History lesson

I was gifted a book not too long ago by a friend of mine titled "The Road That Made America." It's about the Great Wagon Road (or the Great Trading Path), written as a revealing first-person account by North Carolina author James Dodson.

This was an intriguing read, mostly because of what I knew about the Great Wagon Road dealt primarily with my Moravian heritage. The road, which began as a single-trail transportation artery in the 1700s, gradually evolved to become, as the book flap describes, "America's first technology highway" and became a precursor to the nation's Industrial Age.

Moravians, who founded Bethlehem, Pa. on Christmas Eve in 1741, used the trail to travel south to a tract of land called Wachovia and established Bethabara on Nov. 17, 1753. Bethabara eventually spawned Salem, and then Winston-Salem.

The road is nearly 800 miles long, ranging from Philadelphia to Augusta, Ga.

Dodson found himself shadowing the trail in a multi-year quest to find more details on his family history, and this is what his book is about. He speaks with museum curators, historians, B&B owners and anyone else who has a sublime knowledge of the road. There are discussions about the Conestoga wagon, McCormick's thresher, Woodrow Wilson and other facets of interest along the road. It's great stuff.

Then I came to a chapter entitled "The Past Cannot Be Unremembered." Look, I like to think of myself as pretty well-read on American history. It's hard not to be when you've lived most of your life in the cradle of the country's democracy and traveled the Great Wagon Road numerous times myself without even  knowing I was on it.

But this particular chapter was eye-opening. It was about the Slave Trail of Tears.

I never heard of the Slave Trail of Tears. It was never taught to me in school or in college. It is not to be confused with the Trail of Tears, that 1830s abomination created by President Andrew Jackson to relocate approximately 60,000 Native Americans, mostly from the Cherokee tribe in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, to what is now modern-day Oklahoma. Essentially, it was a government-approved program of ethnic cleansing in the United States.

But the Slave Trail of Tears is something completely different. Google it. According to what Dodson learned, the Slave Trail of Tears is the greatest migration of a peoples in American history. Dodson quotes an excerpt from a narrative written by Edward Ball for Smithsonian Magazine in November 2015.

Now I'm quoting it:

"The Slave Trail of Tears is that great missing migration – a thousand-mile-long river of people, all of them Black, reaching from Virginia to Louisiana. During the 50 years before the Civil War, about a million enslaved people moved from the Upper South – Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky – to the Deep South – Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama ... [a forced resettlement that was] 20 times larger than Andrew Jackson's "Indian removal" campaign of the 1830s ... bigger than the immigration of Jews into the United States during the 19th century and even the wagon-train migration to the West, beloved of American lore. This movement lasted longer and grabbed up more people than any other migration in North America before 1900."

What? What? How come this doesn't get into the classrooms? How come this isn't seen on roadside historical markers? Smacks of the sanitation of our history by a bunch of white... oh, wait. Never mind.

Then Dodson digs up another quote from Ball (a White man), detailing the role the Great Wagon Trail had here:

"The gang headed down the Great Wagon Road, a route that came from Pennsylvania, already some centuries old. ... Along the way, the coffle (a coffle is usually a group of enslaved people chained together) met other slave gangs, construction crews rebuilding the Wagon Road, widening it to 22 feet and putting down gravel. They were turning out the new Valley Turnpike, a macadam surface with ditches at the side. ... Today the Great Wagon Road, or Valley Turnpike, is known as U.S. Route 11, a two-lane road that runs between soft and misty mountains and pretty byways. Long stretches of Route 11 look much like the Valley Turnpike did in the 1830s – rolling fields, horses and cattle on hills. ... Today, a few plantations survive. I stop at one of the oldest, Belle Grove. ... Relatives of President James Madison put up the stone mansion of Belle Grove during the 1790s and it lives on as a fine house museum run by historian Kristen Laise. ... Thanks to Laise, Belle Grove is not a house museum that shorts the story of slaves."

Then Ball ends his narrative with the sentence, "The past cannot be unremembered."

I can't believe I'm in my seventh decade and never knew this stuff.

I bring all of this up – the Great Wagon Road and some of the history behind it – because of where we are in our own moment of time. We're about to celebrate the 250th birthday of our nation, which was theoretically (and ideologically) built on the principles that all men are created equal.

