Gov. Noem enters old arena as a "hottie"

SD Governor Kristi Noem

Bob Hope used to trot out women who fit the mold for "good-looking," years ago. So he'd bring out someone like Raquel Welch in front of a sea of servicemen in Vietnam. Those were the Christmas TV specials. So odd a place to suggest the joy of Christmas, eh? 

The specials just sort of disappeared as the U.S. got further mired into the conflict and had to draw up a way to get out. Does history repeat itself, now in 2021? 

I haven't noticed anything like the Hope shows emanating out of the Mideast during our protracted conflicts there. Let's see, it was to avenge 9/11. Well, it seemed a proper thought at the start, I guess. There were formal protests against it. I remember being out at Oyate on the U of M-Morris campus with my camera for one. The effort was quite futile vs. all the flag-wavers. 

So we never learned the lesson of Vietnam? After 20 years in the Afghanistan quagmire. The decision to get out was quite bi-partisan: Biden and his predecessor calling for such. 

I wonder how Raquel Welch felt about being the epitome of female attractiveness. Mind you, the title was bestowed her by men, not by her own kind. We all should have wondered: how did women everywhere really feel about the likes of Bob Hope and Dean Martin suggesting a standard for women? Did women just act like they were humored by it all? 

Raquel Welch in Vietnam

What about the women who knew they were rather the antithesis of the Raquel Welch ideal? We all could have shown principle and just rejected it. When confronted, we'd say in a sober way that it really was just foolishness. But the mass populace did not stop tuning in to the likes of Dean Martin and Bob Hope. 

I have previously written about the time when a Star Tribune reporter wrote that "a few wolf whistles" greeted Judi Dutcher at the podium for a national Democratic convention. The Internet allows me to call up the scene of Dutcher coming forward to speak. There was a vocal acclamation, yes, including a whistling sound or two, like the sounds at a sports event, but nothing that I would describe as a "wolf whistle." 

The reporter made his own judgment with a grin of course, figuring his readers would think it charming or something like that. It would not fly today. And we are not just pretending to have more reasonable or civilized attitudes about women's appearance. We really have adjusted. I doubt that any Star Tribune reporter would even consider writing like the example I cited. But if he did - would be a male of course - he'd get grilled internally. There would have to be demonstrated evidence of "wolf whistles." 

I was suspicious of the reporter's account immediately - I wouldn't buy the behavior in that setting. 

The reporter might feel that Dutcher would be flattered by the account. And maybe the woman would be inclined to notice him, to pay some attention to him? Lecherous man. No, the writing would not pass muster today and probably did not even then. 

However, in the past we'd be inclined to shrug and give a pass. Our culture gave a pass for a lot of what would be condemned today. 

So how should we react to this little back-and-forth between South Dakota Kristi Noem and the right wing podcaster guy? And hey, is it really so special to be a podcaster? What does it take? Hey, it takes nothing in our rapidly-evolving media world. Yours truly has an "Anchor" podcast which I set up for free. I was quite active with it for a time. I put it on hold beginning about four months ago. It was a bit of a burden in addition to my online writing (blogging). 

As with many new tech resources, the novelty can wear off some. But I won't rule out jump-starting it.  So, I'm a podcaster! And so is Matt Walsh. Matt is identified as a "right wing blogger and podcaster." He has an outlet with the conservative Daily Wire. 

Noem has quite definite conservative "creds." She is also capable of independent thinking. So even though she started out rejecting mask mandates - quite in line with her herd - she recently refused to stop private businesses from implementing vaccine requirements. This got her the displeasure of the herd including Walsh. 

Walsh was true to form for the herd as he got personal and nasty with put-down talk, rather than to try to exercise reason. Oh, he called Gov. Noem "attractive." It was really a way for him to try to cheapen her.

Noem has long gotten attention on the "attractive" front. Is it just male journos who do this? What presumptuousness it is. Walsh said on his podcast "Kristi Noem is a very attractive woman. So she's got that going for her. As far as I can tell, that's the only reason why she was ever looked at as some sort of 2024 potential (presidential) frontrunner." 

The nasty streak of conservatives or right wingers is hard to countenance at all sometimes. We rather have to put up with it. So Walsh discounts Noem's potential for exercising reasonable discretion as SD's governor. It all becomes ad hominem. Kristi Noem is just eye candy, I guess like Raquel Welch before the sea of salivating U.S troops at Christmastime in the hell hole of Vietnam. 

Matt Walsh added that "the hype and everything that she's gotten from conservative media is entirely based on the fact that she's an extremely attractive women, which she is." 

Well. . . 

Noem is certainly slender. I don't think society prioritizes thin-ness like it once did. One might suggest that Noem actually looks a little anemic. In a spirit of levity I have given her the name "Governor Tight Fittin' Jeans." (Remember the Conway Twitty/Loretta Lynn song?) I hope that's considered innocuous. If not, I get a frowning face on this assignment for misogyny. 

As a kid I never heard the term misogyny. Come to think of it, never heard autism, Asperger's or the whole raft of such problems either. Us kids were "mainstreamed" for better or worse, and it was actually worse for many of us. And we went along with wolf whistles. Talk of an "attractive woman" got everyone to smile. I wonder how women actually felt. 

Noem rebutted Walsh's statements most eloquently. 

So, Walsh admitted his shortcomings? He apologized? He's a right wing pundit so what do you think he did? Well of course he turned into even more of an a-hole. 

South Dakota is an odd place now. We have Gov. Noem with her suggestion or hint that Donald Trump should have his face on Mount Rushmore. We had the attorney general thing, Jason Ravnsborg, details of which you've probably heard ad nauseam. And then there's T. Denny Sanford in the news too, quite the notorious context. Can his money offset that? He's quite the Scrooge McDuck.

