If You Tell a Lie. . .

Everyone from George Washington to Pinocchio knows that if you tell a lie, the consequences are unpleasant, and seldom do you get through life without your secrets being discovered by somebody.  Many people choose to ignore this life truth for individual reasons; unfortunately people who are in charge of our country, our universities, our churches, and our businesses are among those who think they can manage the consequences so that they can maintain the power they have obtained.  This trend is prevalent in our political system to the point that it is a commonly accepted behavior, and candidates for office think they can't win an office if they are truthful.

In 2004 when Mr. Barack Obama gave forth with an attention-getting speech at the Democratic National Convention, I thought he did pretty well.  His books, Dreams from my Father and The Audacity of Hope, set the country on fire because of how well they were written.  (A disclaimer:  I haven't read either of these books.)  But you know, sometimes you pick up on something intangible, something intuitive, that tells you that things are just not right.  Every time I heard Obama speak, I had that feeling.  If he were the inspirational communicator people found in his books, why did he hem and haw, stutter, and totally depend on a teleprompter when he spoke.  He did not have the words in him.

So when I saw Jack Cashill on C Span promoting his new book that de-mystified the great Obama, I knew I had to read it.  What a wild, wonderful trip it was.

Before I read the first word, I flipped to the back of the book to see if he had footnotes and references.  He did.  Unfortunately his references listed secondary sources.  But the book is, for all practical matters, a literary analysis, so using material from the works being analyzed and other analyses is fair, I think. Also consider that any records pertaining to Obama, his family and friends, his education, and his work have been scrubbed as clean as a Dutch housewife's kitchen floor.

Deconstructing Obama has two main tenets:  Obama did not actually write either of his books, and Barack Obama, Sr., is not his father.  Obama's life and work, as the public knows them, were structured to enhance his political opportunities which in the beginning consisted of aspirations to be the mayor of Chicago.  Even the most astute political analyst did not foresee the election of 2008.

To my thinking Cashill deftly proved that Dreams from my Father was written by Bill Ayers. The analysis is long and complicated, so read the book if you need the full story.  Cashill provides examples of Obama's early writing, and the difference in any writing example that is presented and the Dreams book is more than striking.  Let it suffice to say that Obama needs work on subject-verb agreement, something that most eighth graders can master.  Cashill also presents a poem that Obama wrote that is so incoherent it sounds like something those proverbial monkeys in a room full of typewriters wrote.  

As for the paternity issues, Cashill presents several possibilities in the absence of any proof.  First, he raises doubt about Barack Obama, Sr., the Kenyan, fathering Ann Dunham's child.  Cashill says the birthers are following the wrong story and overlooking the obvious reasons that records have disappeared and family and friends have been told to zip it when reporters and researchers come around.  Of course, most of the primaries in this situation are dead.  You know what they say about dead men and tales.

I'm not going re-tell all of the theories about who Obama's father is.  I will say that if you look at pictures of Barack Obama, Sr., Ann Dunham, Frank Marshall Davis, and Barack Obama, Jr., side-by-side, there are amazing revelations.  If you don't know who Frank Davis is, you'll need to do some research on your own.

And let me say that all this information that was new to me is all over the internet.  I had no idea until I read Deconstructing Obama.  I had never seen a picture of Obama's maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham.  Barack Obama, Jr., is the spitting image of his grandfather.  Who finds out these things?  Apparently thousands of bloggers and writers on the internet.

Another issue discussed in the book is the pictures of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham.  The pictures show a nude woman who is attributed to be Ann Dunham by many people.  Of course, this is denied and the pictures are reportedly of a 1950 pin-up girl named Marcy Moore (so says Snopes.com and others).  I looked at the pictures of the nude and also of Marcy Moore, and I have to believe that these are pictures of Ann Dunham based on the similarity of other pictures of Ann Dunham.  She has the notorious Dunham chin, and Marcy Moore really doesn't look that much like Ann Dunham, except that they both have dark, short hair.

Some of Cashill's theories have strong documentation.  Some of his theories do not.  All of these theories are predominant on the internet, just as much as the birther theories are.  Quite a bit of band width and time are being spent on these topics.  While our country is gurgling down the drain, we're spending time figuring out who is really the father of Barack Obama.  And Barack Obama and his handlers are spending their time denying it and perpetuating the Structured Obama.

How much better off we all would be if Obama had just told the truth.  I think we could handle it.