And yet, we're a nation that had to endured one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever in Dred Scott in which African-Americans were declared non-citizens. We're going through court-approved gerrymandering that diminishes the strength of the Civil Rights acts and Black representation in government. We're seeing a rewriting of American history that would love to wipe out any mention of slavery. In the meantime, the American demographic is turning browner and browner, which apparently frightens a lot of white people who are afraid of losing power and control over them.

We are at a crossroads on our own Great American Trail. 

 

 

 

 

 

The eyes have it

"Basically, you have two options," explained Dr. Charles Richards, an opthalmologist at Piedmont Retina Specialists in Winston-Salem, after a brief exam of my wife's, Kim, right eye.

"We can do nothing for several months," he said, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. "Or we can operate."

Operate? Wait. You mean, like eye surgery?

You could have scraped me up off the floor. I'm pretty squeamish about eye stuff. I don't even do eye drops very well.

Kim immediately after surgery.

 "You don't have to decide right now," said Dr. Richards. "Take the weekend to think about it. If you decide to have the surgery, call us next week and we'll set up an appointment."

The surgery was for something called macular pucker, the child's primer description for those of us who are not opthalmologists. As Dr. Richards explained it, macular pucker is when the retina develops a wrinkle on the membrane, a result of the aging process. It can cause blurry or fuzzy vision in the eye. "There are no drugs or drops to treat it," said Dr. Richards. "Surgery is the only way."

I got up off the floor and raised my hand.

"Yes?"

"Is it laser surgery?" I asked, hoping to calm Kim's anxiety. And mine. She's squeamish about eye stuff, too. Laser surgery didn't sound too invasive. I mean, this is her eye we're talking about.

"No, it's mechanical," replied Dr. Richards and I immediately had thoughts of little hammers and chisels and scalpels at the ready as if we were still living in the Paleolithic Period of medicine.

"Oh, OK," I said, nodding my head like I knew what he was talking about. There might have been further conversation at that point, but I'm not sure. I really didn't hear anything after the words "eye surgery."

Kim 24 hours after eye surgery.

 On the drive home, Kim and I tossed around the idea about having the procedure. Finally, Kim kind of surprised me.

"Let's go ahead," she said. "I just want to get this behind me. But don't tell anybody. I don't want the attention."

So of course, the first thing I did was tell everybody I knew. One of them was Larry Lyon, my former editor at The Dispatch who, in mid-life, became a Presbyterian minister. He's retired now, but his advice was sage. "Be calm for Kim," said Larry.

I have no idea how he knew by that point I was running wildly through the house screaming "Eye surgery! Eye surgery!" while waving my hands in the air. I was a mess. But I did settle down after that.

So we made the appointment. On Wednesday, we checked into Medical Park Hospital in Winston-Salem at 5:15 a.m., where the procedure would take place. By 7, we were called into the pre-op, where we met the attending nurses and the anesthesiologist. Then Dr. Richards came in with some soothing words.

We were set to go.

I had a book with me and I was prepared to knock off a chapter or two, but about 20 minutes later the waiting room monitor came up to me. "Kim's back and she's waiting for you."

Huh? Already? My colon surgery several years ago took more than three hours.

Dr. Richards came into the post-op cubicle and told us that everything went well. "She did great," he said.

Kim later told me that she never felt a thing, even though she was under a conscious local anesthesia that was delivered intravenously. She remembers having a bit of a coughing spell during the procedure and hearing Dr. Richards tell her, "Let me know when you're done coughing so we can continue."

Oh, my.

When I got into her cubicle, she was awake and, well, smiling. She was wearing a protective eye shield held on to her face with yards of medical adhesive tape. She looked like a pirate. Shortly thereafter, we were discharged.

We were home before lunch. What a morning. Kim promptly went to bed and slept for several hours. That gave me time to think about what had just happened:

My wife just had eye surgery, the first surgery she's had of any kind. She was at times nervous, scared and afraid. In spite of all this, it was her decision to proceed. She confronted her fears and conquered them full on. I thought she was incredibly brave.

She's my hero. 

 

Send in the clowns...

 "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy My brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon you."

               – Jules Winnfield, a fictitious character reciting fictitious Bible verse remotely based on Ezekiel 25:17 in the movie Pulp Fiction.

