Observations: My Political Writing

Work in Progress - Subject to Modification

 
I’ve been writing the weekly columns for the Bluefield Daily Telegraph editorial page since June of 2008, when I sent a letter to the editor to my friend and fellow Rotarian, Tom Colley from the beach while on vacation. I emailed the piece to Tom with the message that he could do whatever he thought best with it. At the time he was Executive Editor of the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, my hometown newspaper.

He emailed me back to say that the “letter” would run “atop the edit page” the following Tuesday. I was surprised. And thrilled!

I had been editor and publisher of a weekly community newspaper, the Twin State News Observer, from 1988 to 2001, and had written the editorials for that publication. The editorial page was titled "Observations." After it closed, I wrote for my own blog site and posted opinion pieces on Internet sites. The letter to Tom was a lark, a response to some political issues of the day.

When I returned after vacation and talked to Tom at the next Rotary meeting, he said the Tuesday slot was open, if I wanted it. I quickly accepted his offer. I was thrilled, and he was pleased, too. My great grandfather had bought the Bluefield Telegraph in 1894, as a two-day or three-day a week publication, turned it into a daily, and my family ran it until 1985 when the family businesses were sold. Tom had worked for my family prior to the sale, and had stayed on with the new owners. He said he was really happy to once again have a Shott writing for the paper.

Unfortunately, Tom passed away a short time later, ending a relationship I valued greatly. I still write the weekly column, however.

I write about subjects I feel strongly about, subjects that I feel are important to America continuing to be a bastion of freedom. The issues that have the greatest opportunity for great harm are those of national significance, and that is what I primarily focus on.

My op-eds are intended to present to the newspaper’s readers information that they may not see or hear, and/or to present ideas that they may not have thought of or read elsewhere to help clarify important issues.

Given that goal, the weekly columns generally focus on topics that I believe are important, and a perspective that needs wider awareness among the readers in the seven-county area covered by the newspaper.

These columns are also published on my Web site, Observations (jshott.com), and other Internet sites, and articles not submitted to the newspaper also appear on Observations.

Among readers of the newspaper columns, critics are more numerous than fans in the Letters to the Editor section. Their critiques range from small things like my not being specific enough about some element in a column, to arguing against a point made and supported by fact or logical argument with a “that’s not so” statement with nothing to support it, to an argument against a point I didn’t address at all.

The letter writers seem to be generally in one of four categories:

1. They missed the point:
     a. They didn’t read the column all the way through, thereby perhaps missing clarifying information later in the piece; or perhaps didn’t read any of it, but took what someone said about it, thereby talking nonsense.
     b. They misinterpreted what they read. They actually read the article, but missed the intended meaning. Consequently, they are unable to address the issues in a sensible way.

2. Some are simply dishonest: They deliberately exaggerate or distort what was said to try to discredit an idea they otherwise are unable to refute. And sometimes they even argue against something that wasn’t mentioned at all.

3. Then, there is the odd letter that makes a valid point or counter-point, which I especially appreciate, as they provide a different and potentially educational perspective.

4. And, there is the odder-still letter where the writer agrees with me. However, whether there really are more critics writing letters (as I suspect) or whether the paper prefers to print the disagreeable ones, I’m not sure.

Black and White in Bluefield

 Work in Progress - Subject to Modification

Growing up in Bluefield, I had perhaps a unique experience with race.

My great Uncle Hugh and Aunt Jane were elderly and well to do, lived in a nice, but not splendid home in a good neighborhood, and had a black couple that worked for them. John worked around the house and yard, and drove Uncle Hugh around, while Selena worked in the house. They lived in an apartment above the garage with their children.

I knew that John, Selena and Geraldine, their daughter, were black, of course, but that didn’t matter. I believe that Geraldine had a younger brother, but I didn’t really know him. They were great people; very much like us, except for the color of their skin.

When Dad would take Mom and me to visit Hugh and Jane, after saying hello, I went to find Geraldine, who was about my age, both of us probably about 8 years-old, and we wiled away the time playing around in the yard.

When I was in high school starting in 1959, there were several black students also attending that school. Most black students, however, went to the black junior high and high schools. No rule about that, I think; that’s just the way it was. It was at least partly because the black schools were nearer the black neighborhoods.