Our one-time MN governor Rudy Perpich said South Dakota was "50th in everything." Think about it.

Former Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich said South Dakota was "50th in everything."

 

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com

"Wichita Lineman" in Campbell's wheelhouse

"Wichita Lineman" did not fly when it was released in 1997 (as a cover of course) by Wade Hayes. Country music was enjoying one of its "up" periods. A new young generation should have been primed to appreciate "Wichita Lineman." 

Pop music can defy such predicting. The Hayes version only got to No. 55 on the U.S. country music charts. The plan was to have it on Hayes' album "Tore Up From the Floor Up." The disappointment of the single release brought a delay. The album came out in 1998 re-titled "When the Wrong One Loves You Right," and "Wichita" wasn't even on it. 

I remember Hayes' video for "Wichita Lineman." CMT on TV was quite the "thing" at the time. The novelty of nonstop country music videos waned. They still exist as does CMT (to my knowledge) but it's all in a sea of what one critic has called "the cable TV sludge." 

Highly talented songwriters turn out sharply-conceived material all the time, so it's amazing that "Wichita" was not even considered a finished product. 

Jimmy Webb was a gold mine with his songwriting in the 1960s. He spun material that will thrive indefinitely. And to think this is done with just a few seemingly simple lines for a particular tune. "Seemingly simple," yes, but it must be an exacting craft. How else to achieve the stratosphere of success? Or is it so exacting? I think the answer would be yes and no. 

Somehow the writer needs to find a "sweet spot" where the most basic of feelings, the most basic picture to form in one's mind, comes forward. So we imagine a lone telephone company lineman. 

Performer Glen Campbell wanted the song to be identified strongly with a specific place. Quite logical, considering Campbell's boffo success with "By the Time I Get to Phoenix." Webb delivered his new inspiration with "Wichita," interestingly not about Wichita, Kansas. How many people might have always assumed it was about the Kansas city? 

Webb said he became inspired while driving through "Washita County" in Oklahoma. So "Washita" morphed into "Wichita?" Well that's strange. Top song hits can present many strange things. I am one of those who thinks the music rather than the lyrics holds the real key. Songwriting analysts can delve way too much into the lyrics IMHO. 

Webb decided that the sight of a lone lineman atop a light pole really suggested loneliness. He wondered what this "lineman" might be saying into the receiver. At this time, many telephone companies were county-owned utilities. Linemen worked for the county. Of course, "lineman" has a firm meaning in football too! So Webb's song is neither about Wichita KS or a football lineman. 

But isn't the music the real thing? Campbell spun this song into gold. The supremely talented singer used songs with place names in his "run" of the time. I mean, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Wichita Lineman" and "Galveston," maybe others. 

But what was the point? Were these places so special or did these names just have a nice "ring" to them. Rhetorical question. Sometimes I imagine for my own amusement "Galveston" but with "Wolverton" being sung instead. The latter is a tiny Minnesota town.

There's a more interesting common thread to Campbell's hits to consider. Have you ever noticed, several songs are about a man thinking obsessively about a woman who is not in close proximity? In "Phoenix" and "Gentle On My Mind," the man appears not even interested in close or intimate contact. He's literally a drifter. He's "looking for something," I guess, in line with the standard 1960s zeitgeist of being confused, of not having all the answers about life. 

The young people felt they had wisdom about the Vietnam war but the war inexplicably dragged on. The zeitgeist was impacted hugely. We got songs about people being disrupted or disoriented and just seeking something. But, to leave a woman who is embedded in your thoughts: why would that song theme even be so appealing? Seems rather discouraging or negative. 

But the woman is the object of his thoughts, right? That's the counter. But shouldn't the whole idea be to make an investment in that person? Maybe commitment was just more difficult in the 1960s? 

I will suggest here there was actually a chauvinistic element. Please hear me out. Part of the old sexism, ironically, was how men talked like they wanted to put women on a pedestal. Oh, women were just other-worldly with their special-ness. That's why they got on the lifeboats first on the Titanic, right? But don't women simply want equality? Today yes, most definitely. 

I would suggest one word for the old fawning nature of men's attitudes toward women: patronizing. Women had to fight for true equal rights like in the workplace and in sports. Why such a daunting battle, if men really considered them so "special?" Women must not have been deemed truly special, rather they were some sort of quarry that suited men's interests. 

I once read of the U.S. Civil War: Men left their southern plantations and such to go fight. This forced women to really start running those operations, and you know what? They found they could handle it just fine. Well, no revelation really. And yet for generations, men fawned over women in a way that really seemed misogynistic - flattering women while not acceding true rights or power. 

And so Glen Campbell even gave us a hit song with "Housewife" in the title: "Dreams of the Everyday Housewife." Sheesh! Could you imagine how non-palatable that song would be today? Mad Magazine had a parody on TV commercials where the spokesman started out by saying "With the help of these average housewives. . ." (They were going to test a household product). "Average housewives" was in bold face to accentuate the absurdity of the term or concept. 

Popular entertainment went along with the Neanderthal template for a long time. The likes of Gloria Steinem came along to tear it down. 

Might Campbell's "run" of hit songs have a dated quality, putting them in the rear view mirror for today? Who gives a rip that this "Wichita lineman" with his ordinary job is distracted by thoughts of his significant other, as he's out there in the godforsaken wasteland of Oklahoma? Why do we like the song? I will paraphrase James Carville, sort of: "It's the music, stupid." 

My bias is to always weigh the music rather than lyrics as essential. I prioritize lyrics only when considering "storytelling" songs, a type I like to try to write myself. A short little love song is not my cup of tea. 

Amazing that Webb could build his iconic image with just a few brief sentences. His submission to Campbell was not even a completed version, so Campbell just opted for an instrumental section! And the rest is songwriting history. 

