Author: Dick

Seven come eleven
Daddy needs a new
pair of shoes.

Lately I have been on a biography kick. My reading habits are thus that I get interested in one topic or genre and keep seeking it out until I find something else to entertain and/or inform me.

Biographies, good biographies that is, can transform you back to that time or place even when put into the context and language of the present. A good example is “Mark Twain: A Life,” written by Ron Powers, who penned “Flags of our Fathers.”

Not only did Powers take me back on the amazing journey that was Mark Twain’s life — warts, ups, downs and all — but that author did so quite often using a 21st-century voice.

Interestingly enough, although I have always admired Twain’s writing and to some extent, the way he tackled life, I was pulled into the world of Sam Clemens once again because of an earlier biography I read about President Ulysses S. Grant. That book told of how Clemens, who initially was sympathetic with the South and then went West to avoid the whole war altogether, later encouraged and enabled Grant to write his own biography. Grant did so, in a race against the clock with terminal cancer and dying penniless on his tail.

Now I am reading a Warren G. Harding biography: “The Shadow of Blooming Grove,” a work published in 1968 by Russell Francis.

The first question I can imagine someone asking after reading the above paragraph is: why? Before George “Gee Dubya” W. Bush, Harding had long been thought of as possibly the worst president ever. Even dying in office didn’t improve his standing in history. Much of that was due to the Teapot Dome and other scandals that riddled the Harding administration. This is even though Russell, who pulls no punches about the good and bad of this Buckeye State native, felt Harding himself to be an extremely honest guy. Of course, I am skeptical because Harding made his bones before becoming a politician as a newspaper publisher and secondly because he was a politician.

Although I am early into Harding’s life, the most interesting aspect I have been reading so far is of the whispers and speculations floating about Warren G. Harding and his family that the family’s blood was partly that of the “Negro” race.

It wouldn’t be too much of a strech to say some politicians today might wish (for gaining the so-called “black” vote) their ancestry included that of African descent, as it wasn’t desirable for white people in the post Civil War era to be identified as of another race, especially being black. As most who know a smidgen of history will understand as well, such sentiments were as prevalent in the America’s “Heartland” of Ohio as they were in Georgia or Mississippi.

What is amazing is that the Hardings would be pummelled in print by rival publishers who accused them of being black. Warren Harding’s father, a physician, especially would get offended by such accusations and result to violence involving fisticuffs and knives.

Perhaps these speculations, whether real or imagined, are something I had previously learned at some point in college. But I don’t think so. At least I don’t remember ever reading that people suspected Harding of being our first black president. An any case, it is good to know such information exists because one doesn’t learn everything in school. So I can go with a good conscience saying that my reading habits — at least in this instance — are worthwhile. Sometimes those habits are not always of such value.

Some of the most encouraging words coming out of Congress lately are those from GOP Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who is predicting my favorite (emphasis on the sarcasm) U.S. Attorney General will resign. Yes, that would be the Weasel of the West himself, Alberto “VO 5” Gonzales.

Under congressional fire for a scandal involving the firings of some U.S. attorneys for what were allegedly political reasons, Gonzales is now up to his sleazy neck in the warrantless eavesdropping controversy.

The latest twist in the sorry eavesdropping saga are revelations from former deputy attorney general James Comey who said that then-White House counsel Gonzales tried to pressure his predecessor, John Ashcroft, into recertifying the wiretapping program. Ashcroft was in intensive care at a hospital for gallbladder surgery and Comey was in fact the acting attorney general. Ashcroft reportedly deferred to his deputy who had reservations about signing onto the program.

Although Ashcroft was sick and probably under the influence of some heavy drugs, I have to say that was one good moment he had in an otherwise crappy tenure as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

An involvement in a can of freedom-limiting worms should not be surprising since Gonzales was involved in other matters which may have chipped away at civil liberties and human rights. Who can forget the oldies but goodies such as the “Torture Memo” or his championing of the Patriot Act and pooh-poohing the rights of Americans to habeas corpus?

These are among the reasons I call Gonzales a weasel, that and the fact his appearances before Congress with his cleverly, smirking non-answers could make the most patient among us want to hurl their televisions into the street, or perhaps, just hurl.

To paraphrase the Dixie Chicks Natalie Maines: “Just so you know…I’m ashamed the attorney general of the United States is from Texas.” I think many of you might guess how I feel about Gee Dubya.

My hope is that the door won’t hit Gonzales in the ass on his way out of office. On second thought, I hope it does hit him in the ass. He deserves it.

Surely someone knows the story behind this sculpture on the Jasper, Texas, courthouse square. Unfortunately, I don’t.

An odd and end or two need to be discussed from a visit to my hometown as well as to my birthplace a couple of weeks ago.

While visiting my birthplace, what once was the Hancock Hospital in Jasper, Texas, I came across what has become for me, a rather intriguing bronze sculpture. The bronze of this man reading a newspaper while perched on a bench is on the grounds of the Jasper County Courthouse. It is located katy-cornered from the now famous yet now defunct hospital. I say now famous because I was born there. Okay, so it’s a joke. I say it is defunct because as a hospital, it no longer exists. I’m not sure what the building is used for these days. But that is beside the point.