In our school of grades 10, 11, and 12, there were probably 10 or 12 black kids out of the thousand or so total student body. We all shared essentially the same values: goals, behavior, and appearance; there was no actual difference based upon one’s race, and in my experience there was no unequal treatment of the two races, either by students or staff and faculty.

While in high school, I worked at the local radio and TV stations, and there were black employees there. Again, no real difference. I worked the AM/FM stations on Sunday mornings, and one program was a black lady who performed gospel music live from our studio along with her three daughters singing backup, and her son playing drums. I was a musician, primarily a trumpet player, but also played electric bass, and played with that group each Sunday. They were great people, very good musicians, and once again, no awareness of racial differences.

When I went to college, I don’t recall any black students, although it may be that there were some that I just did not encounter.

Then came the Air Force. One of my two Basic Training Tis was a black sergeant and other black people on the base. No issues. When I reached my duty station, no issues from other Air Force personnel or base personnel, or from the musicians in the off-base bands I played in or the audiences we played for.

After my separation, I returned to my hometown and went to work again at the radio and TV stations where there black employees. We all got along fine, in a friendly, respectful atmosphere.

In fact, in all those years the only bad experience I had with black people was one time when my cousin and I were walking home after signing off the radio stations after midnight, and were confronted by two black guys who drove up and got out of their car, challenged us, and started a minor scuffle. Pushing them off, we ran off and they didn’t follow us. That’s it. The only negative interaction I remember in my hometown.

Thoughts on life and death

This post is a work in progress. 
It will be updated and expanded as thoughts evolve.

=======

As I get older, I think about life differently. 

One position that I cannot escape is that I want to live; I like living; I do not want to die. Life is a wonderful thing, a wondrous thing, which is difficult to understand, but is not difficult to appreciate. I understand that in difficult times some may want to end their pain. But the overriding reality is: Once you are dead, you are dead, and that means that this life is over. Perhaps what comes next, if indeed something else follows this life, as most religions posit, that may be as good or better. However, whatever one believes follows Earthly life, we won't know until that time comes what, if anything, follows this life.

Which is not to say that at some future point my life's quality will have deteriorated to a point where I will no longer favor living. This is what happened to my paternal grandmother, who in her later years often said "I have lived too long."

Her long life was free from medical problems, except for four pregnancies, which I believe were perhaps consummated at home, or at least in far more primitive conditions than today, given that her last children, twins, were born in the early 1920s. I don't guarantee these dates are correct, but late in life she had surgery, perhaps in her 80s. And also late in life, she fell and broke her shoulder. Until those advanced ages, Marcie had few health problems that I knew of.

Her husband, Jim, died at 62, and two of her sons -- Ned, the oldest, and my father Jim, Jr., the second oldest, died at 66. Her other three sons are still living.

While she suffered some memory and identity problems, Marcie was pretty healthy all her life. All 106 years. I hope and pray I have her long-life genes.

Of the many things she shared with me and others, one thing I remember very clearly: "I hate doctors." And she would tell the doctors the same thing. Could the infrequent doctor visits that her dislike for them produced be the secret of her longevity?

I know on a personal basis several physicians in a variety of specialties. I respect them immensely for their dedication and their knowledge, and I believe that good doctors do indeed help people. However, I must at the same time admit that I avoid going to the doctor unless I have an obvious problem.

=======


There are two major questions about life that perplex thinking people. Religious people follow #1, while non-religious people follow #2, or perhaps consider both and try to work through this conundrum:

1. If there is no God, or Supreme Being, where did all the "stuff" on Earth and in the universe come from?

This question has no answer that is scientifically satisfying, that I have heard.

2. If there is a God or Supreme Being, where did God or the Supreme Being come from?

Trying to solve those mysteries may keep me busy in the later years.

========

I also marvel at the wonder of human life. Each of us is something special, if only because we are alive. Humans are a wondrous creation of a supreme being or an evolutionary product of this unknowable world. How did this occur? How can we be?

That is much easier to understand if there is a god/supreme being than if somehow all that is now, all that came before, and all that will be just somehow magically happened.

