It's Thanksgiving Day. I'm thankful. My life has been a series of wonderful gifts. Caring, bright parents. Wonderful wife (how did I do that?) Fantastic children (who grew up and now take care of themselves. Even more fantastic.) I've been able to find work throughout my life. Not always the best pay, not always the best job, but work has been available. What's more, I finally have a job with some security that is a really wonderful job. And I almost make as much as an average fellow. Three-fourths of average I'd say. I could have a terrible, boring job and make more. I could work my first job a lot fewer hours and have a second job too and make pretty good money. But I'm quite content to do it the way I do it.

There have been some pretty wonderful people along the way who have been my friends and helped me get along. I've lost track of some--Bill Hardy, Joe Midgett and Cheryl Berry. I'd like to find them again. I know that they must think of me at times and wonder how I'm doing, wonder if I'm alive. I remember their smiles. You need people in your life who smile when they see you coming down the hall and those people smiled at me. There are other friends that I have not lost track of. I'm thankful for them. I should be closer to those dear people. Some of them have carried me when I was low. There are ministers who had great insights that I'm thankful for. I sat and listened to their sermons and was not bored, but rather, was inspired to think for myself. (Don't get me wrong now, I've known some boring, stupid ministers as well. Let's hope they were doing the best they could and were not negligent doing work for God).

I find that as I have gotten older, I have fewer friends. Of course my work sort of isolates me from other adults. You'd think that teachers would interact a lot, and maybe they do in some departments, but I am pouring my life into students, bright and dull I'm afraid. I work with them from early morning until most of the other staff are gone and there is no time for adult interactions. As for students, after four years, they go away. They keep in touch for almost exactly a year and then they stop "bothering you." It's a natural process, birds leaving the nest and all.

Some of my friends have died. I lost my best friend from high school about a year ago. And mother died about the same time. My uncle and cousin have died in Jacksonville in the past year. This week I've lost another important person. Jerry was fifty-seven. He was a big ole bear of a man. Six foot five and just big. I remember at one of our first meetings I asked him if he could hit a softball pretty far and his answer was "As far as they can be hit." That was about right. Same for a golfball. I remember a round of golf we played together where he shot a 75 and he had 5 birdies. We played best ball tournaments together for years and sometimes we won them. I remember how weird it was to write a 29 on a scorecard as a score for the front nine. Seven under par after nine holes. I somehow drove the green on a par 4 and made a ridiculous putt on the ninth hole. About a 50 footer. I remember competitors seeing us at the turn and saying, "How are ya'll doing?" only to glance at our card in the cart and shout, "Oh man! Their first number is a 2!" We won that day. I still have the trophy. Mostly I remember laughing with Jerry. We played games. Rummy, monopoly, ping pong, softball. I remember throwing the ball across the infield to him at first from shortstop. He was a huge target. He was nearly impossible to beat at anything. And we laughed and laughed while we played. We had our own idioms for talking about games. We made gin rummy into prize fighting and that made it even more funny. We drank gallons of sweet tea. Jerry was a terrific businessman. He advanced rapidly. Customers believed him and he delivered. He eventually started his own business. He wrapped you up with his big handshake when he saw you and made you smile with his big as a bear grin. Meeting Jerry meant that someone would be laughing within 10 seconds. Jerry literally could sell ice cubes to eskimos. He had two beautiful children and two beautiful grandchildren. He loved those kids. I remember him playing with Austin and Carter and throwing them around like sacks of flour into a bunch of cushions accompanied by squeals of laughter. How did our wives put up with the noise?

I had moved away from Jerry and hadn't seen him since his daughter married. I had to give up golf for various reasons and we didn't have that to pull us together anymore. His life had taken some dark turns and I didn't even know it. I wish I had been around to comfort him at least a little bit. He took his own failings so seriously. He was a Christian man. A man with conscience. He was a positive force in the world. I'll continue to think of him often.

It's my birthday. Wouldn't life be grand if I could just stay this age? Young enough to be pretty healthy. Old enough to stay out of trouble. Experienced enough to be considered valuable. Not so experienced that I'm considered a doddering old fool.

I got up early on my birthday. Didn't want to waste any of it.

My son is singing in a good church choir directed by a friend of mine and I'm glad he's getting the opportunity to sing some great music. It lifts the spirit so to sing great music. And the music remains apart of you forever. When you hear it again, you can still remember your part, and all the words. What kind of brains do we have that allow us to remember any text set to a tune? He expressed ideas in his blog that reflect that he has learned things and had some experiences that conductors hope we are able to teach and provide. I thought it would be worthwhile to reprint some of what he said here. Carter follows:

The concert last night was a lot of fun. The saddest part as anticipated is that we don't get to sing this music anymore...