               –  Also, Pete Hegseth, erstwhile Secretary of Defense, reciting fictitious Bible verse during a Pentagon prayer service last Wednesday.

 "And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them."

               – Ezekiel 25:17 (KJV) 

 So this is where we are.

Pete Hegseth, our pompous, self-righteous, full-of-himself Secretary of Defense, is now leading Pentagon officials in prayer by reciting a passage from the movie "Pulp Fiction" when he actually thought he was quoting Ezekiel 25:17.

A quick scan of the room showed some uniformed officials with heads bowed, eyes closed, as if Hegseth knew what he was doing. I don't know. Maybe he did.

The context for the actual scripture is said to deal with foreign nations who gloated over the destruction of Judah. It's supposed to emphasize God's role in executing justice. Hegseth somehow thinks this verse – either the cinematic or the Biblical – justifies the United States' current military misadventure in Iran.

Meanwhile, as this Hegseth nonsense continues, there are reports that the U.S military is dealing with morale issues, specifically a lack of proper rations aboard several ships deployed in the region. The U.S. Navy denies these claims, but just the suggestion that troops are being poorly fed might raise concerns about morale. The military, after all, marches on its stomach.

Navy chow. Yummm. (USA Today).

 Complicating matters is that the U.S. Postal Service has indefinitely suspended mail delivery to 27 military ZIP codes after the attacks on Iran, so for the time being, military families can't even send care packages to their relatives in uniform.

I guess you can believe Hegseth when he tells us there are no issues with morale, but I have a hard time believing anything this arrogant clown says. So do I believe there are substandard meals being served to sailors and Marines on the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Tripoli? I do.

 While all this mess (pun intended? Maybeeeee) is going on, we have the Vice President of the United States J.D. Vance warning Pope Leo XIV (warning?) that he, the Pope, should be careful when talking about theology.

OMG.

Vance apparently is upset that the pope is not in alignment with the administration's war of choice against Iran. You know, the war where children are blown to bits in their elementary school and civilians are killed by the thousands. Instead, Pope Leo responded with Blessed are the Peacemakers and pointed out that Jesus "is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs."

Vance, citing World War II as an example, said, "I think it's very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology."

This statement got a rise out of Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune. "When he (the pope) talks about matters of theology? Isn't that his job?"

Indeed.

The week didn't let up. We also learned that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, continued his fascination with road kill. In a new book titled "RFK Jr: The Fall and Rise," revealed in a diary entry that he stopped his car on a New York highway in 2001 to cut out the genitals of a dead raccoon for further study, all while his kids waited patiently in the car.

So here's Kennedy, the vaccine denier who holds the very health of the nation in his hands (I hoped he washed them first), adding another chapter to his dead animal fetish. He's fascinated by dead seagull corpses. He once severed the head of a washed-up deceased whale. And he confessed to dropping a dead bear cub off in Central Park make it look like it was killed by a bicyclist (who I assumed would be pedaling as fast as he could in the opposite direction).

Then we learn that FBI Director Kash Patel's alcohol problem has staffers concerned about his well being. Apparently, according to a story in The Atlantic, Patel has dealt with bouts of excessive drinking, at times allegedly locking himself in a room.

These are the leaders of some of the most important departments in our government. All of this should make my head explode. Except that it already exploded several years ago.

Only 198 days until midterm elections.

Release the unredacted Epstein files. 

 

 

 

 

God's Acre, again

By the time Palm Sunday comes around, Kim and I usually have a serious decision to make: Are we going to the Moravian Easter Sunrise Service at Old Salem this year?

Although we have a week to think about it, it usually turns out to be a game-day decision with several critical considerations involved, such as: What's the weather going to be? And do we really want to get up at 4:30 a.m. to get ready for the half-hour trip to the cemetery? And what do we do about breakfast?

This is important stuff because the Sunrise Service at Old Salem is a big deal, sometimes drawing upwards of 10,000 people from all points on the compass. It's one of the most inspiring services I've ever attended and it's been going on every Easter morning since 1772. That's 254 years. Older than the country.

This service almost always grabs me by my own Moravian roots and shakes me to my core in something of a spiritual cleansing, so our final decision whether or not to go often comes down to how contrite do we feel?