All the News That's Fit to Print

Things are popping in Applewood.  My neighbor to the east of our house is having some work done on his kitchen.  I know this because of the sign in the yard saying it's a "Lowe's" job and the truck in the driveway with the sign on the door advertising that they are kitchen specialists.  My neighbor at the entry of the development is getting a new mattress from Kiser's Furniture.

My news is that my peas, onions, potatoes, and lettuce were buried today, and in seven to 10 days they will be resurrected in a brand new body.  The soil is probably too wet to be planting, but I dumped three bags of Black Kow composted cow manure into my little plot anyway and carried forth.  You can grow anything, anywhere, if you put enough manure into the ground where it's planted.    

My plan was to plant my garden by the signs, but today was designated as a "most barren period".  Anyone wanting to plant root crops, according to the Farmer's Almanac, should do so on one day about the first of March and one day next week.  I think today was listed as good for killing pests, digging holes, and slaughtering.  Wonder what kind of potatoes that will produce.

I grow peas because you cannot buy (at least around here) fresh peas in the shell.  A few years ago I bought some pea seeds on a trip to Monticello, and I've saved seed from them every year since then.  I'm not sure I'll have peas this year though.  When I save the seeds, I dry the pods and then shell the seeds out of them, storing them in an envelope until the coming spring.  Last fall, either through laziness or abject distraction, I left the peas in the dried pods in a little bowl in my china cabinet.  This morning I started shelling the peas out of the pods, but I was distraught to find the pods in the bottom of the bowl were molded.  Most of the peas seemed okay, so I went ahead and planted them.  In a few weeks we'll see what kind of peas you get from moldy seeds.

The big news in Applewood today, though, is that someone is refurbishing the old apple barn down by the "big road".  A few years ago someone cleared out the brush around the barn and put a new roof on it, but today someone has not only used heavy equipment to pull the vines off the walls and roof and clear out the weediness, but they have replaced the door on the loft, cleared out all the old packing boxes, re-done the parking area, and, of all things, painted it red.  Nobody puts that much work into a building unless they have plans for it.  So the big mystery is what will take place in the old apple barn.

Senior Attention Deficit Disorder

Note to self:  select a topic for a new blog.  Possible topics are:  organizing the attic, learning to throw away items to which you're emotionally attached, was the weather prediction by the groundhog accurate, cooking, paying taxes, Winston Churchill, digging up the garden, cooking, going to Asheville, Estep family history, and cooking.

Have I lost every smidgen of my ability to focus?  I believe I have.

I am just about three months out from my last day at work.  I'm beginning to take this retirement thing seriously.  My hair stylist told me last week that most people she knows who've retired spend the first year doing all the house work they've neglected over the last 30 years.  That's not true in all situations of course.  A friend of mine who retired about five years ago immediately went on a trip to Scotland, and even today she seems to have a good time.  She supplements her income by painting "primitive" landscapes that she sells through an antique mart, and she just bought a cabin in the mountains.

I suppose I've taken the route of cleaning out all the detritus we accumulated in this house since 1991.  I haven't exactly given up on that project, but I am taking a break. Big jobs are more easily accomplished by breaking them into smaller jobs.  It takes longer, but it's an effective mental game to play on yourself.  "Today I will do this one thing.  Then I'll go to Wal-Mart."  I'm still waiting, of course, for better weather to clean windows and carpets.

Those things that I thought would make retirement worthwhile have somehow been pushed to the side.  All of the genealogy I was going to write up is sitting in a stack on the floor of our home office.  The painting I planned to finish reclines on the easel.  I'm still cleaning house.

So I've determined that I'm not exhibiting some kind of old person "nesting", but rather I'm afflicted with a syndrome called Senior Attention Deficit Disorder (SADD).  It's commonly found among new retirees overcome with all the possibilities of things to do each morning.  Instead of selecting a course of action for the day that is enjoyable and productive, SADD sufferers lose calendars and misplace cell phones as they drift from one possibility to another.  This isn't a memory problem; I don't forget to do things, but I am having trouble finishing what I start.  Just like one famous Georgia girl (and many other retirees), I can always do it tomorrow.

Homecoming

This is a photo taken at a homecoming at the Chestnut Grove Baptist Church near Hix in Summers County, West Virginia. Front row, left to right:  unidentified gentleman, Irma Amick Ballengee, Frank Burdette, Gladys Burdette, Tom Shephard.  Back row:  Fred Lively, Callie Shepherd, Red Ballengee, Mr. Lively (Hub?).

In the olden days, when my mind was quicker and my joints didn't hurt so much, late in the summer churches held get-togethers that everyone called a Homecoming.  Some churches today continue that tradition, but it just doesn't seem to have the dramatic effect that homecomings used to have.

