fast back then. The National Socialist German Workers Party, led by Adolf Hitler, had been barely a blimp on the radar screen of German politics during the 1920s. But with the arrival of the Great Depression, with millions out-of-work, with the democratic Weimar Republic viewed as weak and chaotic, with many conservatives worried the Communists might gain control as they had in neighboring Russia, and with the defeat in World War I and the reparation payments to the victorious allies still a bitter pill being swallowed, the Nazis gained traction.

Political & Public Advocacy— From Pamphlets to the Internet

         Abraham Lincoln, when speaking at Gettysburg, cited the nation’s founding as occurring with the Declaration of Independence, a document approved on July 4, 1776 by the Second Continental Congress which was meeting in Philadelphia. He noted that the country, at its inception, had been “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

  In using July 4^th and the Declaration as the date and document that “brought forth” the country, he was putting it above the Constitution, the legal agreement ratified by the original 13 states in 1788, five years after the successful conclusion of the Revolutionary War; a contract that had created the current federal government and might arguably be considered the real start of the United States.

The Importance of Understanding Economics

   Like most of you, my life has been influenced and impacted by the economy, both adversely and beneficially. However, truth be told, I possess only a rudimentary understanding of how it functions.

     I’m aware that economic policies and strategies are used by the Federal Reserve Board, the President and Congress, and our Governor and Legislature with the intent of causing certain desired outcomes. These include monetary policy, job creation, trade agreements, taxation, tax credits, budgets, regulations, and much more.

Lack of Easy Access to Quality Food Adds to Flint’s Woes

     Flint’s water crisis has been a dominant news story during the past few months. Front and center were the reports of high lead levels found in water samples, which do not bode well for young children who ingested too much of this neurotoxin and could suffer long-term damage to their mental and physical development .

     Added to this public health calamity is the suspicion that the water caused Legionnaires’ disease, resulting in several deaths. In addition, there were the claims by residents that bathing or showering caused skin rashes. The question of accountability—what happened and why— while not nearly as crucial as the well being of the residents, has also been part of the news stories. And despite pleas to not point fingers of blame or allow partisan politics to enter into the fray (Let’s focus on solving the problem instead), heads have already rolled, lawsuits have been filed, political spinning is in full force, and the tug-of-war over blame (or perhaps more accurately over who’s more to blame) is churning up the landscape.

Rose Hamlin Tennis: Still Teaching

This was the photo of Rose Hamlin Tennis in her book
The School That Was: A School Marm's Tale

     On an afternoon, sometime in 1990, I was at my desk when Rose Hamlin Tennis walked into our newspaper office. I offered her a chair opposite me.  Rose, who passed way in September of 1995, needs no introduction to many readers, but if you are unfamiliar with her, she taught school for 35 years—from 1931 through 1967—with many of them spent at the Fowlerville High School and Junior High. I was among her legion of former students.

Gov. Snyder ‘tone deaf’ with hiring of national public relations firm

    An article in this past Saturday’s Detroit Free Press reported that Gov. Rick Snyder has hired Mercury LLC,  a national public relations firm known for its expertise in crisis management, to “help with communications during the Flint water crisis.” In addition, the governor also hired another communications expert, Bill Nowling, who is a former Snyder press secretary and also worked for former Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr.

    The announcement was made by Snyder’s current chief of staff, Jarrod Agen, who (oh, by the way) is married to Mercury LLC’s senior vice president. The article noted that she operates out of the firm’s Ft. Lauderdale, Florida office. So, we had a spokesman telling us that additional spokespersons have been hired to speak to us. The familiar put down “How many people does it take to change a light bulb?” comes to mind.

Covering Michigan State of the State address remains an enjoyable occasion

  We have been to several State of the State addresses in recent years. It’s an enjoyable occasion as well as a nice break from our normal (at times mundane) routine of providing a newspaper for the local audience.

    An aura of excitement permeates the Michigan Capitol building on this evening, much of it coming from the invited guests who have been allowed access to this center of political and governmental power. Reporters aren’t supposed to cheer in the press box, so I disguise any hint that the event is anything other than journalistic business as usual.

Michigan may have impact in current presidential campaign

 The presidential campaign, now on the eve of the caucus and primary season, has reached (to borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill) "the end of the beginning." During the just completed year, the would-be successors to President Obama have announced their availability, held rallies and shook hands, spent a lot of energy courting wealthy donors and key interest groups and participated in several debates.

  Reality, in the form of poll numbers and cash-on-hand, has forced several of the contenders to withdraw before any actual decision making has taken place. After the upcoming Iowa Caucus on Feb. 1 and the New Hampshire Primary on Feb. 9, the field will presumably be whittled down even further.

Cheap Grace & False Neutrality

     Cheap Grace.

     The phrase caught my attention when I began reading a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. All I knew of the man, prior to finding this text in my son’s bookcase, was that he had been a Lutheran minister from Germany, had stood up to the Nazis, and was executed. In the ensuing years, the church has honored him with an annual remembrance.

   The book is entitled Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy and was researched and written by Eric Metaxas. It is a weighty tome, nearly 600 pages in length, and examines in great detail Bonhoeffer’s early life (the formative years), including his family background and interactions, the unfolding events in Germany and elsewhere in the world, his evolution as a minister (being influenced by these events), and the various ways he responded to and opposed Hitler and the National Socialist Party. It concludes with his imprisonment and then his death in the final days of the war.

Facts, Opinions, Logic & Fallacies

  Philosophy is defined as “the study of the general and fundamental nature of reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language." That sounds pretty encompassing, daunting, and, yes, esoteric.