My critique of such material can seem harsh. If you want to get brutal and unvarnished opinions of your work, just go into the songwriting field. 

It is amazing how Webb "did his thing." And all these years later, we'll continue to reflect on the lyrics, offer constructive criticism, and just appreciate. Jimmy Webb and Glen Campbell RIP. You were music masters. "Wichita Lineman" has been called "the unfinished song." Oh hell yes it was finished.

 

A closer look at "Phoenix"

I share thoughts about the Webb/Campbell collaboration "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" in a post on my companion blog, "Morris of Course." I consider this to be an overrated song. Why should the man in the song assume that the woman he left behind should care about him so much? I invite you to read my post:

https://morrisofcourse.blogspot.com/2021/08/fools-gold-imho-by-time-i-get-to-phoenix.html

 

I share also on "Gentle On My Mind." How can a song be so boffo with such a monotonous melody? "Ours is not to reason why," I guess. But I do seek to reason. You may click:

https://morrisofcourse.blogspot.com/2021/08/gentle-on-my-mind-overcame-monotonous.html

 

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com

The "Nazi" Titanic movie, fascinating relic

Who would have ever guessed years ago that we'd get a chance to see the most notorious Titanic movie? 

To my knowledge, this was the first modern Titanic movie. A silent version came out soon after the disaster. In 1929 there was a version called "Atlantic." Given that it was just a couple years after "talkies" dawned, it looks crude in some ways. Still, all three of these movies can probably be judged as good by the standards of their times. 

You're wondering about the "notorious" one? Have you not heard of the "Nazi" Titanic movie? I had heard some references through the years. I was left wondering if a completed version would ever be made available for viewing. 

The historical accounts suggest there was extreme turbulence during its making. What? Turbulence in 1943 Germany? Well very much so. Seems miraculous the movie even reached completion. And today, thanks to the almost boundless reach of the Internet, it can be examined in full. So I availed myself last week. 

Quite quickly I wondered: Is it even a moral thing to watch this movie? Moral debate has been vigorous over using Nazi scientific research. 

The movie might just as well be examined as part of understanding the whole Nazi propaganda thing. The movie was overtly a part of that. Wait, how could a seemingly basic Titanic movie possibly fit in with Nazi propaganda with Joseph Goebbels? It did! This requires an explanation: The 1943 "Titanic" argued that American and British capitalism, i.e. naked greed, led to the disaster in the north Atlantic. 

Goebbels himself commissioned the movie. He also wanted to show the prowess of German filmmaking. 

All of the standard Titanic movies weave in some fictional characters with the well-known events of what happened. "Iceberg dead ahead" et al. The German version gives us a most sympathetic German character, an officer on the ship who embodied bravery and selflessness. The latter quality is ironic, n'est-ce pas? 

Turbulence in the making of the movie? It was quite Nazi-esque turbulence, as original director Herbert Selpin was arrested after giving some skeptical thoughts about the Nazi regime. Keep in mind that the Nazis were a death cult rather than pure Fascism. Selpin was imprisoned where he was hanged. End of project? No. The fellow who completed it was not even credited. 

The finished film had a dodgy roll-out. It made it onto the screens through Nazi-occupied Europe but not in Germany itself. Goebbels had done a reversal of attitude toward the flick. He suddenly felt the movie might run counter to morale. 

 

Not entirely out of left field

So, the propaganda message was about greed? We might smile about this because frankly, there is a grain of truth to the suspicion about capitalism and greed as bedfellows, eh? The 1943 "Titanic" shows the movers behind the Titanic seeking a speed record for the vessel, the idea being to inflate stock price. My first reaction: why would speed be so important anyway? This was an incredibly luxurious vessel. Why wouldn't the passengers want to spend an extra day or two on it? 

The infamous Bruce Ismay and his White Star Line board plan stock manipulation: sell their own stock "short" so to buy it back at a lower price just before the news about the speed record. Doesn't stuff like this happen right up to the present day? 

We know how the whole venture turns out of course. It is the fictional German officer, "Petersen," who pleads for more caution in the run. Ismay instead pressures Captain Smith to go full-throttle. You might say "damn the torpedoes" but instead we're talking icebergs. The ship had its appointment with fate, it starts to go down, and it's Petersen and several German passengers who show the most bravery and dignity. 

The shorthand is like the U.S. Civil War movies, with the Northern officers exuding the primary virtue and valor. An asterisk: U.S. Civil War movies do in fact show Southern officers with great fighting spirit but behind a shroud of going against the grain of history. The moral lesson is clear. 

Nothing wrong with showing a group of German souls behaving with gallantry during the Titanic incident - we can always forgive some parochialism of this type - and there's no suggestion of any of the real Nazi horrors, genocide being primary. None of that, so my conscience was not tugging at me as I watched the fully colorized version of the 1943 "Titanic" on YouTube last week. 

Goebbels eventually decided that a movie about mass death and panic would not be healthy for the German populace that was subjected to Allied bombing raids. Oh, another problem: the heroic Petersen committed the faux pas of questioning his superiors on the boat. The Nazi scheme was to defer to higher authorities always. (Sort of my experience in the U.S. public schools, LOL.) 

The movie continued its dodgy and inevitably controversial course after the war. Art is hard to hold down, though. Though the movie had a propaganda aim, at least at the start, the aim strikes me as wholly benign now. Greed in capitalist countries? Is the Pope Catholic? We must always strive to do what's right: the impulse tugs at us, but surely we must not be naive and think that greed is not always lurking out there. 

Really, was greed an element that contributed to the Titanic's sinking? We can surely wonder. But I'll repeat: why should speed of the crossing be deemed to important? 

