America, Stop Constantly Emoting

Posted on February 23, 2021 by Austin Gisriel

Somewhere along the line in the past 50 years, America has transformed from a relatively stoic society to one in which every day is like a giant primal scream therapy session, and one conducted by an unlicensed therapist at that. Everybody is supposed to feel everything and then tell everyone else about it. It’s gotten so that we now seem to equate deep feelings with deep thinking.

Television shows are filled with crying, cursing, wailing, wallowing, the gnashing of teeth, and the smashing of furniture. The constant exposure to such programming reinforces the idea that such expression is normal, thus creating a vicious cycle.

Nowhere is our constant emoting more apparent than on social media, particularly Facebook on which people routinely provide the rest of us with the play-by-play of their emotional state. In case you are so overwhelmed by your own emotions that words fail, you may choose from exactly 200 emoticons to show the world your current mood. Posting such updates is, of course, an invitation to all your friends, and all your friends’ friends, to form an emotional bucket brigade who pour criticism or encouragement on your emotional fire as they see fit.

Gone are the days when a person was expected to meet life’s inevitable crises with a measure of faith, a dash of grace, and a certain degree of you-can’t-beat-me stoicism. Faith and grace, those twin sisters of strength, were long ago run out of town, and stoicism has been replaced by spectacism, a freshly-coined word meaning “to make a spectacle of one’s self.”

Guess what, America? You don’t have to share every feeling. It’s not a social requirement. We don’t need to know what you feel; most of the time, we don’t want to know what you feel because we have our own feelings going on over here, although your narcissistic obsession with your own feelings might blind you to that fact.

So, here’s some advice, America: Shut up about your feelings.

Just shut up.

Stop giving voice to every feeling, and I say this for your own good. Living in a constant state of ginned up outrage and self-created drama is not healthy nor natural.

First, giving voice to emotions often gives them a reality and a permanence that they wouldn’t otherwise have. If you don’t give voice to every emotion, if you don’t analyze it and put words to it, it may simply go away. You feel blue, for example. Maybe, you feel blue just because; but describe it and explain it, and you give life to your blueness as surely as Dr. Frankenstein gave life to The Creature.

Second, have some faith in yourself. You don’t have to be defeated by every one of life’s trials and tribulations. The Greatest Generation became great, not because they were better people than we are; not because they were braver, stronger, more moral, or happier. They were the greatest because they refused to surrender to the overwhelming emotional situation in which they found themselves. They set their fear aside; they set their lives aside, and did the job which needed to be done. (Ironic, isn’t it, that they did this for their grandchildren who now throw themselves on Facebook’s floor and fling tantrums in every direction?)

Third, unfiltered, uncontrolled emotion is easily manipulated emotion. The powers that be, and there are powers that be, on Madison Avenue, Wall Street, and in the nation’s Capital have a very vested interest in seeing that you are easily manipulated. They don’t want you to think—just react—and buy this product, buy this idea. Such manipulation goes a long way toward explaining why some powers that be have already moved on to the next step, which is to tell you what to feel.

Emotions are like a corral of wild stallions. We need to respect their power and ride them with care and caution. We can’t just fling open the gate and allow them to stampede us. If America is to restore the emotional balance clearly lacking in our society, then we must lasso those emotions and lead them back into the corral. It’s not healthy to leave the horses in charge of the stable.

Setting aside their feelings, they did what needed to be done.

Original caption: Landing on the coast of France under heavy Nazi machine gun fire are these American soldiers, shown just as they left the ramp of a Coast Guard landing boat. CPhoM. Robert F. Sargent, June 6, 1944. 26-G-2343.

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A Movie for our Times

Posted on February 16, 2021 by Austin Gisriel

Friday nights have been a television wasteland ever since The Wild, Wild West went off the air in 1969. This past Friday night naturally found me clicking through Martha’s Netflix channel (is that the right word for Netflix?) desperately trying to find something to watch; something that would actually hold my attention, and not just kill some time. Fortunately, I found a movie that held my attention and then some in a 2019 film, The Highwaymen, starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson.

