Civility

Civility

CIVILITY: noun

1) formal politeness and courtesy in behavior or speech: I hope we can treat each other with civility and respect

2) polite remarks used in formal conversation : she was exchanging civilities with his mother

In early use the term denoted the state of being a citizen and hence good citizenship or orderly behavior.

Believe it or not there was a time when people actually talked to each other instead of just yelling.  It was a time when people could disagree without being disagreeable; a time when a debate meant orderly discourse and not a shouting match.

The recent Presidential primaries and the upcoming election have reinforced to me once again the complete lack of respect we have for each other in this country today.   South Carolina, where I live, went through a fierce Republican primary fight, yet I would wager that not one in five of the electorate could today tell where most of the candidates stood on the issues.  It all seemed to center around the dog on Romney’s car roof and Gingrich’s ex-wife.

The lack of civility in this country is not the preserve as politicians.  Recently I watched as the President of the United States, while making a speech, was repeatedly interrupted by a reporter.  Shame on that member of the media and anyone who cannot respect the Office of the President regardless of the occupant.  Harry Truman once fired the most publically popular general in the U.S. Army making the comment, “I don’t give a damn what he says about Harry Truman but he will damn well not disrespect the office.”

Now we are approaching the election of that same high office and the focus on one side is on Romney’s tax returns and, yet again, where President Obama was born on the other. Instead of strategists, both major parties now hire attack dogs whose only qualification seems to be that they be able to scream louder on news shows than their counterparts.  I find this embarrassing both as an American and as a member of a supposed civilized culture.  If you want to see a stark contrast to the current environment queue up the Kennedy/Nixon debates on YouTube sometime and listen for a few minutes. What you will see is perhaps boring though relevant to the times.  What you will also see is two men who shared a great deal of personal animosity but were able to put that animosity aside and act “civilly” towards each other for the benefit of the debate.  You will also see there is no live audience to incite or influence the discussion.

 As long she was alive we visited my wife’s grandmother whenever we came to South Carolina.  It never failed that as we were leaving, her last words to us were always the same: “Y’all be nice to each other.”  Mr. Romney and President Obama, you don’t have to like each other.  You don’t have to agree with each other.  However you can keep a civil tongue and be nice to each other.

Be nice to each other.  Good advice for presidents and paupers alike.

As Time Goes By.

At the Beach

At the Beach

Recently my wife and I went to the beach.  It was our second trip this summer and, hopefully we’ll get back a couple of more times before the cold weather returns.  We both love the beach.  She gets her love honestly, having grown up less than a two-hour drive from the South Carolina coast.  I wasn’t that fortunate; having grown up in a town in North Carolina twice that distance from the sea.  Yet I share her love of sand and surf as If I was born there.  In fact my first visit to the sea was when I was six weeks old

My family was fortunate to have a cottage at Carolina Beach; the operative word here being cottage.  My children would have been aghast if I had tried to make them stay in such a place when we took our family vacations to the beach.  Yet, to us, in the 1950’s, it was comfortable enough and we loved out trips there in the summer.  It was especially meaningful to me because it was the one place my Father became my Dad.

My father and I were never close.  I neither feel any guilt nor have any animosity for this relationship.  It is just a cold, hard, fact.  My Father was a child of the depression and I was a child of television.  He grew up worrying about his next meal.  I grew up worrying I wouldn’t have the right color alligator shirt.  His work was his life, first and foremost.  My life was Elvis and cars.  Yet there was always one time when he quit being a businessman and provider and one place where started being a Dad.  That was the time we spent to together at the beach.

My fondest memories of him are those precious days over too few years we spent at Carolina Beach.  It was there we spent hours fishing in the surf, swimming in the sea.  It was there he taught me how to float on my back over the swells and to body surf in to the shore.  It was there I learned to bait a hook, to fish from shore and from a pier.  I remember when I was eight standing side by side with him on the Center Fishing Pier when the Spots were running, each of us pulling up two at a time on our lines.  When I had a backlash on my reel he would swap with me, untangle my line and hand it back.  We caught fish that day until the coolers were overflowing.  It is to this day still the best day fishing I can ever remember.  He taught me how to dig in the wet sand for sand fleas and then use them for bait.  He taught me how to fly kites.  He showed me love though like most men in his generation he could hardly ever verbalize it.