Immoral to view this movie? What about to pilfer from, for subsequent Titanic movies? Charles Murray the great sociologist has been controversial partly through perusing Nazi or neo-Nazi research, and in the case of "Titanic," four scenes were re-used for the 1958 "A Night to Remember." The 1958 movie was critically acclaimed. I've always thought of it as "The David McCallum Titanic movie." It shows the then-quite young actor. 

We learn that the uncut version of the "Nazi" Titanic movie was restored in 2005 and released on DVD and VHS, then came Blu-Ray in 2017. The uncut version wasn't available in North America until 2019. So now it's on YouTube, colorized and free to watch, in all its real splendor. And I must say, as art it is excellent, better than I expected. Amazing that Goebbels initially saw it as furthering his purposes. 

The James Cameron Titanic movie was probably the last word for such undertakings. Or was it? Who knows what Hollywood might plan? 

Perhaps the whole template for these films will someday be applied to 9/11: fictional characters and scenes amidst the actual disaster. I do not feel we have yet gotten a full-blown 9/11 representation on the big screen, not on the scale of the Cameron effort. Perhaps the U.S. has not achieved enough emotional distance from the 2001 disaster. 

But the time will come, I predict. Let's sign up David McCallum for it. He played the assistant wireless operator in the 1958 Titanic movie. Wireless operators were the "geeks" of their time.

 

Addendum: Donald Trump has used propaganda in contemporary America. It is ripe. It is also very easy to explain. I think his supporters like things that are easy to explain. Trump's propaganda works thusly: although the policies he engineers do not help his followers - arguably they run counter - his rhetoric is an "us against them" thing in which "them" is the "expert class." 

The followers get the psychological satisfaction of venting and mounting force against the "expert class." No wonder the followers have to be so out front with manifestations like signs and flags professing love of their leader, their surrogate Fuhrer in effect. So, we see signs like "Biden, stick your unity up your (blank)." That's right here in our Morris MN. It's across the street from a public park where kids play. 

Many such vulgar examples have been reported. And why? Merely to express a political preference? No, the reason has to go beyond that, into the aggrieved psyche of all these folks. Trump's propaganda has impact and is profoundly dangerous. "Hang Mike Pence?"

I'll repeat this firebell in the night: Cult leaders are known to take their followers down with them.

  

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com

MHS Class of '73 reminded of our mortality

I rarely attend funerals but I stopped in at the last rites for Allen Anderson recently. Allen and I were members of the Morris High School Class of 1973. I noticed only one other class member at the August 6 funeral, Craig Murphy. It's always good therapy to socialize a little with Craig. He'll have you laughing and thinking at the same time. 

Our society makes accommodations for the young, and begins withdrawing such accommodations for people as they get older. The late Allen did not age gracefully. Toward the end he had become limited in his movements. He was not without blame. Those who imposed restrictions did so with justification. 

Nevertheless, observing someone like Allen in his final struggles gives us pause, makes us wonder if we'll stay free of such travail through the rest of our life's road. 

So many of us who share the vintage of Craig, Allen and I can tell stories of parents' struggles as they climb the ladder of age. They lose their independence in many cases. They can become angry about that. Their health issues can become staggering. So we tell stories and share. Then we turn to our spirituality as we try to find answers. 

So, a church was Allen's final destination for his mortal life. Marginalized as Allen had become, many people thought it proper to attend his services. Such a gesture is always nice when a soul leaves this world. We would all be happy to know such a turnout would surface for our rites. But in many cases, I would guess the turnout would be less. 

Not that a funeral turnout is any sort of barometer. 

Maybe the turnout for Allen was a gesture of consolation for his soul. Maybe it was a special gesture by this congregation. Allen I'm sure was not the most routine parishioner to accommodate. Churches of all institutions strive to have an open door. Heaven help us if this ceases. 

Some people have hardships that require pastoral visits as a means of keeping the bond. Allen might have been a candidate for that. My impression is that he was striving to be a public person as much as possible until the end. Unfortunately, part of that was to ignore or overlook problems that did create an issue. 

Allen was one of the "Donnelly kids" who joined us in school for the seventh grade. Oh, what a transition, because the St. Mary's kids, the Catholic kids, joined us at that time too. Or we joined them. I was familiar with Allen and the other Donnelly kids prior to that, as Donnelly had its own elementary basketball team. We just said "basketball" then, and not "boys basketball." 

We assigned girls to home ec. That's just the way it was, not to justify. Boys were boys, girls were girls, and boys were taught to be the pursuers in relationships with "the fairer sex." Ugh. Society is having some trouble reconciling now, between the notion of male assertiveness in relationships, and the mantra of "totally equal." In principle it seems we've all shifted over to the latter. It's not that simple though. A great many of us stick to the notion that the man pursues the woman. 

Consider Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo talks now about how our standards have shifted. He really is right about that. And now Bob Dylan is in the news? 

As enlightened as we now pride ourselves in being, we must acknowledge the blunt truth: no "science" has developed for the orderly development of special relationships between boys and girls, men and women. We're still prompted to just smile about such things. My reference is to the heterosexual world. I have scant knowledge of how a gay person's mind works. 

Gays are totally deserving of equal rights. Allen's funeral was at a church with a reputation of not being accommodating toward gay rights. Society has appeared to move on from this. Gays prevailed in the cultural battle because in the "long game," liberal ideas rise to the surface. Chris Matthews adamantly expressed this when he hosted his MSNBC show. I recall him saying with a twinkle in eye: "liberals always win in the end." 

Matthews had been a staffer for Tip O'Neill. Oh and BTW he was once a capitol police officer. Amazing how capitol police officers fail to get even basic respect from Republican office holders now. The police had to try to stop the Trump riot of January 6. They did yeoman's work but for a time, it looked somewhat like trying to defend the Alamo. 