Costner plays former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, while Harrelson plays Maney Gault, also a former Ranger. These two are brought back to active duty by the state of Texas to track down the infamous outlaws, Bonnie and Clyde. The Texas Rangers, however, had been disbanded by Governor Miriam “Ma” Ferguson (played by Kathy Bates) because of their questionable law enforcement tactics; therefore, Hamer and Gault are credentialed as Texas Highway Patrolmen, which explains the title.

Both Costner and Harrelson give outstanding performances, the cinematography is excellent, and the producers pay careful attention to details. The plot is historically accurate for the most part (or at least to the extent of my limited research), but The Highwaymen is far more than a cops and robbers flick or a buddy movie. It is a film with nuanced themes which are wonderfully developed by both the script and the actors.

It’s one thing for Bonnie and Clyde to kill a few police officers (9 is the best estimate) and rob rural gas stations, but when they orchestrate an escape for several friends from the Texas Eastham Prison Farm, well, that was going too far because it made the state of Texas look ridiculous. Meaning the politicians running the state of Texas in 1934 looked ridiculous, and that could not be tolerated. Ma Ferguson does not want to call in these former Rangers, but doing right is often a dirty job, one which few people are equipped to pursue to the lengths necessary to succeed. Frank Hamer was such a man and so, the Governor reluctantly relents.

Hamer has no illusions about this particular job: You cannot compromise with evil, you cannot negotiate with evil—evil must be put down like a mad dog, and that’s what Hamer sets out to do. In one telling scene early in the movie, Hamer visits a gun store and purchases enough arms and ammunition, including a Browning Automatic Rifle and a couple of Thompson machine guns, to arm a platoon, rightfully believing that if you’re going to exterminate evil, you have to match evil’s firepower. Hamer’s attitude is reinforced by the filmmakers who write no dialogue for the actors portraying Bonnie and Clyde. In fact, the outlaws are not even seen in close up until the final scene in which they are killed.

Nor does Hamer have any illusions that what is “right” is ensconced in the law, and that what is “wrong” is illegal. Hamer is comfortable with the idea that you sometimes have to shade wrong in order to do right. Hamer does not hesitate to cross state lines in his pursuit of Bonnie and Clyde, for example, and as more of his character is revealed, the more we learn that he has been willing to do more than just pursue criminals who have left his jurisdiction.

Maney Gault is portrayed as being much more like the rest of us. He’s somewhat hesitant to cross certain boundaries, both literally and figuratively. Gault is uneasy, for example, about the prospect of shooting a woman, even if it is Bonnie Parker.

Ultimately, the two men track the outlaws to Louisiana and, along with the local sheriff of Bienville Parish, arrange an ambush which was successfully carried out on May 23, 1934. A crowd gathered when the bullet-riddled car was towed into Arcadia, Louisiana, the bodies still inside. There was an immediate rush for souvenirs, and according to Wikipedia, one man was trying to cut off Clyde’s trigger finger before order was restored. The film depicts this scene, which also includes several wailing young women, wearing Bonnie’s trademark beret—the outlaws had become celebrities.

The job completed, Hamer and Gault drive back to Texas.

Upon its conclusion, the film notes that 20,000 people attended Bonnie Parker’s funeral in Dallas. Some 15,000 attended Clyde’s.

The heroes of the story were forgotten. The evil was then, and continues to be, glamorized.

I’m not sure why that is often the case. Maybe, it’s because it is easier to forgive evil than to remain vigilant in its face. In any case, we’re not comfortable with the people who remain vigilant; the ones willing to perform our dirty work. We curse the cops and shun our veterans. Maybe, we know we lack the courage to do what they do. Maybe, we’re jealous of Frank Hamer’s sense of right and wrong. Moral relativism, and all that.

I believe in moral relativism, but then there are situations in which moral relativism is itself relative. There are situations in our lives and events in our world that must be confronted without hesitation; situations and events that must be declared evil, and our response must be unhesitating and without compromise.