And the idea that the wonders of human life and the things that each of us do and think will end at some point, a point unknown for the most part, and the possibility that that is all there is seems somehow anticlimactic. 

These are things that many never actually think about. We go through life dealing with life, problems, happy times, jobs, family and the rest, and never really give much thought to how special it is just to be a human being and all that involves.

But once one has considered life and has come to appreciate how magnificent it is that humans -- and each of us as an individual -- exist, our demise seems horribly unfair.

Our small world

The immensity of the universe -- the known universe -- is stunning, and its complexity and beauty awe-inspiring.

Spending an hour or two or three or more watching Carl Sagan's "Cosmos," or the new generation featuring Neal DeGrasse Tyson, or some other science-based look at the universe, will change your perspective on life, at least for a little while.

When we are finely focused on the things in our lives that have our attention, we forget -- if we ever really knew -- just how tiny and insignificant we, and those things we are involved in are in the grand scheme of things.

And now, in the unknowable immensity of the universe scientists have found a star, Trappist-1, with several Earth-like planets orbiting it in our stellar neighborhood, about 39 light years away. These are the first such planets yet discovered outside our solar system.

The curse of being a "jack of all trades; master of none"

Some people are a doctor, lawyer, mechanic, engineer, accountant, teacher, musician, artist, welder, or whatever for 20, 30 or more years; it's what they do.

I once worked with a guy named Ray Brooks who had many talents. He was a decent graphic artist and photographer. He also played drums well. And basketball and baseball. He was the production manager of WHIS-TV, and could run cameras, work the film chain, edit film, operate the video switcher ... the list goes on. I always admired that about Ray.

It took some years before it occurred to me that I was a lot like Ray. By that I mean I did lots of things decently, but had no particular interest that dominated all others. I was a decent trumpet player, percussionist and played a little bass. I earned a BA in Music education and a M.Ed. and taught band in public schools. I was fast on my feet and could catch a football and played decent shortstop. I also was a tolerable writer and worked in radio and TV in various rolls in production and on the air, culminating as the 11 o'clock anchor on WHIS-TV.

I claim only a similar orientation to doing lots of things, rather than one like folks involved in the careers listed in the first paragraph, like Ray did. I don't claim to be as broadly good at so many as he was.

As a result, I have had a varied, but interesting life. My chief interest shifts among a list of things, and I have had a bunch of different jobs in a few career areas. I know "something" about a bunch of things, but never became a true expert in any of them.

Charlie

Charlie was a great fellow. He was a simple man who grew up in a family with nine children in a hewn log house in a rural area of West Virginia. He had very little as a child, and had a tough life as compared with today’s young people. To get to Charlie’s bedroom, you had to go outside and up the stairs. To go to the bathroom, you had to go outside and walk a little way to the outhouse. You’ve heard stories about walking seven miles to school in snow up to your knees … well, Charlie actually had to do that. He was a hard worker; he worked hard all his life, and retired from Union Carbide after 40 years of service as a millwright and pipe fitter. He was the salt of the Earth.

Thirty-one years ago he met and married my wife’s mother, whose husband had died of cancer several years before, when Diane was just 13 years old. When I met Diane, Charlie and Norma were already married. Both Norma and Charlie were involved in the Masons and Eastern Star. That may be how they met. Charlie was a 32nd Degree Scottish Rite Mason. He was a Shriner and a member of the Oriental Band.

Charlie passed away two weeks ago of a massive heart attack. When he died he was in a nursing home, because he suffered from Alzheimer’s and was totally dependent upon other people to take care of him. Norma did that 24/7 for more than a year, and felt guilty that she couldn’t continue. In fact, it was both harmful for her health and dangerous to her safety to continue to take care of Charlie. He didn’t know who anyone was, including Norma and his daughter, and he didn’t have any idea who he was. At times he would become physically violent toward Norma. Though Charlie’s body continued to live on, his mind, his essence ceased to exist months ago.

Charlie is in a better place now. May he rest in peace.

The Easter Trip

The family took a trip to Alexandria, Virginia over the Easter weekend to visit my two daughters and their families. As usual, this trip was not without interesting events.