My favorite (though it was close) was singing the Serenade to Music with the small group and Georgia State kids. It was originally written for sixteen soloists in particular (their names are written into the music with the footnote "if these singers are not available, others may be substituted"!). The words come from The Merchant of Venice - Act V: "Such harmony is in immortal souls"

Gloria by Poulenc was also so much fun to sing. The many weeks of rehearsal never got old, even when we did the same page a million times. I liked it each time (and... practically had it memorized by the end).

In many ways, our conductor, Alan Raines, reminds me of Dad. I can see why they work together on things. They are both tirelessly (obsessively) passionate about music.

Because of Alan's vision, it was a great performance and great experience for hundreds of church members and college students (ages 18-92!) who would otherwise not get a chance to be a part of such a large scale and high quality peformance.

-- posted by carter

Back to Carter's Dad.
It is a joy to rehearse and master (or nearly master) a work of art. Often the performers come to love it much more than the audience because they have studied it in such detail. They know and notice every nuance. Many times audiences are only ho hum about pieces that choirs adore (and vice versa). Sometimes the experience of getting to know the work convinces the singers that the music is not art. The audience only hears it once and thinks it is fine. They may miss how cheap its effects are.

Sadly, after that final performance of a fine work, the group dissolves and the elements that created the work dissolve too. A musical work of art exists only in the moments that it is performed. (Okay, I'll give you CD and DVD are wonderful, but it's alot like watching a baseball game on TV. You get a different show at the park.

Rehearsals of a masterwork are also a great privilege. The works don't get old as you rehearse. Singing the same page over and over does not destroy the work's beauty.

I'll come back to this idea soon.

4000 members of the Georgia National Guard have been called up for duty in Iraq. Police officers, firefighters, teachers, students, bankers, software engineers, salesmen, self employed businessmen.

Albany 180, Americus 90, Brunswick 260, Calhoun 140, Canton 90, Dalton 90, Douglas 60, Douglasville 66, Dublin 175, Eastman 50, Fitzgerald 50, Forsyth 255, Fort Stewart 55, Gainesville 150, Glennville 55, Griffin 170, Hawkinsville 50, Hinesville 200, Jesup 100, Kennesaw 50, Lawrenceville 150, Macon 280, Montezuma 60, Rome 75, Savannah 290, Springfield 120, Statesboro 95, Thomaston 45, Tifton 55, Valdosta 90, Waycross 50, Winder 170.

I've been in 24 or those 32 towns and walked around. Everyone in town is going to know someone who is deployed. One of my senior girls has a dad in Qattar. She has been crying a lot. When I talked to her, she says she is doing okay but her mom isn't taking it well. There must be crying children or parents, friends and cousins for each of the 4000. Some of the soldiers are going to die in Iraq. Many will kill Iraqis. (We have killed about 100 Iraqis for every U.S. soldier who has been killed, so far). Some will return home with unspeakable injuries. Some will be mentally scarred. All will be changed. They will be pround Americans at times. They will wonder why in the world they are there doing what they do at other times.

The president seems emboldened now that he is assured of power for another four years. There is sabre rattling going on about Iran and North Korea. Lay down your arms or we'll come and kill you next.

Sgt. Michael Conley, 56, is going over. Silver star in Viet Nam. He thinks the ghosts in his head from that war may help him save some lives. I heard the Republican party denigrate John Kerry's silver star from Viet Nam. Somehow he just got the Navy to give him one. He was really a scheming coward you know. Running for president, even back then.

Did you see the series, Band of Brothers on HBO? It follows Easy Company of the 101st Airborne through their service in World War 2. Lt. Richard Winters jumped behind enemy lines on D-Day. He lost his weapon in the jump. When the company was gathered he turned out to be the senior officer, since all other officers had been killed.

Some nearby German cannons were pounding Utah Beach and Lt. Winters was ordered by Division HQ to go find those guns and put them out of action. He had about 8 soldiers with rifles, a machine gun and some grenades. With surprise and superior tatics, he captured those 4 guns, guarded by about 75 Germans, and destroyed them. He also captured maps that showed the locations of every big gun in the Normandy area. He left about 50 bewildered Germans in trenches shooting at him as he retreated, taking two casualties, one dead, one wounded. His tatics for attacking an entrenched enemy of superior forces are still taught at West Point today as "the" strategy for that situation. Lt. Winters was awarded the silver star.