The Highwaymen is a movie for all times, particularly the one in which we live.

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Dirty Dancing Outrages U.S. Ambassador

Posted on February 2, 2021 by Austin Gisriel

Yet another most interesting item regarding outrage over the latest dance craze appeared in the “Out of the Past” feature in the February 1st edition of the Winchester Star. Datelined January 26, 1921 from Brussels, it reads:

Owing to a protest by the diplomatic corps, headed by Ambassador Whitock [sic], of the United States, the tango will not be danced at the coming court dances, the first to be held since 1914.

The “shimmy” is also barred, but the fox trot and one-step will be permitted.

It turns out that the Ambassador’s name was actually Whitlock, with an l. Brand—that was his first name—was a four-time mayor of Toledo, an attorney, a politician, a journalist, and an author, as well as the ambassador to Belgium, at least according to Wikipedia.

In other words, the man couldn’t hold a job.

He was appointed minister to Belgium in 1913, which was somewhat bad timing, but served U. S. interests splendidly during the Great War, and upon its conclusion, and the restoration of the Belgian government, the United States established an embassy in Belgium, naming Whitlock as the ambassador.

The Wikipedia article does not mention why Ambassador Whitlock took exception to the tango. We’ve already discussed polite society’s aversion to the shimmy in this blog post and this one, as well as this one. And one more here for good measure. Clearly, those who would maintain the moral standards of the day saw the jazz age dances as an affront to all that was holy and decent. The photo below, of Ambassador Whitlock and his wife suggests that their morals were affronted rather often. Constantly, perhaps. They certainly don’t appear to be a couple who would dip and dive in a tango, much less shimmy like flappers in a speakeasy. In fact, Mrs. Whitlock appears to have just read an item from an Indianapolis newspaper dated January 4th, 1921 which stated that the young women there refused to wear corsets to dances, because “they were termed ‘old ironsides’ by the boys and they were unable to accomplish the movements in the new dances.” Actually, Mrs. Whitlock appears to be wearing a corset at least two sizes too small. So does Mr. Whitlock, for that matter.Fortunately for those of us in the dance community, Ambassador Whitlock has been forgotten while the tango and the shimmy live on. I intend no offense to Ambassador Whitlock by this remark. He was probably a laugh riot when he got together with the Minister of Sweden and they joked about the Ambassador from Luxembourg employing the wrong spoon for his soup at the dinner before the court dance.

So. In honor of all those diplomats’ daughters in Belgium who never got to tango or shimmy 100 years ago, and as a tribute to those girdleless girls from Indiana, I present another version of “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate.

Enjoy. Enjoy it for them.

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Look for special book promotions in 2021!

Posted on January 26, 2021 by Austin Gisriel

The New Year is bringing about a couple of changes to my writing world in order to make it easier for you to order books from this blog. You may now pay for any books you order directly from me via PayPal. If you have a PayPal account simply open it, then look for paypal.me/AustinGisriel, type in the correct amount and hit “send.” Please know that I am still quite happy to handle payment with an old-fashioned check as well. (Actually, you can just send money without even ordering any books if you feel so moved.)

You should also look for special offers throughout the spring, as free shipping will be available for individual works during a certain number of days and times.

Indeed, Book Raid.com will be running a special promotion tomorrow for The Boys We Knew when the e-book version will be available for only $.99 rather than the usual $2.99. While Book Raid’s promotion is for one day, I am extending that offer for an entire week, through next Tuesday, February 2nd. For that week, you can purchase The Secret of Their Midnight Tears AND The Boys We Knew, the second book in The Secret of Their Midnight Tears trilogy for only $.99 each.

In fact, if you like paperbacks, as I do, you can order the entire Secret of Their Midnight Tears trilogy in paperback directly from me and pay no shipping. This offer is good from now through Valentine’s Day. That’s $25.00 shipped and autographed for all three books and I’m more than happy to inscribe any special dedications. Simply direct message or e-mail your mailing information and method of payment.