My Dad is gone now as is that little cottage at Carolina Beach.  It gave way, as most of the single-family dwellings on the beachfront, to condos ages ago.  It has become, like so much of what I write about, just another old man’s memory.  I don’t fish anymore.  It seems hardly anyone fishes from the surf anymore.  I guess there are just too many people on the beaches these days.  I still body surf and float on my back over the swells though I never mastered like my Dad who seemed to be able to stay like that all day.

If you ever go with us to the sea and I wander off my own to sit and stare at the water.  Please don’t take it personal.  You did nothing to upset me.  I’m just watching my Dad as he rides slowly over the rolling waves……

As Time Goes By

Going Home

Going Home

Recently I had the opportunity to return to my hometown; the place where I was born and raised.  I don’t go there much anymore; actually hardly ever.  My family has pretty much either died or moved away and, in fact, I have only one cousin, who is in her eighties left there.  I go back now almost exclusively for high school reunions and funerals – my last trip, unfortunately, for this latter reason.

Going home now is a bittersweet experience.  Bitter from the loss of so many loved ones like my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and an increasing number of old friends.  Bitter as I see the empty stores in my hometown; the local drugstore where I drank cherry cokes made at the soda fountain and spent countless hours playing matchbook football at the diner tables, the clothing store where my mother bought my first pair of jeans, the A&P gone and replaced by a Family Dollar store.  There are no local groceries anymore and, for that matter, no local hardware, no local banks.  It is the passing of a uniquely southern way of life that will never come again; a time when churches were unlocked day and night, a time when neighbors shared telephone party lines, and we all waited anxiously for the next new movie at the local theater, which is also long removed from the scene. 

 Yet there is sweetness to going home, going to a place where I will always be “Jimmy”, not Jim and never James; a comfort to see people still there who tell me I look more and more like my Dad.  It is nice to ride by the house where I grew up, drive up the big hill we sledded down in winter snow; though in truth even the hill is not as high and long as I remember. 

There is a comfort in greeting the friends of my youth.  Except for my immediate family there is nowhere else I can go for so many shared memories.  Those memories are the sweetest of all.  I often play a game with myself in which I try to remember the first time I met these dear, dear people and more often than not fail, not because of a senior’s memory but rather from the fact that they have just always been there.

Thomas Wolfe’s said, “You Can’t Go Home Again”. Clichéd or not it still rings true.  However, once in awhile can back for a visit and taste the bittersweet.

It's All About the Money Stupid

It’s All About the Money Stupid

Last Monday saw the culmination of the college football season with the crowning of a new national champion.  Many people watched this contest and came away with the mistaken idea that the winner was Alabama.  However, the real winners Monday night were Vanderbilt and all the other members of the Southeastern Conference who sat home and got to watch along with the rest of us. You see LSU and Alabama each earned seventeen million dollars for being in the championship game but that smooth thirty-four million has to be shared with the rest of the conference.  Regardless of where the money goes let me repeat that there was a $34 million dollar payday for that one game.  It leads to, what is to me, the obvious conclusion that this sport is no longer about school pride; “it is”, to paraphrase James Carville, “about the money stupid.”

If you are still of the deluded conclusion its about winning one for the “Gipper” consider the following report from the September 24,2011 Charleston Post and Courier:

“Over the past 25 years, professors' salaries at major college football schools rose 32 percent. Presidents at those institutions received increases of 90 percent. And football coaches' compensation grew 750 percent, according to an inflation-adjusted study of 44 schools by Duke University economist Charles Clotfelter.”

Consider this fact: Les Miles, head football coach at LSU, the team that lost and still earned $17 million has a salary pegged at around $3.9 million. The Chancellor of that same university has a salary of  $750 thousand.  Although none of us would sneeze at $750K, I have to wonder what this says about our priorities with regard to education in this country.   “It’s all about the money stupid.”

Closer to home here in South Carolina is the following April 2011 report from an online service called Fitsnews.com:

The University of South Carolina‘s board of trustees quietly approved a forty percent salary increase for head football coach Steve Spurrier.  Under the terms of the agreement, the 66-year-old head coach will make $2.55 million in 2011, $2.87 million in 2012 and $2.95 million in 2012. He will also receive a one-time payment of $1 million at the end of the 2011 season – pushing his salary for that year to $3.55 million.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that the Chancellor of the University of South Carolina has a total compensation package of about $300 thousand.  “It’s all about the money stupid.”