Years ago, we found an equally moving moment. We go to God's Acre the day before the Sunrise Service to watch hundreds of people scrub and clean the flat marble gravestones of their deceased ancestors. It's a neat tradition.

A marker gets ready for Easter.

 Believe it or not, this can be a remarkably contemplative moment, too. At least two small brass bands were on hand to practice yesterday, with one of them in the bell tower of the bordering Archie K. Davis Moravian Archives building, while the other was on the cemetery grounds itself giving response.

We saw one group of about 20 people or so clustering around a marker. A child or two was doing some animated scrubbing, followed by "good job" and then a moment's reflection as a person in the gathering spoke a few words about the departed. Sometimes there was light laughter and sometimes there was quiet reflection as they celebrated the deceased. It was both joyous and solemn all at once. And then they'd move on to another gravestone, another relative.

This seemed to be happening all over God's Acre.

I don't have any family buried here, but I do know a couple of people here and we annually look for their sites. It sometimes takes my breath away when we do find them because there are more than 7,000 people buried in these grounds.

And then I give them my pause. 

Because this is the day before the actual service, and it's likely that we are not going to get up at 4:30 to make the trek over here, I conduct my own service in my mind's eye. I feel the sun breaking through the clouds. I see the people scurrying about. I hear the music as it bounces off the hills.

I am admittedly a lapsed Moravian, but I am deeply grateful for my Moravian upbringing, which I hold on to whenever I can. So I ponder the morning sun, the rolling landscape, the rows of white marble stones and contemplate the Easter message as I become my own pastor to my own soul. 

 

 

Round 3

Well, Kim and I did it again.

For the third time within a year's span (going back to last June), we participated in a No Kings protest rally. We joined about 200 other protestors on the Square in Lexington Saturday morning, braving the breezy 45-degree temperatures to display our homemade signs.

Employing the 1st Amendment.

 We figured the turnout wasn't bad for ruby-red Davidson County, especially when you consider far larger protests were being held nearby in Charlotte, Salisbury, Winston-Salem or Greensboro which could have lured otherwise local protestors to those locations.

But it felt good to take part in what was another national movement. Early estimates indicate that this was the largest of the three demonstrations so far with somewhere between eight and nine million participants. That would be about 2.3 percent of the nation's total population sending a message to the stumbling Trump administration of would-be autocrats. That's not an insignificant number and it represents one of the largest demonstrations in American political history.

Based on the two previous demonstrations here in town, I'm sensing a subtle shift in momentum. There seemed to be more horns honking in support of our protest from passing vehicles this time than from people flipping us the bird, which might be their most eloquent way of showing their disagreement from the seat of a gas-guzzling pick-up truck ($3.79 per gallon. How's that additional $35 per tank per week working for you?). 

To me, the social media detractors are amusing. Try as they might, there's a seemingly desperate effort to downplay the significance of the No Kings movement. Some have called it cute. Some say it's sheer idiocy and why waste your time? Others have glibly tried to point out that we have no kings in America and have not had any since 1776. (To be technical, the Treaty of Paris of 1783 formally ended the Revolutionary War and thus ended the reign of King George III in this country). This totally misses the point.

As protestors, we know there are no kings in America. What we are protesting is the deterioration of our rights to an ever increasing authoritarian regime.

Let me ask:

• Are you OK with the current war in Iran? Trump started the war without Congressional approval. He ignored the Constitution.

• Are you OK with an illegal war that is costing this country $1 billion per day? Where's the money for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)?

• Are you OK with Trump raising tariffs? The added high costs passed on the consumers have raised food prices, car prices, all prices. His actions are closing down some small businesses and hurting farmers. He raised tariffs without Congressional approval. He ignored he Constitution.

• Are you OK with the suspension of due process? ICE agents are breaking into private homes and businesses without warrants. That's unconstitutional. 

• Are you OK with dismantling federal agencies like USAID without congressional approval? That's unconstitutional.

• Are you OK with his attempt to end birthright citizenship for children of non-citizens? That's in violation of the 14th Amendment. That's unconstitutional.

• Are you OK with war crimes? Dropping a Tomahawk missile on an elementary school in Iran might constitute a war crime. The same with blowing up civilian motorboats in the Caribbean, especially without due process, especially when you make a second attack on survivors in the water.