My family attended Sewell Valley Baptist Church in Rainelle, West Virginia.  Sewell Valley really knew how to put on a homecoming.  The homecoming itself was a one-day event on Sunday, but the preparation began days ahead of time with the cooking taking up most of the Saturday before.  And please understand, this was not a hot dog and hamburger kind of picnic.  No.  These dinners-on-the-grounds were complete home-cooked meals with a meat, two vegetables, salad, and dessert.  Sometime in the 1960s my mother bought a contraption that consisted of five or six round metal containers into which the various dishes could be placed.  The containers were then stacked on each other, making a column which was clasped into a wire-like handle and carried forth to share at the homecoming.  It was the high-tech way to transport cooked food, and it sure beat cramming bowls and pots of hot food into a cardboard box.

Homecoming at Sewell Valley started with the regular church services, Sunday school followed by worship during which a guest preacher usually delivered the sermon. There was singing.  Oh, there was lots of singing. After the blessing was pronounced at the end of the sermon, everyone trooped out to the long wooden tables that had been set up under the trees in front of the church.  On those tables the women (this was not a job for men) had set out the various dishes they'd brought, all home-cooked and still a little warm.  This was the time for adults to visit, children to play, for the men to sneak away from the crowd to smoke cigarettes.   When the music started inside the church, that was the cue for everyone to trickle inside for the afternoon "singing" which lasted into late afternoon.

Of course, homecoming was the time for those who had moved away to return and visit family and friends.  They came back to their home church.  My father, Red Ballengee, did not have much contact with family or friends once he left Summers County.  His parents were dead; he had some half-brothers and sisters, but he'd not maintained contact with them.  I think it was my mother who encouraged him to drive back up Sourwood Mountain to see if things had changed, and I also think it might have been so that I, who was in my early teens, could see where my dad had grown up.  The friends he visited, especially Mr. Tom Shephard (I think he was one of my dad's teachers) and his daughter, Callie, suggested that my dad come to the Homecoming at Chestnut Grove Baptist Church.

Chestnut Grove was a small church, but the building was overflowing at that Homecoming.  Other than the picture I took of my parents, my uncle and his wife, and my dad's friends in front of the church, the only other thing that I remember of that day is that I was recruited to play the piano for the singing.  I play the piano only a little, by reading music, not by ear.  This means that I can only play the songs as they are written in the hymnal.  If you insist on improvising your singing while I accompany you on the piano, you will rapidly be singing a cappella. When the call went out for a piano player that Sunday, my parents were all too happy to point out that I could play.  I managed to play the songs they were singing, because they used the songs I knew from the hymnal.  It wasn't terribly complicated.  I think it made my dad happy.

Other than being a little stressed because of the piano playing at Chestnut Grove, all my memories of homecomings are beautiful ones.  Homecomings were joyful, exciting times when you could count on being received with a smile at the old home church.  I don't think it's an accident that homecomings take place at churches.  This is our reminder of the great homecoming yet to be, when trials and pain are forgotten at the joy of being reunited with family and old friends.  There will be singing.  Yes, lots of singing.

Sunday School class at Chestnut Grove Baptist Church around 1921 or so.  Red Ballengee is the boy in the suit who looks remarkably like Opie Taylor.  

Pablo

This is not a short story.  It goes back to October 1991 when we moved into the house where we currently live.  At the time the housing development was brand new; our house was one of the first few houses to be built.  There were no trees, no grass, no flowers.  Just new homes in a sea of yellow straw spread on grass seed that was waiting to sprout.

By January 1992 we had found that our development was the favorite spot for people to drop off their unwanted dogs.  We took in a blonde shepherd mix who had been wandering around the neighborhood irritating people for a week or so.  She was extremely thin by the time we started feeding her, but she didn't stay thin for long.  Katie named her Tinkerbell, and we called her Tinker for short.  Her story will be saved for another day.

We had already had the one dog for a while when two black and white rapscallions found shelter under the porch of a house that was under construction down the street.  It didn't seem that they had been dropped off but were probably older dogs who had taken off for greener pastures and instead found themselves hungry and unloved by just about anyone who saw them.

Of course they were attracted to our house.  Katie never met a dog she didn't like, and there always seemed to be a bowl of dog food from which they could steal a bite, no matter how much I told Katie not to feed those dogs. One of the dogs was a short-haired hound of some kind with droopy ears.  He came to be known as Buddy, because he was Katie's buddy everywhere she went.  He also has an interesting story.