I am making this offer good through Valentine’s Day because The Secret of Their Midnight Tears trilogy is a love story. Oh, there are a couple of boys who are crazy about a couple of girls, but this is also a story about the love for one’s family and one’s neighbors and one’s country. This is a story about a few young people in one town during WWII who were trying to make their way in the world, when they were suddenly called upon to save it.

***

One final bit of news: The sequel to Swing Time: A Swing Dancing, Time Warping Story is just about complete! Look for it in late spring!

Thank you and please, feel free to share this message!

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Adam, as do many of his descendants, lacked scientific perspective

Posted on January 19, 2021 by Austin Gisriel

I don’t know why the hand-wringing over “climate change” bemuses me so. Perhaps, because once upon a time, I earned a degree in theology and it amuses me to see that Humanity is as smug as it was in the Garden of Eden days. Adam, you’ll recall, was the world’s first scientist, and not a bad one. He established the nomenclature for all the animals and that achievement alone gives him pretty good standing, but having named them, he started to think that he created them, too.

Adam’s problem as a scientist, you see, was that he lacked perspective. All he knew was the Garden of Eden; he couldn’t see outside it, and so he thought he knew everything there was to know. In fact, he began to “know” things that were not true. To ensure that he knew it all, he ate from the Tree of Knowledge—with a good degree of encouragement from his new lab assistant. This was a mistake because what good is knowledge if you already know it all? Adam gained wisdom, but found out the hard way that he didn’t really know much.

As Adam’s descendants, most of us have inherited this lack of perspective and the notion that we know everything. In theology, we call that hubris, which brings me back to my bemusement.

Back in the early part of this century we fretted over “global warming,” but it turns out that our perspective was limited on the matter of warming and cooling, so, we moved over to the slogan “climate change.” Worrying about the climate changing is akin to worrying about the sun setting. Imagine if our perspective was just a tad shorter. Along about dusk every day we would begin to worry that the sun was disappearing and we couldn’t be sure that it was coming back. Before midnight, we’d have a sun tax, and by 2 a.m. there would be a fully staffed, fully funded federal Department of Solar Disappearances. Next morning, long about dawn, we’d realize we were wrong, but by then, people would be emotionally invested in the thing, and hating their neighbor for scoffing at their overwrought feelings. And of course, that tax and that bureaucracy will still be around on the day the sun does finally extinguish itself in a billion years or two, because solar systems may come and solar systems may go, but taxes and bureaucracies never leave us.

Perspective is the key ingredient in scientific thinking. The amount of time that the Earth has been forming a climate, compared to the amount of time that humans have been measuring what’s going on in our climate is about the same proportionally as all that time between when Adam was calling a striped horse a zebra up to supper-time tonight, compared to the time it takes you to eat that supper.

I’m reminded of all this by a passage from Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi in which Twain, who had been a pilot on the river before becoming one of the greatest chroniclers of jackassery in human history, illustrates in the quotation below what scientific perspective is all about; in this case, it illustrates what we now call, “the danger of extrapolating from inadequate sample size.” In Chapter 17 of Life on the Mississippi, Twain devotes a passage to the phenomenon that the river has shortened itself through the centuries by cutting through 242 miles of capes and necks:

Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and “let on” to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far future by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is here! . . . Please observe:

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oőlitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

It’s all a matter of maintaining the right perspective, you see.

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A Civics Lesson

Posted on January 12, 2021 by Austin Gisriel

The public has sat idly by and let the organized prosecutors amend the Law until the constitutional guarantees of the public were swept away. We’re living in a period of changing times. It’s quite possible that the definition of crime will be broadened to include things which we might at present list in the category of political crimes. When the ordinary citizen is dragged into court, he’ll find that the cards have been stacked against him. Ostensibly, they were stacked against the professional criminal by organized public servants, but actually they’ve been stacked against Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary Citizen, because the whole procedure has been completely undermined.

