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Christmas can be a quiet time

Christmas isn’t supposed to be this quiet, is it?

I guess it can be if that’s what you prefer.

We’re winding down one of the more quieter sacred holidays of our lives together. The two of us — my wife and I — haveĀ had 43 Christmas celebrations. This one in its odd way ranks right up there with one of the more memorable events.

Our house decorations consisted mainly of a few lights outside. We didn’t go all out this year as we’ve done in years past. We cooked a stew all day in the slow cooker. Our son and his girlfriend, and her two daughters, came over for a light meal before they shoved off for an evening of frolic and fun with her parents.

Then we visited my mother-in-law briefly this evening, had a few laughs with her.

Then we came home.

That was it.

End of “celebrating,” such as it was.

These kinds of holidays do us well as we keep advancing in years. I’m sure others have experiencedĀ the same winding down of the celebrating on this holy day.

Well, it’s not entirely over just yet. We’ll see more family over the next couple of days. And we’ll have our share of good times and giggles.

On this day, thoughĀ — Christmas 2014 — our memories will be etched in all the things we didn’t do.

To be honest, it was a very good day.

***

I had taken a vow of non-snarkiness during the holiday. I’m gladĀ I didn’t resort to some harsh criticism during this Christmas holiday.

Tomorrow is another day. I’m not going to make any further guarantees that the contents of this blog will be free of some barbs.

Stay tuned. Keep reading.

If the snark returns to this blog, you’ll know it when you see it.

Until then, have a great rest of the Christmas holiday.

 

Uncategorized

Words do hurt … really, they do

Our preacher repeated something last night that I’ve heard lately.

It’s that the old adage about “sticks and stones may break my bones but words never hurt me” simply isn’t true.

The Rev. Howard Griffin, pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Amarillo, made the point in talking about Scripture’s words and how much power they have.

I’ve heard much about this of late.

Indeed, I’ve come to appreciate the power of words as a force for good — and bad.

Politicians use hurtful words at times to describe their foes. Those of us who follow the politicians’ words then use words to describe them, or at least try to gauge the veracity of what they’ve said.

I’ve tried over the years to avoid personal attacks. Some of my own foes would argue that I haven’t been very successful in that effort. My aim always has been to take issue with someone’s point of view.

Have I strayed a bit too far on occasion? Sure. Don’t we all?

OK, I’m not justifying my occasional straying off course.

I’ve always known that words “hurt” as much as “sticks and stones,” only the scars they leave aren’t visible.

They are hidden, deep in the souls and hearts of those who hear those words aimed at them.

I’ll endeavor in the new year and beyond to more mindful of the pain that words can inflict. I’ll continue to speak my mind on issues that matter to me.

I just won’t get personal.

 

 

national news, political news, Uncategorized

Get well, '41'

TheĀ nightstand next to the bed is piling up with books I am fixin’ to read.

One of them just arrived there. It’s titled simply, “41: A Portrait of My Father.” “41” is George H.W. Bush. The author is “43,” George W. Bush.

The 43rd president of the United States makes no bones about his intentions in writing this book. He calls it a “love story” about the greatest man he’s ever known. “43” wants to share with the world the qualities that have lifted his father to greatness.

I wanted to mention this book in the wake of news that George H.W. Bush was hospitalized the other day after complaining of shortness of breath.

The man is 90 years of age. His health isn’t good. President Bush suffers from Parkinson’s disease. He no longer is able to walk. His speech sounds a bit labored these days.

But oh, yes. He jumps out of airplanes, which he did on his latest birthday.

President “43” recounts that event in the prologue to his book.

I happened to be in New Orleans the night in 1988 when then-Vice President Bush accepted his party’s nomination for the presidency. The Superdome was packed with cheering convention delegates running around the floor wearing goofy elephant hats and their clothing festooned with campaign pins.

The nominee called for a “kinder, gentler” nation and pledged to govern that way if elected president. He was elected handily that year over the man for whom I voted, Michael Dukakis. I’ll concede that Bush didn’t conduct a kinder and gentler campaign.

Still, the president governed with a spirit of bipartisanship that, um, has been missing of late.

I’ve long held a great appreciation for this man’s background that, in my view, prepared him handsomely for the job he earned in that 1988 election. I continue to believe that, on paper, George H.W. Bush was the most qualified man ever to serve as president. Think about it: World War II combat veteran and aviator; businessman, congressman from Houston, CIA director, U.N. ambassador, special envoy to China, Republican Party chairman, vice president of the United States.