Fortunately there were some security personnel inside who were "fail safe," or so it appeared. We never got the scene of Mike Pence or his wife being beheaded and having their heads displayed for video cameras. Are Republicans really gnashing their teeth over the failure of the Trump revolt, or over the eventual success of the security forces for good? I suspect that everyone at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church of Morris voted for Trump. 

Had Karen Pence lost her head, would Mike still be speaking in a deferential way about Trump? Seems an absurd question. But of late, how many Republicans have shown the courage to second-guess their dangerous and stupid cult leader? 

Allen Anderson RIP

Why am I writing about Allen Anderson today? Why do I shed light on our beloved Class of '73? We could misbehave in so many ways but we engendered love too. Well, we are all God's children. I just wish more of us were attending churches that weren't so cotton pickin' "conservative." So many churches seem to be trying to "out-conservative" each other. I'll hear that a certain Apostolic church is "more strict" than another Apostolic church. 

What is accomplished with all this strictness? Well, they all vote Republican of course. Unless of course some really bad things start happening in our world that can be laid at the doorstep of the GOP. Seems impossible to predict a Democratic Party resurgence now, n'est-ce pas? But you'd be surprised. "Liberals always win in the end." 

So just watch: the Democratic Party idea of having Medicare expand to cover dental and vision is probably developing momentum. Oh, it's "socialism." "Auntie Em, Auntie Em, it's a twister!" OK now I'm quoting from the "Airplane" movie. 

Well, do you appreciate Social Security and Medicare, two great bastions of "socialism?" You'd probably like to see Medicare expand its reach, just for the most self-centered of reasons. 

 

Current events and memories

I'm thinking of Allen Anderson today because the Class of '73 ended its high school road at a time when we could all vividly see the debacle of Vietnam. We had spent years following current events when Vietnam was so predominant. We were required to pay attention to the "world events" posters in the elementary grades. They were full or Vietnam news or propaganda. 

The whole mess wasn't completely over when we graduated on that fine early-summer evening of 1973. The mess was devolving rapidly. Still we had class speakers who splendidly sought to strike a positive tone about becoming an adult in the great old U.S.A. Edie Martin was the most compelling speaker. 

And so in the end we saw the miserable "fall of Saigon." There it is on videotape for us to watch still today, people clinging to helicopters etc. Flash forward: we are seeing the exact same thing with Afghanistan. And it is a 100 percent parallel. 

So what have we learned? The military industrial complex got built up after World War II. What if the U.S. had never had to build up its forces for WWII? One of the greatest "what if?" questions, eh? 

May God rest Allen Anderson's soul. We are all headed to where he is. I knew him all my life. He attended both my parents' funerals as I recall. Whatever liabilities or challenges he had - and he most definitely had them - there was definitely a current of goodness within him. I saw it, I felt it. 

I wrote a blog post in 2012 about Edie Martin's MHS commencement address. She tapped "Caspar Milquetoast" as a source of inspiration. In other words, "don't be a milquetoast!" 

Leave it to the Class of '73. Here is the permalink to that post. I invite you to read:

http://morrisofcourse.blogspot.com/2012/04/graduation-reflects-tenor-of-times.html 

 

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com

On myth-making and reality-denying

Myths are interwoven with any country's history. I assume I am speaking to non-Pollyannish people. 

Remember the "Roots" TV mini-series? The book author Alex Haley admitted there was a myth element there. As I recall, he was quoted saying the African-American community needed some myths just like any other element or culture. The "myth" at issue with "Roots" was the evil white people with nets going out and about to capture the black Africans. 

Slavery was evil on its face, naturally. But since it was U.S. white people in the South clinging to slavery primarily, let's point fingers accordingly. The South clung with a fighting spirit in the Civil War, and lost. And was trampled. And suffers to this day to a certain extent. Really. 

Slaves were losers in indigenous conflicts who were sold by the winners. But the myth of raw white predation didn't seem too off-base, because of the whites' ultimate culpability with the institution in spades. 

Fighting slavery? That's a big part of what the Mexicans were doing in their assault on the Alamo in Texas. We are learning more and more about the myth of the Alamo. The myth got ingrained in spades by popular entertainment which my generation, the boomers, soaked in. Walt Disney dished it out. Hoo boy, John Wayne dished it out. 

Wayne made his whole "thing" the idea of Anglo-Saxon virtue in the face of supposed threats. The Alamo incident fit in with the notions or agenda of such people. The attitude was really an iteration of "make America great again." It was evident as far back as 1960 with the John Wayne movie. The actor didn't even trust JFK. Was that because of the Catholic connection? 

Don't you see? Fear and paranoia get in the minds of these people. We see it with the men wearing the MAGA caps today. Psychologists have tried to interpret these men. What is the wellspring for them, their thoughts about how "the other" is always hovering out there? Psychologists suggest that the problem - let's be gender specific - is that they "didn't get enough love" when they were young. Profoundly sad, I would suggest. 

Not only that, I would suggest that men for ages have suffered far more than we acknowledge from weak or nonexistent sex education. Look at Andrew Cuomo now. What kind of sex ed did he get as a child? Was he counseled on how best to deal with feelings toward the opposite sex (assuming he's heterosexual)? 

We need to take such questions seriously, not to chuckle or sniff or whatever. Political conservatives of course are most rankled by suggestions of the need for more direct sexual counseling. My mother had "the talk" where she really just talked about bees pollinating flowers etc. Might be grist for a comedian's routine. But I implore you: it's not funny. Look at Bill Cosby! What kind of counseling did he get as a boy? 

Conservatives would say that talk about raw sexual impulses is just verboten. How then is a young person supposed to handle the thoughts that eventually come about? A boy would likely experience mystery and fear. Let's not underestimate the fear element. I went though this. I watched the Annette Funicello beach movies without understanding what was happening to my body. 