First was the near-death experience the four of us had on I-495 heading south. We got to 495 about 3 p.m., early enough I had thought to beat the rush-hour traffic. Wrong. Traffic was thick and slow. I-495 is six lanes wide in some places, and all six were full. As we approached the exit ramp for I-395 and I-95, the two exit lanes were at a dead stop, with cars backing up well on to I-495. The other four lanes were moving, although somewhat slowly. That would prove to be a blessing.

As we traveled in the next lane to the stopped traffic at about 45 mph, a small, blue pickup pulled out about one and one-half car links ahead. I slammed on the brakes and moved a little to the left, trying to avoid the crash that appeared inevitable, and trying not to cause one on the left. We didn’t collide with the idiot in the pickup, but it was about as close as you could get to it.

Later that evening, a group of us was out on the deck and my son, son-in-law and I were tossing a stuffed football with three year-old grandson #1. Sometimes he would trap the ball, and we would cheer. Sometimes he would actually catch the ball. And we would cheer. And, of course, sometimes he would miss the ball. After a string of several misses he said, “Aw! I’ve got cheese hands.”

“What did he say,” my son asked? “Did he say, ‘cheese head?’” obviously thinking of Packers fans.

“I thought he said ‘cheese hands,’’ someone said.

About that time his mother who was working a short distance away said, “No, darlin’, it’s not ‘cheese hands,’ it’s ‘butter fingers.’”

We all thought that was pretty funny.

It was a good trip, all in all.

The Visitation

The son of a close friend of my wife's family died last week and she and I drove to their hometown to visit with them. They are in their 70s, their son just 53. He has had a difficult life, especially in recent years. He had bi-polar disease, and had been on dialysis for about four years. His father had been with him that afternoon, had left him lying on the couch with some things he might need. Something happened. He called 911. When his Dad returned to the house a short time later with his Mom, the place was filled with emergency vehicles. The door was locked; they couldn't get in. They tried to revive him and took him to the hospital, but he was gone at home.

It was just over three hours to Fairmont, and we got to the funeral home right at five o'clock. Richard and Mary arrived about 15 minutes later. They were happy to see Diane after all these years; they appreciated our taking the time to come. Diane was the only one in her family who could get there.

After saying our "hellos" and renewing old acquaintances Richard motioned for us to accompany them to the parlor. We were with them when they first saw their son in the casket. It was a moment I never want to repeat.

I've lost friends and acquaintenances, relatives, and I've lost my Mom and my Dad. All of those were difficult in their own way, especially my parents. I can't imagine how it feels looking on the lifeless body of your child.

Is Spring Here?

Normally, March is not grilling weather. However, this weekend has been much more like summer than it has been like the last weeks of winter. We’ve had temperatures in the 70s; today’s high was 78 and yesterday was just a few degrees lower. That’s unusual for this part of Virginia in March.

Most years I get a “feeling,” a “sense” that spring has begun. It’s kind of like a tingling inside, a sort of personal vernal equinox that ignores the calendar. That hasn’t happened yet this year, but my feeling isn’t always exactly the start of good weather and warming temperatures.

Anyway, my wife and I have a big job clearing leaves from around the home place this spring. The fall weather didn’t help much. Between obligations and weather, I just wasn’t able to get the year’s leaf production cleaned up. We have a blue-million leaves that take over every fall. The house is surrounded on three sides—the longest two sides, and one of the short sides—by leaf-bearing trees. The people that we bought the house from, the ones that built it, managed to incorporate every conceivable, and most devious leaf-catching devices known to man. Clearing them usually takes some 25-30 hours of manual labor. This year, I was able only to get about eight hours in before the bad weather came to stay for a while.

But we each spent a couple of hours Saturday, and I spent another two-to-three today, and was able to get the deck cleared enough that I could get to the grills. An afternoon rain both stopped the leaf-clearing project and cooled the day down into the mid-60s.

The menu consisted of lemon pepper chicken, asparagus, grilled herbed potato slices, sourdough toast on the grill, and blueberry-lemon cake. Very good. All of it.

So the grilling season is open. Bon appetite!