The subject of today's story was a larger dog, although he was not as big as a black lab.  He had long hair, also black and white, like a big border collie. Once you name the dog, you know, there is no going back.  The bigger dog was named Pablo.

I imagine that while Pablo was at our house was the first time in his life that he had ever been shown any affection.  We petted him and fed him, and he played with Katie and the other dogs.  At our house he was happy, although he (and Buddy, too) had a wandering streak that could not be subdued.  They both liked to go off for hours at a time to take care of dog business.  I tried tying them up in the back yard; they chewed through the leashes and pulled chains out of the ground.

Our new neighbors began to complain and started acting strange around us.  They were afraid of the dogs.  When families took an evening walk, our dogs barked at them.  This situation was not helped by those who carried huge sticks on these walks and struck at the dogs with the club.  Dogs are territorial and defensive.  If you want to tame a dog, start slowly and act kindly.  Don't beat the dog with a stick.

We suffered through meetings called by our neighbors, visits from the animal control officer, and humiliating conversations with our agitated neighbors.  It was not pleasant in our new home.  Plus we had the task of feeding and caring for three pretty-good-size dogs.  That summer we had a fence built around our yard so that we could keep the dogs up.  I remember the day it was finished; Larry's mom and dad were visiting us, and when the workers finished up, we put the dogs inside the fence and left to eat supper out.  It felt so good to not have to worry about where the dogs were.  When we got back home and pulled into the driveway, there sat dear Pablo in our front yard, and I swear he was smiling as if to say, "That fence was no challenge for me.  It was only a short jump for me to clear that piece of fence."  We were back to square one.

I had both Buddy and Pablo neutered because that is supposed to calm down male dogs, making them less interested in running around.

That fall it became clear that we had too many dogs, and I ran an ad saying that we had a dog to give away.  Pablo drew the short straw.  A farmer who lived up near Konnarock called us.  He was looking for another dog; I think he had lost one, but I don't really remember.  He came by the house, and he seemed to be a quiet man and peaceful.  He told us how when he walked around doing his farm work, his dog would affectionately slip his nose into the farmer's hand while they were walking.  He attached a leash to Pablo's collar and put him into the cab of his truck.  I cried.

Things settled down with our two dogs.  I missed Pablo; he was always attached to me, maybe because I usually fed him.  Maybe because I was kind to him.  Around Christmas time, on a day when the weather was unusually warm and sunny, I went down to the garage one evening after supper to close the garage door.  I lost my breath when I saw dear Pablo running toward me, coming up the little hill to our house, smiling in that way that dogs have when they are extremely happy.

Depending on where you are "around" Konnarock, it can be as much as 25 miles from our house.  Pablo had walked that 25 miles or so, smart enough to remember the way back to Applewood and determined enough to not give up until he reached the Estep house.  I called the farmer and told him that Pablo was at our house. He told me that he kept Pablo in the barn the first few days, but on Thursday he had let him out some, and as soon as he got out, Pablo took off.  The farmer mailed Pablo's tags back to us with a note that read, "He must love your family very much."

So we were back to our over-population of dogs.  We gave Buddy to a friend who lived in West Virginia, and before long she brought him back to us.  Buddy would not stay home.  And dogs being dogs, males seeking dominance in the pack, there came a day when Buddy and Pablo got into an explosive fight which I had to break up.  At that point I felt that something had to be done, even if it were something drastic, and I pretty much came to this conclusion by myself.

I called around several vet offices to see about making arrangements, so that by the time Larry came home from work that afternoon, I told him what I thought had to be done.  Larry said that if Pablo ever hurt Katie, he would kill him himself.  I took the leash and went out to the front porch where Pablo had lain in the corner since the fight.  I will never forget the subdued way he looked up at me, ears down, a cut on the top of his nose from the fight.  I hooked the leash to his collar, and he willingly followed me to the van.  He would have gone anywhere that I was going.  I didn't even stay with him at the vet's office; I left him there, sitting meekly in the waiting room, waiting his turn all by himself, but I was crying so hard that I couldn't say much to the assistant at the desk.

I don't know how many days I cried after that.  Larry called the vet's office the next day to see if they still had Pablo and to see if we could undo our directions.  No, they said, they don't hold those animals for a very long time.  But I knew that Pablo was gone before Larry called.  On the evening of the day I took Pablo to meet his fate, as I was washing dishes and looking out our kitchen window, I had the sense of Pablo being there, walking around the field behind our house.  I did not see him; I felt him as though he had returned to say good bye.