Somehow I got through life without the disruptive things that have happened to Bill Cosby and Andrew Cuomo. The latter pleaded that our culture has changed. He is right, just as we have changed from allowing anyone to light up a cigarette almost anywhere. That is a sea change. Gone too is the notion that men must pursue women in a way that allows them to ignore barriers. A "real" man wouldn't accept "no" and would realize that the woman is in fact receptive - she just wants him to be assertive, right? To show he's a "real man?" 

I don't take any chances with this kind of game-playing, would consider it abundantly risky. I don't know what kind of behavior a woman would really accept or want. My "fear" is based on this. I "play it safe" and cultivate no such relationship. Sad? Maybe. I'm 66 years old and probably beyond any new realization about things. 

But hey, let's get back to the subject of the Alamo and myth-making. It may be harmless to remember Betsy Ross sewing the flag. A charming set-up for American history for kids, benign. Not so with the John Wayne version of the Alamo. Hell, Wayne did a reprise of all this with his jingoistic movie about the Vietnam war, "The Greet Berets." That movie was obscene because it fed into the war escalation urges of the mid-1960s, one of the most mystifying and tragic things out of U.S. history. 

The Alamo? It was tragic on a micro scale by comparison. A broader harm has been caused by the myths. Ol' Davy Crockett and his comrades trying to fend off Santa Anna. Good vs. evil, just the way certain political elements in America liked it. Like Richard Nixon. John Wayne rooted for Nixon in 1960. We got Kennedy and you know the rest. It was LBJ who pushed escalation. 

Ah, the Alamo conflict "was for Texas independence!" What could be better? Needless to say there are many conservative Texas political types who just love this. They pressure the education system to follow their party line. But it really is hard to push the truth down in America, even in these MAGA-influenced days. Really. 

The Alamo happened in 1836. The authors of the new book "Forget the Alamo" see the war for Texas' independence from Mexico as a fight for the preservation of slavery by Anglo Texans. Santa Anna and his followers were "ardently abolitionist." Jim Bowie was a notorious swindler. He could have ended up hanging. Crockett? He did not fight to the death, not like the actor Fess Parker in the Disney series. The series ended - I'll never forget - with Parker as Crockett swinging his rifle at the hapless Mexican soldiers who were steadily overwhelming the place. 

We gather the Mexicans won only because of numbers. The Mexican soldiers were like the stormtroopers of "Star Wars," expendable, faceless, cannon fodder. They won because of numbers, just like the "evil" Persians in the "300" story (Sparta). In these stories, the "evil" forces have top commanders who don't even respect the lives of their own troops. 

Conflicts are rarely such a good vs. evil enterprise. Let's put aside the "sacred cow" of American history, the "battle of the Alamo." Don't act like you were born yesterday - forget the movies. Forget the florid romanticism, for crying out loud. 

But wait a minute, a lot of you people may buy into Trump and MAGA, so forget it. John Wayne would be proud of you. He rooted for an America that never existed.

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com

("my san antonio" image)

Continuing saga of water treatment plant

I told a city council member recently that the city should have allowed the water treatment plant to operate for a full year before giving out any advisories to the public. Let the system try to get established. Is this mere hindsight now? Well, I would suggest no. 

There must have been a basis for thinking some issues would arise. Issues have in fact arisen. My plumbing company contact informed me that the original plan for the plant was to produce water at two to five grains of hardness. The lower the number, the better the water. As time passed, the people in charge settled on five grains. I can be quite certain of that because of a communication I received from a state scientist in January. 

Now we're getting into state vs. city. Some more "hindsight" I might offer: the project should have been put forward as a State of Minnesota project, not City of Morris. The state appears to have left city-level people scrambling to explain inconsistencies or modifications. Left "holding the bag," as it were. 

I have it from the state level that disagreements occurred. The state person began his submission to me in an odd way, saying "it was great to see" the blog post I had recently written (January 2021). "Great to see," I guess, that I described the treatment plant as an "embarrassment" right in the headline. But this guy name of Jeff Hill thought it was great. 

The "great to see" sentence was followed by an exclamation point. He wrote "yes, there was confusion and poor communication." That would seem to be rather concerning. Again, letting the plant run for a time without any public announcement would have been prudent. Jeff Hill wrote - remember this was in January - that the water quality companies had been testing about five grains per gallon hardness. He cited the five grains as "the city's target." 

He continued "the water plant is now stable. The city seems to have worked the bugs out of the new plant." 

He acknowledged that the new city water is not genuinely "soft." This contradicted an early email I had received from a councilman, stating that the city would be offering "soft water" via the plant. I thought at first this might just be a quibble, the point being that Morris water would simply be better. Very truly it isn't a quibble. "Soft" water simply has to be one grain and this is not propaganda of the water quality companies. 

There has been a "who do you believe?" element of the whole discussion since the inception. This is concerning: of course the water quality companies want to make money - no sin there - but we should never assume anything untoward. At present I am quite inclined to trust the water quality companies. Here's the problem: the city has its own agenda, that being to demonstrate for the state - i.e. to "show off" for the state - that chloride emissions are being reduced. 

How important is this aim really? Is there a "tree hugging" factor here, i.e. overzealousness? OK let's grant that there isn't. Still the state scientist and his cohorts certainly want to be impressed, or to put a feather in their caps, about how the chloride thing is being suppressed. One can deduce that this is why City of Morris officials from early-on certainly implied that going softener-less was a legitimate option, one that any city resident might well exercise. 