It’s high time for citizens to wake up to the fact that it isn’t a question of whether a man is guilty or innocent, but whether his guilt or innocence can be proved under a procedure which leaves in the citizen the legal rights to which he is entitled under a constitutional government.

The most interesting aspect of this most interesting statement is that it is from 1942, when Erle Stanley Gardner penned these lines in The Case of the Careless Kitten, one of Gardner’s many Perry Mason novels. I could add a great deal of commentary to Gardner’s passage, and connect them to our contemporary situation, but that would only diminish his eloquence. Certainly, his words speak for themselves and speak across time.

We do indeed seem to be “waking up.” Hopefully, it is not too late.

Erle Stanley Gardner, Perry Mason’s creator
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A Star in the Night

Posted on December 20, 2020 by Austin Gisriel

When I was a kid December 20th was a significant date. It meant that the long countdown to Christmas was about to conclude and the Magic Day was almost at hand.

Five more days.

Of course, now that I’m well past my childhood days, December 20th seems to have arrived out of the blue. How did it get this late so early?

No matter.

I wish you all a Happy Holiday, and my gift appears in the video below. Unless you are a faithful viewer of TCM, you have probably never seen this Oscar-winning short from 1945. Set in the Southwest, it is a faithful retelling of the Christmas story on two levels. All the traditional symbols are there, albeit in a very American style, and so is the message of Christmas: Love begets love, and if it doesn’t start with you, then who?

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Common Nonsense

Posted on December 15, 2020 by Austin Gisriel

This past weekend, the Governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, imposed a curfew from midnight to 5:00 a. m. in an effort to “combat the coronavirus.” Asked why he chose this time frame for the curfew, the Governor replied that it was “common sense.”

Maybe someone should inform the Governor that midnight to 5:00 a.m. is the time of day when the fewest people are out and about, and therefore, there is the least likely opportunity to spread Covid. In fact, the Governor’s curfew hours are the opposite of common sense, whatever that term may be. “Northam sense,” maybe?

He went on to add, “I’ll also say something that my parents taught me when I was younger, and that is nothing good happens after midnight.” This kind of scientific analysis will no doubt have Covid on the run before the year is out. Too bad my father isn’t governor of Virginia. His curfew was 11:00 p.m. He would have reduced our Covid vulnerability by 16.66 percent. He certainly reduced my make-out time, but that’s because his curfew overlapped the prime time for making out. Of course, Ralph should have followed his parents’ advice before going to those after-midnight costume parties in college and med school. Typical of a politician to want us to follow his parents’ advice, but refused to follow it himself.

In fact, when any politician uses the argument of “common sense” to advance a cause, what he or she is actually admitting to is that he or she has absolutely no understanding about the subject at hand. It would be more intellectually honest if they simply yelled, “Just ‘cause!” which is an abbreviated version of “Just ‘cause I said so!” Which is really getting at the heart of the matter.

Governor Northam may want to stop exercising his “common sense” and read Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in order to acquaint himself with the need to resist tyranny, a state of human affairs which often takes its first baby steps in the form of curfews. But, then, suppose you were Governor of Virginia? And suppose you were an idiot. But I repeat myself.

Secret footage of Governor Northam’s Coronavirus task force.

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The Frederick Keys and What Used to Be

Posted on December 9, 2020 by Austin Gisriel

I just found out that the Frederick Keys will no longer be a minor league affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles. Instead, they will be part of the six-team MLB Draft League, a summer, collegiate wooden bat league that will feature many high-end prospects. It will be similar to the Valley Baseball League, but these players will be from the major colleges and the league will be supervised by Major League Baseball. All of this is part of the restructuring of the minor leagues, which I fully understand and fully support.

It is sad news, nevertheless. Must everything in my life change or disappear, even down to an A ball team in the Carolina League?

The Keys began as an affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles—my team—and remained an Oriole affiliate for their entire existence. Such lengthy associations are rare in minor league baseball.