Lt. Kerry broke with the usual policy and ordered his swiftboat to race directly into fire, beaching the boat and charging ashore leading his men. He ran ahead of his men, chased down the enemy and killed them. His actions were so successful that they became the new policy for swiftboats to respond to attacks from the shore. Lt. Kerry was awarded the silver star.

Does anyone argue that Viet Nam was a good way for America's youth to be spent in the 70's? Was it necessary? Did it serve some purpose? Does someone think Iraq is a good fight for us today? Are we really helping Iraqis?

People are always quoting Robert Frost's line "Good fences make good neighbors," out of context. They insinuate that "de fence" (sorry, terrible pun) is what makes good neighbors. Frost's poem actually says the opposite. He ridicules his neighbor who thinks that good fences make good neighbors. Robert Frost didn't agree.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Robert Frost's neighbor would have voted for Dubya Bush.

It is unbridled charity and love for one another that would make good neighbors.

I've had students visiting lately. They are an impressive lot. Merchant Marine Academy, Harvard, Georgia State, and Columbus State in the past week. They were happy and doing well. My little Harvard girl jumped right into an a cappella singing group on campus. Yea for her.

There is a lot about aging that comes in the form of unpleasant surprises. Things hurt. You run out of energy and have to sit down. The younger people are still running around. 50's are much different than 40's. Not to say there aren't some good things. Wisdom is simply the accumulation of treasures that you pluck from the water of life as it flows by. You get into fewer jams because you anticipate the jams. Younger people think you are nuts with the painstaking deliberate style that you use to prepare everything. You simply know that it has to be done that carefully or it may come back and bite you. But it hardly offsets the aches and pains. Who knew you weren't going to be able to eat what you wanted. I miss cheese, and I miss eggs. Greasy food, that's a killer. Who knew the doctor would say to you, "You aren't a kid. You should stop playing so hard or you are going to get into trouble." And so I had to stop running and playing. Whoever thought hair would be so problematic. It thins out, changes color and texture and becomes impossible to manage. I remember when it was an asset.

And the pills. Two of these, two of those, and don't forget the other ones. It is some consolation I guess when the doctor says "If you have to have a blood disease, you picked a good one."

How many Thanksgivings and Christmases are left. How many spring flowers. I'm determined to enjoy them.

I'm much more interested in planting things than I used to be.

What do George Clinton, Schuyler Colfax, George Dallas, Hannibal Hamlin, Richard Johnson and Levi Morton have in common? If you know without flinching, you are a remarkable person. Why would you know them?

They were all vice presidents of the United States of America. Don't ask me why, but I've been reading about the life of Theodore Roosevelt who became president one day when McKinley was assassinated. In his biography I ran across an interesting word.

"His corollary to the Monroe Doctrine prevented the establishment of foreign bases in the Caribbean and arrogated the sole right of intervention in Latin America to the United States."

When was the last time you used arrogated in a sentence? I found I couldn't use it in a sentence. I'll come back to this word.

As a teacher, you get to see a cross-section of the community. Communities vary of course, and I teach in a very nice community of middle class Americans. The spread of folks is still broad, including physically handicapped and mentally handicapped who I interact with only occasionally. The unhandicapped folks that I encounter are widely different from each other. Some categories follow. I realize that generalizations are inherently false. . . nevertheless:

The brilliant without trying--photographic or near photographic memories, 1400 to 1590 SAT scores. They take academics for granted. When they choose kinesthetic pursuits they are moderately to very successful. They usually choose academics over kinesthetics. They see the big picture. They philosophize and theorize. They see several futures for themselves and have difficulty trying to decide which one they should take.

The brilliant by trying--kids so industrious that you are amazed that they are always working at something. What drives them? I don't know. But they work. They are near the top of the class in grade point average but maybe not in SAT score. They are the best athletes, dancers, and singers. They see their future and want to get there.

The average students--the great mass near the middle. They are not driven, they are thinking about the future some, but not much. They have a few interests but lack the focus to really prepare for them. They work when you insist they must. They like athletics and a few excel there in kinesthetic education. Oddly, a few are gifted in kinesthetic endeavors.

The academic apathetes--well athletes is a word, why not apathetes? They can't bear the written word. If everything was on video they'd have a chance to get it, but opening books puts them to sleep. They live in the present. They take the SAT but their score doesn't help define them, except that it eliminates them from some things. Many will go to college. A few will graduate. Remember only 25% of us will ever have a college degree.