I am grateful that I was able to express my thanks and appreciation to him for all he has done for his country. I attended an event here in Amarillo in 2007 in which President Bush was the keynote speaker. I got an invitation to a luncheon that day and then got to shake his hand in one of those “grip and grin” reception lines.

“Mr. President, I just want to thank you for your service to the country,” I told him as we shook hands. He nodded and offered what I think was a heartfelt “thank you for saying that” to me.

He’s done it all. I look forward to plowing into George W. Bush’s account of his father’s great life.

Get well, Mr. President.

 

 

 

Uncategorized

Remembering good old Christmas days

This feeling of reflection is hard to shake this time of year.

Allow me another remembrance I hope resonates with others who come from big, boisterous families.

Christmas often — not every year, mind you — brought the Kanelis side of my family together for Christmas dinner and revelry at my grandparents’ house at 703 N.E. Beech Street in Portland, Ore. It was a wondrous time, made possible by a very matriarchal grandmother who was the glue that held our family together.

She and my grandfather produced seven children. My father was the oldest of their brood. Of those seven kids, five of them produced children of their own. They totaled 12 first cousins. One of my aunts married a man with three children, so we acquired three more cousins via marriage, making 15 all together.

One of my uncles was away most of our time growing up, serving in the Army, where he retired eventually in 1970 as a full-bird colonel. Every so often, he and my aunt would make an appearance at one of these family gatherings.

And onĀ rare occasions, my maternal grandmother — my mother’s mother, my “Yiayia,” about whom I’ve written on this blog — would attend one of these events. Now that was a treat, as she would regale my paternal grandfather with off-color stories and have him and our aunts and uncles in stitches.

My Grandma Kanelis — Katina was her name — was an old-country cook of the first order. She was a Greek immigrant who cooked everything from scratch. Easter dinners always included a lamb, as in the entire animal,Ā butchered and hanging from tenterhooks in the basement. Turkey was the main course at Christmas.

We’d laugh until we hurt. The cousins would run through the house, and around the yard (weather permitting, of course) and we would gather around a very large table in the dining room to enjoy the meal my grandmother had prepared.

My aunts would sing Christmas carols — loudly and mostly pretty well.

We’d all tell other that we needed to do a better job of staying in touch. But as with most large families, sometimes you did and sometimes, well, things got in the way and you wouldn’t see each other until Grandma invited us all over for the next big family gathering.

We didn’t do this every Christmas, but often enough to leave a lasting impression at least on me — and I’ll presume on other members of my family. I know my sisters remember those times.

That all came to an end in September 1968. Grandma suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized. She was set to come home after being treated — and then her heart quit. She was just 72 years of age when she died and as I tell folks today, 72 is “sounding younger all the time.”

The glue had been peeled away.

Ours was like many families that featured strong women. Indeed, my maternal grandmother — who I’ve mentioned already here — also filled that role. She would live another 10 years after Grandma Kanelis died.

Christmas has this way of bringing back memories such as these. I will cherish them forever.

My advice for others who have similar memories is to do the same. Believe me, they’ll make you smile.

 

political news

Campaign button brings back cool memory

Cleaning and rearranging my desk this week brought me in touch with a memento of a long-ago event that meansĀ much to me to this day.

It is a campaign button, given to me not many years ago by a gentleman — a friend of mine — who had a similar political coming of age at the same time.

It is a McGovern-Shriver presidential campaign button.

I cast my first voteĀ for presidentĀ on Nov. 7, 1972 for Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota and former Peace Corps director Sargent Shriver of Maryland. McGovern was the presidential nominee selected at a tumultuous Democratic National political convention in Miami; his running mate, Shriver, wasn’t his first pick, as you’ll recall. The first selection was Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, who then revealed he had gone through treatment for depression; McGovern dumped him because at the time the public didn’t understand fully that Eagleton was cured of whatever ailed him.

But that was a vote of which I remain perhaps most proud of all the votes I’ve ever cast for any candidate running for any office.

I was nearly 23 years of age. The Constitution had been amended the previous year granting 18-year-olds the right to vote. But because the voting was still 21 when I was 18, I couldn’t vote in the 1968 election — even though I had a keen interest in that contest.