Surely, I figured, I would find something on the Internets about this bronze. And probably something is written about it. It’s just that I can’t find it because a) I didn’t look hard enough b) Nothing written about it exists. c)The statue is a figment of my imagination. So, if you out there in the blogoscosmos see a picture of the statue, you too could be seeing an illusion. But I think not.

After seeing the bronze figure and failing to find any information about it, I e-mailed the Jasper Chamber of Commerce. That was, what, two weeks ago? They never returned my e-mail if they had received it in the first place. After all, the e-mail may not have ever existed.

One would think a small-town chamber of commerce would want to answer e-mail queries about matters in their fair city. That is, provided of course that they exist. By they, I mean the matters and, I suppose, the chamber of commerce.

A reason why the chamber should answer is that they could highlight one of their highlights or illuminate one of their illuminations or just flip a switch and be done with it. Also, an answer regarding the matter would help prevent people from just making s**t up about the object in question. For instance, that the sculpture is of a notorious serial killer or even something less odious but nonetheless patently and ridiculously false. If someone writes me about the bronze or if I find something out, I might follow up right here on this little ol’ blog. But don’t hold your breath.

On to something else.

While visiting my hometown of Newton — some 15 miles to the east of Jasper — I visited one of my old high school friends. I had not seen Frank in almost 30 years. I don’t know why, it’s just one of those things. But he told me something interesting in explaining what he is doing these days, which is driving a truck around there rather than plying his former trade as an over-the-road, long-haul trucker.

Frank said he had a wreck somewhere out west while driving his truck. He had screwed up his knee after it was pinned under the wreckage. He said that what happened was he ate a pretzel and the next thing he knew, he was trapped in his truck. In other words, he blacked out after eating a pretzel. I thought, “Damn, the only other person I have ever heard of that happening to was Gee Dubya”, the story being extracted only after the prez was queried by reporters who noticed what turned out to be a nasty rug burn on his face.

After an extensive Internets search, one page of Yahoo results (that’s about all I have the patience for at the moment), I did not uncover any statistics on the numbers of people who pass out after eating pretzels. But apparently, enough people have choked so that parents are warned in this article to beware of feeding their kids pretzels. Personally, I thought such warnings would be due to shape but apparently, it’s the texture that is potentially breath-taking:

Dry, hard food may be hard to chew yet easy to swallow whole.
Hard pretzels
Tortilla chips
Popcorn

Apparently, we can now add pretzel eating to the list of occupational hazards for both being U.S. President AND truck driving. Who knew?

Is Paris Hilton’s legal goings-on legitimate news? We ask, you decide.==Photo by Peter Schäfermeier of Universal Photo.

An interesting debate took place this morning on CNN’s Reliable Sources. The show’s host, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, and a panel of journalists discussed the newsworthiness of the current legal saga engulfing socialite, TV star and celebrity ding-a-ling Paris Hilton.

In March, Hilton was sentenced to 45 days in jail for violating her probation stemming from a DUI arrest in 2006. Whether she actually goes to jail in June remains to be seen.

I must confess that I cannot remember a whole lot about the discussion on Howie’s show this morning as I was doing something and only got bits and pieces of the discourse. But it is an interesting debate. The majority of Americans who are sentenced for probation violations on drunk driving charges are hardly mentioned by the media unless they are celebrities, government officials, or have run over someone or something significant.

At a paper where I once worked, I remember that a local morning show TV anchor was arrested by police after she was stopped for speeding and allegedly assaulted the officer. The assault was trivial as I remember. I believe she had jerked the ticket book from the officer’s hand and may have caused him to bang his hand on the door but causing no real injury. I could be wrong about the details.

Since many of the reporters at that paper looked contemptuously at local TV news types, there seemed to be some joy expressed in the newsroom regarding the incident. The charges were dropped, but the police beat reporter kept the anchor’s angry mugshot on his cubicle wall. The reason her photo sported an angry look is that the anchor was running late for her job at whatever ungodly hour she had to get there for the morning gig, (the reason she was speeding) not to mention getting arrested. The charges were later dropped, so she got quite a lot of negative publicity and was never found guilty.

Although I was not a big fan of the television personality who was taken to jail, I did wonder just how fair the newspaper was being. Would our photos have appeared in the paper for similar arrests? I guess it would depend on who was arrested, their position and whether or not he or she was liked by the editors. My mugshot might have run. I’ll just leave it at that because I remain under a confidentiality agreement with that paper. I do remember that a young woman who worked on the copy desk was arrested on the job after she was spotted by a security guard in the paper’s smoking area inhaling weed. She was fired but the incident did not make the news at our paper.

The fact is that whether a person’s name or picture appears in the news for some legal infraction short of violent crime is rather arbitrary among newspapers and the electronic media. The same goes for suicides. Most newspapers don’t report suicides unless it is someone well-known or the death occurs in a public place. Most local news outlets do report, sometimes with an obituary and other times with stories, when one of their own dies either violently or from natural causes. Depending on the paper and how large it is, these obits might be written for anyone whether they were a janitor, pressman or editor.