The indifferent students--nothing interests them except things that entertain without causing them to think--pop culture, sex, drugs, alcohol, TV and movies. Their future is the same as their present. When they are 30, their friends and relatives will still be hoping they will grow up. They don't.

The anti-students--they actively work against education. They are vulgar, resisting culture. They are violent, resisting order. They don't want to be touched and resist love too. I don't know what has created them, dna, or a horrible environment. They cannot escape their future. They often recreate themselves.

Pardon a change in direction here. I'll pull it back together at the end.

Leadership today is most often taken by people willing to offer simple solutions to complex problems. They see and speak in black and white. They answer in short sentences. They say the future is rosy and that they know the way to it. Sometimes they say that they alone know the way.

I like to listen to a program on the radio called the Infinite Mind. It features doctors and scientists. One night the program was on "optimism and pessimism." I found that I fell into the pessimistic group. The optimists are better liked, become leaders at every level. They move and shake the world. Their lives are better for many reasons, better jobs, handsome friends and connections, wealth and material prosperity. Toward the end of the program there was a startling moment when the scientists presented research on one other finding in their study. They compared the optimists' and pessimists' points of view over time to decide which point of view proved to be correct. The program said that in almost every case, the pessimists were correct. But no one cared. The audience still wanted to listen to the optimists.

George W. Bush was elected President of the United States a few days ago. The exit polls showed that people with graduate degrees voted against him over 4 to 1. His party is now calling for "unity." "Let's come together to support the mandate he has received," they say. "Throw your weight behind him so he can reshape America."

I could borrow a phrase from Dick Cheney, vice president of the United States, but I will restrain myself. But listen to this. There will be no honeymoon. There will be no unity. I call rather for resistance, disruption at every level, stonewalling, and filibuster. George W. Bush is a cock-eyed optimist, a C-student apathete, elected by C students, a coward who orders men to death, a thief. George W. Bush and the Republicans ARROGATE that they have the country's mandate and that the record number of people who voted against a sitting president should fall in line. Arrogate means to "claim or demand unduly or presumptuously, to lay claim in an overbearing manner, as to arrogate power or dignity to one's self." Thank you Teddy Roosevelt’s biographer for digging that one up.

If the Republicans thought the election campaigning was a time of division and dissonance, they are in for a rude awakening. It was the calm before the storm.

My son wrote this on one of his blogs. He was responding to his conservative friend. I thought it was well said.

"It's disheartentening to find that nothing has changed, and that Americans in general condone the type of leadership we've seen over the last four years.

Further evidence of this united afront to civic common sense is the fact that all 11 of the states who proposed constitutional ammendments outlawing marriage passed -- in Georgia by 3 to 1, in Mississippi by 9 to 1!!!

Yes, I said "outlawing marriage" with no adjective, because I think any discrimination is a travesty, and writing discrimination back into the Constitution is regressive.

No, James, no one had resigned themselves to the fate we now face. Before there was hope. As citizens, our rights were encroached upon, our friends and collegues were sent to a war we don't support, our economy lost jobs (those who lost jobs in the last 4 years voted Kerry 80%), the environment took a beating, the rich got richer, oil prices hit record highs... but there was hope for change.

I put a Kerry sticker on my car mainly because GA is so conservative (though Fulton County voted Kerry) that I feel like a high school kid looking over his shoulder for bullies. But the bullies (or the misguided) are the apparent majority. Nerds lose (those with grad degrees voted Kerry 80%). Hope was on the way, but has passed us by."

posted by carter

We got just over an inch of rain during the last hour of voting last evening. Regardless of who the president is, perhaps the sun will still keep shining and the rain falling on the earth for four more years.

There are things that no one will say that I think should be said. You may think the election issues were homosexual rights, stem cell research, abortion, terrorism, war in Iraq, or jobs. But something else was reflected in voting patterns in the Old South. 80% of the white people voted Republican and 90% of the black people voted Democratic. There is really only one issue and it is race. I'm thinking that's pretty sad.

I have to visit New York or the northeast to find white men who have the same values as me in any number. It is dangerous for me to have a Kerry Edwards sticker on my car. White men will attack my car.

I guess if things continue in the Bush way for four more years, some of this may happen:
Bush will be on vacation mostly. Gas prices will top $3. The stock market will not make any gains but corporate CEO's will make record salaries. Social Security will fail. Drug costs will continue to skyrocket. Wilderness will come to an end in America. 10 million will lose health care in the next 4 years. The tax burden will shift once again to mean a smaller percentage paid by the wealthy, a larger percentage paid by the middle class. Being middle class is going to be less fun.

I'm sure I'll have more to say later.