    I took several philosophy courses during my college career at Michigan State University. My favorite areas of study in this field were (are) ethics and the history of philosophy, in particular the time period of the ancient Greeks.

    In 2011, I enrolled at Kellogg Community College, which had a campus in Hastings and signed up for two summer classes—United States History from the Reconstruction to the Reagan Administration--and a required English class that focused on proper sentence structure and how to write an acceptable academic paper.

The Value of Diversity

     Thanks to the genealogical work of a relative on another branch of the family tree, we have learned that our forefather, Peter Horton, came to Long Island, from England, in the year 1640. So, while my ancestor didn’t come over on the Mayflower (like everyone else’s), he wasn’t too far behind.

   His descendants, I’m told, prospered, becoming prominent in that part of New York. Of course, the family tree by necessity kept branching out and, as the country grew, Horton’s (like the families of other early settlers) had kinfolk move westward.

   Aaron Horton arrived in the Fowlerville area, I believe, in the late 1840's or early1850's. He and his wife, Hannah (Mills), are buried in Miller Cemetery on Stow Road. The ensuing lineage saw their eldest son, Stephen R. Horton, marry a Duncan, which has made me a shirttail relative to half of the town. Their eldest son, my great grandfather Rollin, was united in marriage to a Durfee, a Swedish connection, and Grandpa Lloyd was wed to Illah Mae Bement, whose family had French ancestry.

The 'Right to Vote'

This was updated and published in the Fowlerville News & Views in the Dec. 20 issue.

    The ‘Right to Vote’ is a nice broad term. But within that breadth exists competing philosophies. Is it a natural, unencumbered right? Or does it (should it) have conditions? Pre-qualifications? And if the latter is preferable, what should those be?

   From the dawn of our country’s founding, those in power have sought to fortify and protect their political control of government, and all its spoils. Back then this political and social elite was comprised mainly of wealthy planters owning large tracts of land and prosperous merchants.

    One of the purposes of the U.S. Constitution, for all its virtues, was to create a republic, with a system of checks and balances, to guard against mobocracy—or as we know it, democracy. Also, with the control of voting and elections being a prerogative of the states, initially only property owner (stakeholders) could participate.

Letter-to-Editor Writers Weigh In on Separtion of Church & State Issue

   Over the past few weeks, three of our readers have weighed in on the issue of religious freedom as it pertains to government and, more specifically, public schools. This topic is more familiarly called ‘Separation of Church and State.’

    A student bringing a Bible or Koran or some other text sacred to them, or expressing opinions based on their beliefs (and citing that text to support their position) would seem an exercise in religious freedom as well as free speech. A teacher or administrator doing that in a public school—as a paid employee of government (i.e. the school district) causes a different consideration.

   While the adult, like the student, is entitled to his or her belief and right of free speech, doing so from a position of governmental authority and power has been judged by the courts to fall within the realm of an endorsement or sponsorship, thus a violation of the First Amendment.

   No everyone likes that judicial interpretation, or the concept of a wall of separation, thus the ongoing debate.

A Message of Thanksgiving

Published in the Fowlerville News & Views on Nov. 22

 In the midst of grief, a way ahead. In the midst of darkness, a guiding light. In the midst of despair, hope.

   The Book of Common Prayer used by the Anglican Communion since 1549, contains this passage for the “Order for the Burial of the Dead.”

   Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he flieth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we be in death.

   It’s hard to read (or hear) anything more forlorn, or seemingly more hopeless about the human condition. The words echo those at the beginning of Ecclesiastics: “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “All is meaningless!… What does a man gain for all the toil at which he toils under the sun? One generation comes, and another generation goes: but the earth abides forever… (and) All things are filled with weariness. . .”

Fishing: A Lucky Afternoon

    This column was published Oct. 17, 1994--21 years ago. Bradley turned 27 on Oct. 31.

     A couple of weeks ago, son Bradley and I escaped from the routines of our so-called regular life—the daily hustle and bustle—and went fishing. It was late afternoon, with only a stiff breeze out of the west to disturb an otherwise mild and soothing setting.

   The waters were an intermingle of blues and browns, with the light from the low-lying sun reflecting brightly off the surface. Autumn colors had already begun appearing in the nearby maples and the underlying brush. As fortune would have it, we had this section of river pretty much to ourselves.

Join the Relay for Life

   As we grow older, the list gets longer. The list I’m referring to is family and friends who have been lost to cancer. Earlier this year my step-father, Bob Bartz (Grandpa Bob to his grandkids and great-grandkids) died from the disease. It was a quick-spreading variety that started in his bladder and, before detected had spread to his lungs. Bob was 84, had lived a good and long life, but even so—sans the cancer—he likely could have been with us a while longer.

   A few days ago we, like many others in the Fowlerville community, said “good bye” to our friend Lenny Wise. He was only 70; certainly had cancer not taken him, we would have been blessed with his presences and great wit for many more years.

The Beatles & the Fowlerville Fab Four

  While browsing a department store catalog, I noticed a page featuring tee-shirts. On the front of those shirts were pictures of different popular bands, including one that had a photo of The Beatles leaping into the air. I believe the image came from their movie “A Hard Day’s Night.”

   What struck me was, first of all, the staying power of this musical group. Fifty-plus years after they debuted in America on The Ed Sullivan Show in February of 1964, merchandisers are still making money off their celebrity. My other thought was that these tee shirts are most likely being worn by a much younger crowd than “we” aging Baby Boomers who were teenagers back then. I construed this to mean that The Beatles’ songs resonant not only with the older folks who are contemporaries of the group’s members, but also with our children and even our grandchildren.