Martha and I attended the very first Keys game when they debuted in 1989 at McCurdy Field, and the roster featured a young third baseman named Pete Rose, Jr. Becky and I attended the 2005 Carolina League All-Star Game in 2005 and were thrilled when a young Oriole prospect named Nick Markakis was named the game’s Most Valuable Player.

Martha and I went to the 2019 All-Star game in Frederick and got autographs from Oriole prospect Michael Baumann among others.

We saw lots of players come and go, some you’ve heard of, most you have not. Two of my favorites, you have not. Blaine Sims was a left-handed pitcher who was signed to a professional contract after pitching a game for the Rebels down in New Market one night. His grandparents—Honey and Dino—were regular listeners to our broadcast over the Internet and when Blaine was eventually assigned to Lynchburg, we went out to watch him pitch. I took video of Blaine facing his first batter in the Carolina League. That can be seen here.

Kevin Brown had been a third baseman/outfielder with New Market. He didn’t even start when he first arrived, but he kept at it, always working at his craft, and eventually signed to play professionally. He was assigned to the Myrtle Beach Pelicans and we would go to Frederick to watch him play and to visit. Despite being old enough to be his father, it still made me feel little-boy cool that he would leave us tickets and we would get to visit with him. And he was grateful to see a friendly face in the visiting crowd, and hear that his old hitting coach, Mo Weber, was doing well.

Kevin Brown on-deck, June 11, 2015.

Harry Grove Stadium holds other memories, too. Martha and I went to see Field of Dreams projected onto a big screen near second base. Seeing that movie in a real ballpark was a hauntingly beautiful experience. Becky, Sarah, and I went to see a WWE wrestling card one night, when all three of us were going through a pro wrestling phase. (Where have you gone, Moondawg Spot?)

My buddy Al’s dad used to have season tickets to the Keys, and I would meet the two of them occasionally. Don, an old friend from my youth group days, and I reconnected at Harry Grove, and for three years, I arranged a night at the ballpark for my dance family. We can still do that, of course. Heck most of my fellow dancers go for the food and the fellowship anyway, and wouldn’t know what level of baseball they’re watching. And that’s okay. In fact, it’s wonderful, but for me and for Martha, there will always be a little sense of what used to be and isn’t anymore.

Martha and me at the 2019 Carolina League All-Star Game.

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Is Our Past Our Future?

Posted on November 18, 2020 by Austin Gisriel

Perhaps nothing destroys a political system more quickly and efficiently than paranoia. The situation can be grave enough when one party to a quarrel believes the worst of the other, when it pictures its opponents as conspirators. But when both sides see the other as ruthless, treacherous, and unwilling to abide by the rules, then all room for compromise disappears.

These words were written by author T. J. Stiles, but not about today’s America. They appear in Stiles’ award-winning, 2002 biography, Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War.

Stiles’ theme is that one cannot know Jesse James without having a thorough understanding of the immediate time and place in which he lived, which in Jesse’s case, means not just in Missouri, but in Clay County, Missouri, a jurisdiction almost bordering Kansas. When his older brother, Frank, rode off to fight alongside other secessionist Missourians in the spring of 1861, Jesse was 13 years old, and Clay Countians had already been fighting Kansas Jayhawkers on and off for seven years. The social dynamics of Missouri were complex to say the least with cosmopolitan St. Louis in the east and “Little Dixie” running along the Missouri River which bisects the state. It wasn’t just a matter of slave-holders versus abolitionists; indeed, more than a few slave owners believed that it was the Union who would best preserve slavery.

This post is not meant to be a book review, but at least a thimble full of the above background is helpful, because our social dynamic is also quite complex, and the quoted lead paragraph does apply to the United States today.

So:

Have we arrived today where Missourians arrived in 1861? Has all room for compromise disappeared? If so, what are you going to do about it?

One final thought: Stiles points out that as 1862 dawned, there was no middle ground. Those who tried to stand that ground were consumed by both sides.

Food for thought that is hard to digest.

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