It has been nearly 20 years, and I still think about Pablo.  I can feel what it was like to have him sit close by me on our porch steps and to feel his thick fur against my check when I hugged him.  The scriptures are not clear about what happens to animals when they die, but Pablo was actually an innocent soul just doing what dogs are intended to do.  In my heart I cannot believe that Pablo's spirit or the spirit of any of our other dogs ends when they pass.  I don't claim to know everything, but I will always remember Pablo.  

Contraband

In case you haven't heard, the Food and Drug Administration announced this week that they are asking companies that produce food to voluntarily reduce the amount of salt added to processed food.  The second part of that story is that if companies do not reduce sodium in their products voluntarily, the FDA stands ready to  require the amount of salt to be reduced.  I guess the FDA has not heard about the boxes of salt available for sale on the bottom shelf in the spice aisle at Food City.

The FDA theorizes that if all of our processed food has steadily falling amounts of sodium, in a generation or two we will suddenly realize that, "Hey!  This can of soup tastes great!" even if there is only one grain of salt in it.  I tried some "healthy" soup as a lunch option once when I was still working.  It was the kind of soup that not only doesn't hurt your health, it fortifies your immunity and enables the consumer to re-grow diseased organs.  I took one taste and gagged.  I think the main ingredient (chicken?  beans?  lettuce?  it was hard to tell) was not something found in nature.  It smelled so bad that I threw it in the trash can in the hall way to keep the stink out of my office and went to the snack bar where I purchased a cheeseburger on a grilled bun.

Since ancient times salt has been a commodity that drives entire economies.  It was so important during the Civil War that battles were fought over salt production facilities.  Humans need salt to survive.

But now the FDA knows better. We cannot be trusted to cook our own food. When the time comes that the voluntary reduction procedures don't work, and the FDA must regulate the availability of salt to protect us all, the price of a pound of salt will be so expensive that Mexican gangs will sneak kilo-sized bundles of salt across the border and sell it in baggies to trembling chefs in dark alleys.

Will it come to the point that if you use a salt shaker, you're breaking the law?  That would make life at my house difficult.  We eat from the four food groups every day:  salt, fat, sugar, and caffeine.  I think that we would eat grilled possum liver if it had enough salt on it.

Apple-atcha

The roots of the branches of my family go deep in West Virginia.  Old Isaac Ballengee came to the banks of the Greenbrier and New Rivers in what is now West Virginia around 1782.  The Amicks left Pennsylvania and spent some time in Pendleton County before settling in Nicholas County around 1820 or so.  The Dorseys, Burdettes, Finks, and Boleys were all established in the Appalachian Mountains long before the western side of Virginia became a state in 1863.

Having been born and raised in West Virginia, I was astounded to find out all the things I did not know about Appalachian culture when I first attended Berea College, the supposed exemplar of everything Appalachian.  The faculty, while learned and scholarly, arrived in Berea from other places to teach Appalachian culture to the students who actually lived in Appalachia.  One of the more popularly known aspects of Appalachian culture taught at Berea was "country dancing".  A student group known, not surprisingly, as the Country Dancers, is quite well known and travels extensively to perform traditional dance sets.  I was intrigued by the Country Dancers and loved to watch their skillful performances, but part of the astonishment at the intricacies of their dances is that  I, who had roots in Appalachia for generations, had never seen anything like that.

I'm willing to consider explanations, such as the fact that country dancing stemmed from British traditions, and my families were mostly German, as were many that settled in Appalachia.  If you look up "contra dancing", another term used in connection with these traditional "Appalachian" dances, you will find that much of this dance tradition developed in New England, another explanation for why the average resident of Appalachia has no idea what country dancing is.  An unlikely rationale is that I didn't know squat about Appalachian culture, and the people who came to Berea from New England and other places understood more correctly the way we lived in the mountains.

Those who have lived in Appalachia for a long time know that it's pronounced "Apple-atcha" as in, "I'm going to throw an apple atcha."  Suspicions, as well as hackles, are raised when well-meaning folks say, "Appa-lay-cha".  I know they think they are literate, bless their hearts, but the Appalachian region is not like Boston, Mr. Robert Kennedy, Jr., and I think we know how to say the name of the place where we live.  People who like to protest the way we live should first educate themselves about how we use the language.

No matter which state they live in, the people in the Appalachian Mountains are bound together by history, religion, art, and food.  Residents of the Appalachian Region share so much that it isn't beyond reason to think that Appalachian people, gathered together from the various states, could make a 51st state.  People who come here from places like New England to protest on the steps of the capitol building in Charleston should first understand that fact.  Richmond, the capital of Virginia, you see, is not in Appalachia.