Special Day

May 26 is a special day for two reasons, this year.

First, it is Mrs. Chief’s birthday.  I am told that a gentleman never tells how many years old a lady is.  While no one has ever accused me of being a gentleman, I will not divulge my partner’s age.

I took her out for breakfast this morning and we are going to a different restaurant for supper tonight.   Any one familiar with the Orleans Hit (1972) titled “Still The One” will understand my feelings for my wife.

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Second reason and not so happy.  Today, her birthday is also the first anniversary of my collapsing in the backyard and events that led to a pacemaker being implanted, treatment for prostate cancer and some type of seizures for which  I still take meds.

 

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Bottom line:  Happy Birthday, Sweetie.

Public Schools

In May of 1954, sixty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in the Brown v. Board of Education that schools could not be segregated. Separate but equal was no longer valid.

Ten years later, while in the Navy, I spent eighteen weeks at Naval Air Station Glynco in Glynn County, Georgia from January to Memorial Day learning how to maintain a radar system. Brunswick is the largest community in Glynn Co.

I was either surprised or shocked while there to find out that all of the public schools were closed and the white children went to private academies.

Fast forward 50 years to 2014 and we still have whites only private schools and either no public schools or grossly under funded public schools in this country.

Sad. Very sad.

The NBA

I “grew up” in the old/original Boston Garden.  I watched a whole lot of basketball in that leakey old barn on Causeway Street in Boston.

At the time the NBA consisted of just eight teams.  Only two of those teams are still playing in the same city today that they were in, in the 1950s.  They would be the Boston Celtics and the New York Knicks.

I watched the Boston coach Arnold ‘Red’ Auerbach trade center Ed Macauley and forward Cliff Hagen to St. Louis for the rights to draft Bill Russell.  Mr. Russell is the only celebrity that I would like to spend some time chatting with.  From the first time I saw Mr. Russell in 1957 I was impressed with his quiet dignity.

I watched as Mr. Russell and the other players that Red Auerbach drafted changed the game of basketball.  Instead of being a slow, set-piece game, basketball was turned into a run and shoot game.  Mr. Russell would get a rebound and before his feet hit the floor, he was looking for Cousey or Sharman breaking down court.  Mr. Russell would heave a long pass and the Celtics would have an easy layup.

Anyway, I have watched thousands of basketball games.  I think that I understand the game better than most observers.

But, what has caused me write this is Donald Sterling’s, owner of the NBA team the LA Clippers, incredible stupidity.  He is only a few years older than I am, with a young wife and a much younger girl friend, and he  makes the ugliest racist remarks.  Much uglier that I could ever imagine.

Virginia

I watched an interesting hour of TeeVee this morning.  It was about what Mildred and Richard Loving had to endure as a married couple in Virginia in 1958.  Wikipedia has it here.

Also, in Virginia, at the same time, this happened.

It was either the spring or summer of 1961.  I was in the U.S. Navy, stationed on a ship in Norfolk, Virginia.  Mrs. Chief and I had only been married a few months and were living in Navy housing in Norfolk.  Mrs. Chief was eighteen years old when this happened.

Mrs. Chief was friends with a neighbor couple who were black.  Johnny Mae invited Mrs. Chief to go to a movie on base, at the base theatre.  Johnny Mae’s husband drove them to the base and they were to take a Norfolk city bus home, public transportation.

After the movie, when they got on the bus, Johnny Mae walked to the back of the bus, past the “color line.”  Mrs. Chief followed Johnny Mae.

Johnny May insisted that Mrs. Chief sit in the front of the bus with the white folk.  Mrs. Chief refused to move and rode back to Navy housing sitting in the back of the bus with her friend.

I have always been so proud of my wife’s actions that day.

It Is All Racial

Today it is obvious that the white enclaves are struggling mightily to hold on to power.  The 30 – 50 safe gerry-mandered Congressional Districts are white and conservative.  No matter how crazy their Rep in Congress is s/he will get re-elected, unless s/he is not crazy enough.