My own interest came from uncertainty about the Vietnam War and whether we were engaging in a conflict that was worth fighting. I had just returned home from my own service in the Army and came away from my time in Vietnam asking questions about the wisdom of our continuing along that futile course.

There also was that break-in at the Watergate office complex that would grow into a significant constitutional crisis.

Sen. McGovern was a war hero who rarely mentionedĀ his combat serviceĀ along the campaign trail. Meanwhile, his Republican foes kept denigrating his opposition to the Vietnam War as some sort of chicken-hearted cop-out. This man knew war. He’d fought it from the air as a bomber pilot in Europe during World War II.

McGovern’s opposition to the Vietnam War didn’t sell in the final analysis. Even though public opinion was deeply split on that war, McGovern would lose the election almost immediately after the polls closed. The TV networks declared President Nixon’s re-election literally within minutes of the polls closing.

It was over. Just like that.

I had taken on a duty for the McGovern campaign in my home state of Oregon. IĀ helped spearhead a voter-registration effort at the community college I was attending. Our task was to register young Democrats to vote that year. We did well on the campus.

As a result — I’d like to think — Multnomah County went for McGovern narrowly over Nixon that year. Mission accomplished in our tiny portion of the world.

I’ve voted in every presidential election since. This was the first — and so far only — election in which I served as a foot soldier in a cause in which I believed. By the time 1976 rolled around, my journalism career had just begun. Therefore, all I could do was vote.

The campaign button reminds me of how idealistic I was in those days. It also reminds me of how much energy I possessed as a young man who saw politics as fun, exciting and quite noble.

Age has rubbed some of that idealism and energy away. But only some of it.

 

 

national news, political news

Step down, Congressman 'Felon'

U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., has pleaded guilty to tax fraud.

He faces a 36-year prison term at his sentencing set for next June. Meanwhile, he’s going to continue serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, voting on bills (one can hope, at least), some of which deal with tax policy — you know, determining how much you and I pay in federal taxes.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/12/23/grimm_pleads_guilty_to_tax_fraud_wont_resign_125056.html

He shouldn’t be doing that. He needs to go. Now.

Grimm was indicted on 20 counts. They involve mail fraud and assorted business dealings involving the health food company he owned prior to entering Congress.

All Americans ought to be concerned about this guy — although some of us aren’t, obviously — because he legislates federal law that affects all of us. He no longer has credibility. None.

He’s also known for one other thing. Last year he threatened to kill a reporter who asked him about all of this. OK, he didn’t say he would “kill” the young man; all he did was threaten to “break you in half” and toss the reporter from a balcony overlooking the Capitol Rotunda — which likely would have resulted in the reporter’s death.

Grimm apologized for his intemperate response to a reporter’s legitimate question.

But, hey, let’s not digress.

Rep. Grimm shouldn’t be serving in the U.S. Congress.

 

local news

Armored car theft story takes weird turn

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My head is spinning.

A man who at the start of the day was considered missing and presumed to be in possible danger now has been charged with the theft of $200,000 from an armored vehicle that police found abandoned in Amarillo.

The suspect now is Trent Michael Cook, 24. He’d been driving the armored vehicle. He’s been missing for a couple of days. “Good Morning America” did a story this morning, describing Cook merely as missing. Police said he might be in some danger.

Now he’s been charged with theft. Police had reported initially that Cook was unarmed; now they say he is armed and is considered to be potentially dangerous.

http://agntv.amarillo.com//jay-ricci-report/armored-car-driver-charged-theft

What in the world changed?

Police aren’t likely to explain yet why they changed Cook’s statusĀ from “missing” to “suspect.” They’ll have to get him in custody before they explain to the public how this story has taken such a dramatic turn.

It’s all quite weird. I’ll be waiting and watching to see how this story unfolds.

 

business news

Economy has kicked into high(er) gear

What’s this? The nation’s Gross Domestic Product grew by 5 percent annually?

That’s the greatest increase in the GDP in 11 years. The economy not only has pulled itself back from the abyss, it has kicked itself into high gear.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/dow-crosses-18000-for-first-time-on-gdp-surge/ar-BBh9Hg9

What were investors’ reaction? The Dow Jones Industrial Average today closed at more than 18,000 points for the first time in history. The S&P set another record. Investors are happy. My own retirement account is making me happy again.