Fast-forward to today: my own plumber informs me that the new city water has fallen all the way to 15 grains. My plumber tells me the problem is lead pipes: you cannot let water that is too good or too pure flow through lead pipes. If this is the case, shouldn't this allowance have been made from the very start? We have scientists in charge, for crying out loud. Unless science butts up against some other agenda. Jeff Hill writes that "City Manager Blaine Hill and Morris have come a long way in our eyes," but then adds: "While we may not agree on all the characterizations, we have convinced most to be honest about the new water quality, and what needs to be done to water softeners." 

That's rich: "We have convinced most to be honest." 

Disagreements? Between the state and city? I'd sure like to see some elaboration of that. The city has come into our homes in effect, and had better know what it is doing. The city manager has even proclaimed that the city can get court permission to come into our homes and investigate softeners. You know what? With all that is going on now with the pandemic, why don't we just put this on the back-burner. Leave people and their softeners alone. 

"We think Blaine knows that many people will want soft water and will keep their water softeners," Jeff Hill wrote.

But didn't the original letter from the city, which I cite from memory, say we might legitimately want to disconnect? A couple other options were in the letter as I recall, but the bottom line is that it was getting too complicated, I mean for busy people with complicated lives. Or, maybe the simpletons among us like yours truly. My plumbing company contact said last fall "sometimes I think we make these things too complicated." 

Why would anyone in his/her busy life want to even deal with their softener, to open up the checkbook, when the softening would appear to be going just fine? I have suggested before that if the new plant was so absolutely necessary, the state might subsidize the changeover, perhaps offering vouchers to people to help. Secondly, instead of water bills going up, maybe the government could pay the difference as an entitlement. 

We can expect more help from government like this if we just elect more Democrats. But there's no hope out here in outstate rural Minnesota, so wedded to the GOP, where lawn signs proliferate like "Biden, take your unity and stick it up your (blank)." That's across the street from East Side Park. How graceful and eloquent. 

Of course the city had to pass a law right away about water softeners. The city manager appeared to want to distance himself from the Morris paper's front page article about this. The wording was harsh, suggesting that many of us would now "be in violation of the law." I hit up the city manager about this and he responded by saying "I don't write newspaper articles." 

What was the point? Was the article inaccurate? Did the city demand a correction be published? I don't think so. 

A water quality company spokesman then told me the city "can't go around like the Gestapo." Heavens, changing your water softener or discarding it is not something you can do at the spur of the moment. I wish the council had thought this out more. Or, was the council in the crosshairs of the state bureaucrats like Jeff Hill, under pressure to deliver so the bureaucrats could show off? 

If true, we should toss out all the city council members. But Morris is too apathetic to do that. We wear apathy on our sleeves. And the typical reaction to this blog post would probably be "Why are you making such a big deal out of this?" I might get laughed at. Actually, saying that something "isn't a big deal" is a very Minnesota thing, as in "How to Speak Minnesotan" (the book by Howard Mohr). 

Jeff Hill wrote to me "Morris (water) is at five grains." I have seen no revised information since then, and surely the government would want to keep us informed, right? Ah, government. "The water plant is now stable," Jeff Hill wrote in January. The city has "worked the bugs out." 

I had a college professor who would describe a confused situation as an "abortion." The term floats back in my head now. You know, it's just like the softball complex that is just down the road from the treatment plant, along "Prairie Lane" or "boondoggle alley." 

Jeff Hill went on to talk about "time clock softeners" and at this point it is all just too technical, in the weeds. To hell with it. Are the residents of Morris supposed to do one big Hail Mary over this? I was prepared for that, then I had the water quality company come back last week, and they said my current system is quite up to snuff. Knock on wood. 

But I feel for the Morris residents who early-on, prodded by the city, decided to just disconnect or ditch their softeners. Watch your back, everyone. 

Jeff Hill talked about how the Pomme de Terre River is now less threatened by chloride from salt. Somehow, this issue wouldn't cause me to lose any sleep. Tree huggers, you can take a flying leap. Jeff Hill wrote that "Morris is no longer in the sights of the MPCA." What was the MPCA going to do to us? City Manager Blaine Hill was quoted saying "you'll save money" by adjusting your softener. Well, I acquired a new softener for $1500 and now my water bills are higher. I didn't need this. 

The bottom line: a friend of mine who is well-known in the community, a lawyer by profession, wrote to me in September of 2020: "Yea, I think the engineers sold the city a bill of goods and now Blaine has to defend his actions. Very frustrating to say the least." 

What can we as individuals do? I'll again quote Alex Karras as "Mongo" from "Blazing Saddles": "Mongo just pawn in game of life."

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com

Federated cable TV was too good to last

Is it true that many older people reach a point of "capitulation" when it comes to understanding all the new trends? Does a part of us just want to start shaking our heads? A willingness at some point to just be "left behind?" 

"Leave me alone, I'll just listen to A.M. radio instead of keeping up with all the media wrinkles." 

So Federated Telephone has announced it is discontinuing cable TV. This after years of pretty high-profile promotion of the service. 

TV has gone through so many stages or iterations or whatever. I'm 66 and my parents surely considered TV to be rather a miracle when it was first available. Wasn't the original concept of "TV" good enough? Well no. 

I eventually signed up for Federated because it was kind of a bastion for local service. They appeared to treat customers in a fair manner with a stable price structure. A local person was available to talk to you. Such elements are still considered important for someone my age. I guess the youth of America have moved on. They are wise to the wrinkles of our new age, having grown up with them. 

People my age remember when you "changed channels" on TV with a knob. The "remote" seemed like a breakthrough. I'm old enough to remember when "color TV" was a major advancement. We watched many Twins games on TV before the center field camera position came into regular use. Layer upon layer we saw change happen. 

Today I am apprehensive as I'm told about something called "bluetooth." Sounds kind of scary. 