But, let me toss this out from Salon:

When Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg studied the voters of Macomb County, a hotbed of so-called Reagan Democrats – the county gave two-thirds of its votes to John F. Kennedy in 1960, and the same proportion to Ronald Reagan in 1980 — he found that they no longer saw Democrats as working-class champions. “Blacks constitute the explanation for their vulnerability and for almost everything that has gone wrong in their lives,” and they saw government “as a black domain where whites cannot expect reasonable treatment,” Greenberg wrote.

I was not old enough to vote for JFK and was smart enough not to vote for Reagan.  I was born in 1941 and have always seen Democrats as champions of the working class, the poor, the down-trodden.  And there are a hell of a lot more poor and down-trodden white folk than there are people of color.

Another . . .

I’ve made several posts recently about my buddy, Molly.  My 9-1/2 year old friend moved in when she was about 8 months old.

She knows the rules.

Her way of signaling that she has to relieve herself is to ‘bug’ me, or bug me and Mrs Chief.  I take her outside, she does whatever it is she has to do and we come back inside.

I do NOT praise her for doing it outside and not in the house.  Let me say that again – when Molly goes out and pees or has a bowl movement, she is doing what she is supposed to do, what she KNOWS she should be doing.

The House of Representatives know what needs to be done, but they are so stubborn and bull-headed they shit all over themselves.

Molly is smarter than the Republicans in the House (and Sen Cruz).

Today: 28 Sep

marks the 34th anniversary of my retirement from the U.S. Navy 1n 1979.

Mrs. Chief & I spent a good portion of the day at her Mom’s cottage on Grand Lake, in Celina, Ohio.  We had baked spaghetti with meat balls for lunch.  Doin’ nuthin’ much ‘cept relaxin.’

We took Molly with us.  She doesn’t mind riding in a convertible.

Politics and Some Important Issues

It has become hard for me to stay interested in all the political machinations these past few months.  I am well aware that the TeaParty and government shut-down are important, but . . .

On 26 May, just four months ago, I collapsed in the backyard while weed whacking.  Great grand-daughter alerted my son-in-law.   I became aware of people at the kitchen table an hour or so later.

Anyway, the third time I lost consciousness, I was in the hospital all wired up to a monitor.  Heart stopped for 20 seconds.   I now have a pacemaker.

But there is more.  I was also having seizures.  I am on Keppra for the seizures and Zoloft for several other items.

And if that wasn’t enough, I am being treated for prostate cancer.  At the age of 72, surgery was out.  So I opted for Hormone therapy, also called ‘testosterone inactivating pharmaceuticals’ or TIP.  My PSA was at 8.7 in March of this year.  After three shots of Lupron 7.5 (each 4 weeks apart) my PSA dropped to 0.2.

The above three health problems have taken my attention and my ‘caring’ about politics to a new low.  I used to watch a whole lot of political shows on MS-NBC.  Now, I just watch Rachel Maddow.  No Chris Matthews or any of the others.

 

This Is Just My Opinion

If the United States had a white Democrat as President, we would not be having the budget and ‘debt-ceiling’ problems that the media is reporting on.

Before 2008 when President Obama was elected, I was under the apparently mistaken impression that the USA was in a post-racial period.

W O W ! !

Was I wrong.  Nobody is using racial slurs, but when ever President Obama suggests or proposes a program that was initially put forth by a Republican, all of a sudden the Prez is a Socialiat-Muslim.

Now this.  Now we have another racist who is calling for a march on the White House on November 19 to force the President to resign.

The march will not happen and the President will not resign.

Molly

Molly is my best buddy.  Molly is a nine year old herding dog cross. Light brown, right ear erect, left ear flopped down, she is sixty pounds of energy.  Here is a picture of Molly.

I have read “Inside of a Dog” by Alexandra Horowitz three times.  I know from Ms. Horowitz’ book that the sense of smell is the dogs number one sense, with eyesight at number two and just in front of hearing.

When I took the Chihuahuas out I noticed a dead mouse, kind of out of the way.  The Chihuahuas never noticed the mouse.

Then I took Molly out.  Molly sniffed and from the direction of the breeze, I felt that she was smelling the mouse.  It took her more than a few seconds to find it with her eyes but her nose is what led her to actually find the mouse.

After reading Ms. Horowitz’ explanation of the nose – eye relationship in dogs, it was real fascinating to see it in action and to understand what was happening.