But celebrities of all ilk seem to be fair game for any infraction be it legal or of a personal nature. Some sports figures seem to get into legal messes so often these days that sports desks at newspapers should think about hiring their own police beat reporter just to cover the arrests.

Of course, the news executives defend their practices related to news about celebrities. It’s what the public wants. The public is consumed with celebrity. I have seen TV news people from even the smallest of markets asked for their autograph. I don’t think anyone ever asked for my autograph during the 17 years I worked for newspapers. That is even though I, at one time, wrote a column that was distributed nationally. I must admit that I would have felt silly signing an autograph. The fact that I was never asked seems just about the way the matter should have been.

News types like to wail, gnash their teeth and wring their hands over even the most minuscule issues that affect them. So the debate over reporting of celebrity hijinks is largely an internal gabfest. It is an interesting topic. But it isn’t among the biggest struggle that society faces these days. So, I wonder: Why did I just devote 30 minutes and all these paragraphs and words devoted to this issue? It beats me. I suppose that I just need a life.

Meet Bush’s yorkie, VA Secretary Jim Nicholson.

If I had a dog, I would shave its ass and call it the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Well, that’s not entirely true. I would never shave a dog’s ass.

In all of the dealings I have had with the VA since leaving the Navy almost 29 years ago, those I experienced this week have been the most infuriating, frustrating and probably a few other -tings yet to be named for a future draft choice.

My latest troubles with the VA stem from a combination of my employment as a part-time government employee, the VA’s unwillingness to share information with those who use its healthcare system and a little negligence on my part.

Health problems — degenerative arthritis of the cervical spine to be exact — contributed to my severe poverty level over the past year and a half. That led to homelessness, which continues although I have been staying in a motel until I can find an affordable place to live. I was hoping to use some reimbursements from my part-time job to snag an apartment or other dwelling this week. But the good-old ass-dog VA had other ideas.

My poverty and the VA’s negligence contributed to my having outstanding medical bills at three different VA systems in Central Texas, North Texas and Houston. A veteran who receives VA care must complete what is known as a means test to determine if he or she is able or unable to pay for their care or prescription copayments. The VA had always reminded patients each year to do that but somewhere along the line, that practice stopped and the veteran was responsible for getting that paperwork done. The problem is, and even as much as I was plugged into the VA in the past, I didn’t know that the onus fell on me.

Consequently, I owed for medical treatment and copayments that should not have been charged to me because I was below their poverty level.

Also, after more than 10 years of VA care I only learned this week that “Previous Balance” on my monthly statement is actually a delinquent amount. I was not a very happy person discovering these revelations.

My negligence stemmed from trying to survive and doing all the various necessities when one is homeless. This includes finding food, shelter and a place to wash away the funk. I was not as attentive to VA bills in the last year or so because I was trying to survive and it had never been a major issue being behind on your VA bills.

That all changed when I began working for the government in March.

I knew that some money could possibly be garnished from my pay for money I owed to the VA. But I did not know the depth of how that all worked.

It worked by taking all but about 1 percent of the money that was owed me for travel and per diem reimbursements. All of a sudden, bam, they took all my money without telling me squat with the exception of a notice that $80 would be garnished for my debt with the Central Texas VA system. And they will continue to take my money until or if I can get in place a waiver to stop these vultures from raiding my treasury.

The biggest problem I have with all of this — aside from my badly-needed funds being looted — is that these actions are taken with no consideration whatsoever of the individual’s financial circumstances. The VA as I am sure is the case with some other agencies has this mindset: “He’s a government employee. We can treat him however we want because WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT!” Tee hee.

Now I have never been accused of viewing life as particularly fair. But these circumstances go beyond basic fairness. The VA — led by former Republican National Committee chairman and whom to me resembles a Yorkshire Terrier Jim Nicholson — should above all treat its patients with some semblance of decency. The VA has a lot of wonderful people but also has its share of snakes. And these snakes don’t give a rat’s ass if you are homeless or blind, crippled or crazy. They want to make access to veterans health care difficult with the hope that the veteran will just give up and go away, and in some cases — die.

Mine is a cautionary tale. If you are a VA patient you should watch them like a hawk. Read all the fine print. Think ahead of them and keep in mind all the ways that the VA could screw you. I know that is hard to do if you are homeless, or you have a severe or life-threatening illness or you are struggling with physical therapy with your prosthetic leg that you now wear from fighting that f**ked up war in Iraq.

As for me, I will not give up my fight to seek a little fairness and to perhaps get a little of my money back. I don’t know what it will take. I have already filed a complaint with the office of my local congressman, U.S. Rep. Ted “Here Comes the Judge” Poe. I don’t expect a lot out of this move but it will at the very least make a few people at the VA a bit anxious. And in addition to studying my legal options, I likewise am thinking about taking my story to a few of my old media contacts. I would rather not do the latter, but the only way to get things done at the VA is to shame them into action.

It’s a sad state of affairs how our veterans are treated in this country. The VA talks the talk but rarely do they walk the walk. The agency often doles out what I consider as emotional abuse and sometimes harm the patients they are charged with healing. Physician, heal thy self. Please.