Most of Spurrier’s compensation comes from non-taxpayer sources i.e. people and companies that want a winning football team.  Perhaps the new business mantra should be:  “Millions for sports but not one cent for education”, to paraphrase Robert Goodloe Harper, a South Carolina Federalist.  Of course Darla Moore here in South Carolina did give millions to build an International Business Program that is recognized consistently as one of, if not the, best in the country.  As a reward for her largess she was removed from the Board of Trustees.  Of course she probably can’t run a 4.5 forty.

These examples at Penn State, LSU, and South Carolina are not unique; just look at Southern Cal, North Carolina, and Miami to name just a few more.  Indeed I would guess that few major college programs could stand much close scrutiny.  Why?  “It’s all about the money stupid.”

The horrific events that occurred at Penn State becomes the cautionary tale as to what can happen when we, as a society, allow our priorities to get so out of kilter that sports programs run educational institutions.  We seem to have lost sight of the fact that colleges and universities exist as institutes of higher learning, not farm systems for the NFL and NBA.

I am not opposed to college athletics.  On the contrary I am an enthusiastic college sports fan and those that know me are sure my blood runs Tarheel Blue.  However, when you see that the U.S. rankings in world education is rated average, coming in 14^th out of 34 countries studied, I think it is time to take a serious look at our priorities.  While we don our school colors; living and dying on the outcome of a game, our educational system is really dying.  In ancient Rome the Coliseum Games were a distraction to the people to keep them from dwelling too much on reality.  Perhaps we are approaching that point ourselves.

“It’s all about the money stupid”, but it shouldn’t be.

As Time Goes By.

I Do Hereby Resolve

I Do Hereby Resolve

It is time once again to sit and reflect on days past, days to come, and again go through that exercise in frustration called “New Year’s Resolutions”.

Believe it or not the custom of New Year’s Resolutions goes all the way back to the Romans.  According to an article in EzineArticles.com, in 153 B.C., Janus, a mythical king of early Rome was placed at the head of the calendar.  This god had two opposing faces that allowed him to look backward at the year past and forward to the year ahead and became the symbol of resolutions.  Hard to imagine but human kind has been frustrating itself with these broken self-promises for over two thousand years.

Who am I to buck such a long-standing tradition?  For better and, sometimes, worse, here are my resolves for 2012.  I have attempted to be bold this year because if the Mayans are right – why not?

Resolve #1 – Write more.  I began this blog as a resolution last year and although I did write, it has been sporadic at best.  What I discovered is that writing is hard work and takes a discipline I have yet to perfect.  I promise to do more and better work this year.

Resolve #2 – Continue my lifelong effort to have brussel sprouts banned as an illegal substance.  I know it has its proponents but so do most drugs.  Besides, I have been to Brussels and if you try to order sprouts, the waiter will look at you funny, shrug and say, “Try the mussels.”

Resolve #3 – Pay it forward.  Part of the backward facing Janus is a reflection on the past.  I have enjoyed a blessed life, rich with love and comfort.  Shame on anyone who reaches this point in life and doesn’t not only take the opportunity, but, more so, seek the opportunity to do a kindness.

Resolve #4 – Try to be tolerant of those that believe in Dook basketball.  Indeed they are lost souls wandering aimlessly in the wilderness.

Resolve #5 – Exercise more.  This resolution is a corollary of my usual “lose weight”.  Maybe if I eat the same and exercise more something will give somewhere or, better, maybe I can eat more and break even.

Resolve #6 – Finish my “milkshake” quest at Cookout.  Probably my biggest disappoint of 2011, I failed miserably in my effort to run through their extensive 40 “shake” menu, only getting 14 down.  I think I became discouraged, and, somewhat repulsed, after downing the Watermelon shake in July.  However, with renewed resolve I forge ahead in 2012.  I will also set up a separate blog with appropriate comments on each frozen concoction.

Resolve #7  – Work for World Peace.  Okay I’m being flippant.  We all know if I succeeded in this there would be a serious backlash on the beauty pageant circuit.  Contestants everywhere would have to answer the “This is what I will do if I win” question with “Duh”.

Resolve #The Last – Wake each morning with the understanding that this day is yet another gift; yesterday is gone, and tomorrow is nothing more than a maybe.  Make the most of now.

Happy New Year.