Here, though, is where I get confused.

I keep reading doomsayers lament the “wrong direction” the country allegedly is headed. Wrong direction.

The price of gasoline is down. Supply of fossil fuel is up. The United States is now the world’s No. 1 producer of petroleum. That’s one segment of the economy that’s looking up, and is getting the credit for the revised increase in the GDP.

You want more? The budget deficit has been cut by more than half. Remember the yammering of those who wondered whether the economic stimulus would bankrupt the Treasury? It didn’t happen. I consider myself a deficit hawk, so IĀ view the reduction in the deficit as a positive sign that government spending is not hurtling out of control, as some have suggested.

Here’s another kick in the teeth to the naysayers. The most recent jobs report posted more than 300,000 added to the labor force. Even better is that wages are up. It was that pesky wage figure that kept fanning the flames of those who just couldn’t believe the economy had actually turned the corner.

The gloom-and-doom squad isĀ continuing to outshout the other side.

I do not intend to let them get away with it so easily.

 

 

 

national news

Obama haters go way beyond the pale

Good ever-loving grief. Can’t the Obama haters out there ever cease their incessant rants?

The latest comes from former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani, who said — are you ready for this? — that the president of the United States has implied that everyone should “hate the police.” Thus, Barack Obama is responsible for the assassination of two New York City police officers by a gunman who was angry over the disposition of the Eric Garner choking death case at the hands of a Staten Island policeman.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/dec/23/rudy-giuliani/giuliani-obama-propaganda-says-everybody-should-ha/

Yep, the one-time “America’s Mayor” has blamed the president for the actions of a lunatic.

Politifact managed to fact-check the ex-mayor’s assertion and has ruled it is a “Pants on Fire” lie. An outright falsehood.

The president has said nothing of the kind, ever, in all the discussion he’s had in public about the Garner case, or about the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Mo., or about the Trayvon Martin case in Sanford, Fla. All three incidents involved black individuals being killed by police officers or, in the Martin case, a private neighborhood security officer.

As Politifact reports: “Part of Giulianiā€™s point is that Obama has been empathetic to the protesters, which he has been — though cautiously so. And he has always discouraged violent protests and excessive police response.”

Indeed, the president has taken great pains to insist that protests remain peaceful and civil.

To suggest he has called on Americans to “hate” the men and women who serve and protect their communities is toĀ tell an egregious lie.

 

national news, political news, Uncategorized

Did Obama have a hand in North Korea blackout?

North Korea’s Internet service went dark for nine hours on Monday.

President Obama had threatened to retaliate against the nutty nation after he reportedly hacked into Sony Pictures’ email service to get back at the company for a film depicting the attempted killing of North Korean loony dictator Kim Jong-Un.

Did the president order the Internet attack on the communists? He’s not saying. Nor should he.

It reminds me a bit of something that occurred in the early 1990s. It involvedĀ a veteran member of Congress and an overly zealous challenger.

The congressman was the late Democratic incumbentĀ Charlie Wilson of Lufkin. The challenger was a Republican former Army officer named Donna Peterson of Orange.

Peterson began running some highly negative campaign ads criticizing Wilson for his lifestyle, which included Wilson’s enjoying the company of lovely women. Wilson acknowledged his lifestyle. Indeed, he once said his East Texas constituents were proud of him for it, saying they didn’t want to be represented “by a constipated hound dog.”

Wilson came to the Beaumont Enterprise, where I worked at the time, and told us that he “never initiated” a negative campaign, but said if Peterson persisted, he’d be prepared to “respond accordingly.” She kept up the attack.

Shortly after that visit, an audio cassette arrived at the newspaper. It contained a recording of Peterson — who was campaigning as a high-minded, morally righteous individual — arguing with her married campaign finance manager over his refusal to divorce his wife and marry her, the candidate. The only conclusion one could draw was that the two of them were having an affair.

We asked Wilson point-blank: Did you record this telephone conversation? He denied having any “direct knowledge” of it.

Did we believe the congressman —Ā who at the time served on the House Select Committee on Intelligence? Well, what do you think?

Still, he ended up trouncing his opponent, who hasn’t been seen or heard from since.

The Internet blackout kind of has the same feel —Ā to me, at least —Ā as the mystery tape that materialized in the heat of a negative campaign for Congress.

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