"You can watch YouTube on your TV," people say. Well, how exactly? You need to pick up some geek traits, it appears, and maybe the train has already left the station for me. Maybe it's at a point where I am simply weary and don't mind capitulating, to just turning on A.M. radio to get some daily fulfillment. My saving grace is that I do have a laptop, my second, which I'm hoping will last longer than my first. 

My first may have broken down prematurely because I didn't have the savvy to look out for all the viruses or malware or whatever. Just the other day, I got a "pop-up" advising that "Lenovo Advantage" wanted to install something. My current laptop is Lenovo. I went through the first step of installing, then of course another panel came up and my instinct told me to hesitate. I researched through Google and found I had done the wise thing. 

I once got some malware called "Listen to the Radio" which sounds so innocent. I did a check and found it was bad news. I found out how to get rid of it. But how many other pitfalls are out there? Am I all caught up now? 

This mountain of complications did not exist when we all simply watched TV. In my neighborhood just north of Morris, we only had one channel at the start: KCMT of Alexandria. My "town kid" friends talked about the "able cable." They could watch "Gilligan's Island" and "Gunsmoke." Man, if we had been told that someday we could watch hundreds of channels! We'd pinch ourselves. But you know what? It truly is no big deal having access to so many channels. We actually yawn. We actually get frustrated that there is "nothing to watch." Mercy. 

We itch to be entertained all the time, rather insatiable. Then we hit the boredom wall. People in the entertainment industry know all about this. It has to do with scarcity in marketing. 

If I consume "news," I will want to hear about sensational stuff a good portion of the time. This is why Donald Trump has been nothing short of a gold mine for the "news" industry. Capable politicians who simply look out for the interests of society are boring. They'd put "news programs" on the chopping block. 

The hottest prime time news shows really aren't news anyway: they masquerade as news while really just being opinion. Viewers "take sides." So the Fox News viewers go to the diner the next morning, cheer for the Republicans and rip the "loony libs." Around and around it goes. 

So, Federated of Morris has pulled the rug out from under so many of us. The customers liked the nice steady and honest service with local reps. Too good to be true for the year 2021. So we're scrambling and "watching our backs" with other services that try to wring every cent they can out of you. It's manipulative. Oh, and I learned from the "No Filter Sports" podcast that there's a word for this in the TV provider world: "breakage." The people in that industry know they can jack up prices pretty willy-nilly and most customers will just take it. "Breakage." 

Except that I am getting too old and weary to want to deal with it anymore. It's capitulation at age 66, I guess. I suppose I could "negotiate" a package or a contract with some behemoth like Mediacom. I used to be a Mediacom customer. I did experience "breakage" with them - I saw it while it was happening. I didn't have the will to fight it. It's no fun fighting anyone. I could have called and threatened to cancel if I couldn't get my monthly rate at a certain level. At that point it had already gotten too high IMHO. I could have butted heads with them, figuring they would rather have me as a customer at a reduced rate than to lose me completely. 

It may well have worked. One gets weary playing "hardball." I decided Federated would be a friendlier source and so I switched phone and TV over and established home wi-fi with Federated. Seemed like a real nice arrangement. But then out of the blue came the letter from Federated saying TV was going to be on the chopping block. It had been too good to be true. It made too much sense. 

So I called Federated and ended my TV on the spot. 

Yes, one's laptop can be mighty useful, no doubt about that. But as I told Kevin Wohlers recently, there are times when "it's just nice to have the TV on." 

 

The endgame

I think we know where all this is going: before long there will be no "TV" as such and everything will simply be the Internet. We have some evolution stages to go through first. Question is, am I too old and weary to keep up with it all? To install "bluetooth?" So I'm getting by with the resources I can handle for now. 

It irritates me, just like the adjustments we've been dragged through with the City of Morris water treatment plant. I approached Councilman Wohlers to talk with him about that. As mad as I get about the City of Morris, I can never find it in myself to be mad at Kevin. Do us Morris residents need a water softener or not? How many "grains" is the new city water at present, because the rumors are just terrible with the downward spiral, all the way down to 15 friggin' grains? 

Seems almost criminal, the way it has gone. My plumber said to me last fall: "Sometimes I think we make these things too complicated." 

Yes, and ditto our communications and entertainment. At 66 I may be increasingly falling by the wayside. Oh, to just be able to turn the knob on the TV and watch "Captain Kangaroo" again. 

"Bunny Rabbit!" 

"Grandfather Clock!" 

"Mr. Green Jeans!"

 

Allen Anderson, RIP

It was hard understanding Allen Anderson. Such is the way God created us, with inscrutable aspects, a blend of good and bad, healthy and unhealthy, virtuous and with faults. We lost Allen last Saturday, age 66, same as me. He and I graduated with the Morris High School Class of '73. He might have been more worthy of graduation than I was. 

But he was known through all the years as someone with peculiarities. Troublesome peculiarities a good share of the time, so that his movement around the community became restricted. We cannot blame anyone who erected those restrictions. There were health aspects to this - let's not get into it further. But at the same time, I think we all sensed a warm side to Allen's nature, the side that thought it important to pay attention to people and community activities. 

He was a Donnelly-ite. The Donnelly kids had a group identity when I was young. Bob Van Zomeren was in the group. And Jane Larson. And Marv Stoneberg. And Kathy Graff. And Diane Bjorlin. (The artist Del Holdgrafer pronounced it ber-LIN.)

Allen had his issues but he exuded this sense of community spirit, involvement, interest. He seemed oblivious to the barriers created for him. And now we suddenly learn of his death. An individual we can never forget. God's life breathed into him. Allen Anderson RIP. You're in a better place now with your Lord and your parents, Allen. 

Funeral is Friday afternoon. I'm wondering if we might see a surprisingly large turnout.

 

Addendum: Motto for Morris High Class of '73: "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead." It was considered edgy.

  

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com