Many of Trump's actions have been implemented by executive order without regard to the Constitution, and thus can be challenged by the courts.

Trump is a convicted felon. Trump is an adjudicated rapist. Trump is all over the Epstein files. Trump is a compulsive liar. 

We are either a country of laws, or we are not. 

The current administration's agenda is choking us. 

And that is why we protest. 

Even deeper

Just when you think he can't sink any deeper...

I must have written that lead dozens of times in the past few years, but the pace seems to be accelerating.

I'm talking about our convicted felon president, who displayed the wasteland of his soul Saturday immediately after learning that former FBI director Robert Mueller had died at the age of 81.

"Robert Mueller just died. Good. I'm glad he's dead. Now he can no longer hurt innocent people."

This coming from the guy who wears MAGA baseball caps to the dignified transfers of deceased military personnel who apparently gave their lives to protect a pedophile. This coming from the guy who evaded the draft in the Vietnam era by claiming bone spurs – five times. This coming from the guy who has disrespected Gold Star families and who has suggested those in the military are suckers and losers.

Mueller, of course, was the special counsel who was handpicked by Trump to investigate possible ties with Russia during the 2016 election, which Trump won. Mueller did not find any connections, but he did indicate numerous obstruction of justice violations by Trump, which in normal times would mean some jail time.

Trump, a grifter, a pedophile, a convicted felon, has yet to spend a single day in prison. I guess this moment gives him plenty of opportunity to speak ill of the dead.

So we sink deeper.

Get this. On Friday, the Treasury Department said it responded to rising oil prices as a result of Trump's illegal war with Iran (that hardly anybody in this country wanted) by temporarily lifting the years-long oil sanctions against Iran.

By doing so, Iran can refill its coffers in order to purchase (or produce) more weapons to carry on its fight against the United States. In other words, the United States is now helping Iran to finance its war against ... the United States.

Trump has also dropped oil sanctions against Russia, meaning that Russia is now refilling its coffers to help finance its war against Ukraine. 

All of this is coming from the president who ran his election on the promise of no new wars. How's that working for you?

I can't help but think that this country is about to mire itself in a quagmire. Even though the Vietnam war ended in 1975, memories are still fresh. The North Vietnamese – who never won a linear battle against the Americans – fought an asymmetrical war in which it used unconventional strategies to fight. The Americans were more linear, using strategies dating back to World War II as well as costly technology that was basically useless.

We might be looking at something similar where Iran, even with its military depleted, can still be an effective foe with asymmetrical strategies that affect the economic health of the world (think oil). Even if Trump were to stop the war today, do you think Iran will cooperate? We've bombed school children, destroyed infrastructure and killed thousands of Iranians .

We might be in too deep already. 

  

 

Ghastly miscalculation

I'm trying my best to keep current events in perspective, but then I realize I don't know how to measure perspective.

I thought my high school civics classes would help, and then I thought dabbling in the humanities (the interpretation of human expression) in college might offer some guidance. It's one reason why I ended up with a degree in Liberal Arts English. I wasn't a particularly serious student in college (much to my current regret), but I did enjoy my Shakespeare class, as well as those art history and introductory music history classes (I once wrote a paper on The Beatles classic Abbey Road album. I wish I had it now, just for laughs). And, of course, I relished all my critical and creative writing classes.

Dad ended up being a Moravian minister, so whatever theology might have rubbed off on me became a part of my overall exposure to the humanities. Hopefully, I learned how to think, to communicate and to do so with empathy.

The humanities are usually course curriculum because they are designed to help a person gain perspective into points of view other than his own. It might be why I still carry elements of the hippie movement with me, which I also fostered in college. Make love and not war is never a drag, man. In fact, it's far out.

Humanities is also why I find myself in my particular conundrum today.

Why is our country in an illegal war against Iran? Did Vietnam not teach us anything? Or is it because the baby boomers  – whose war in Vietnam defined a generation – my generation – is aging and dying off without passing on the bloody history? It was a forever war. It had no purpose outside of feeding the military industrial complex. It killed, maimed and poisoned many of us.

This time, we're being led by into a war by an egomaniac – a pedophile president who is a convicted felon – with no end in sight. The only real conclusion we can logically make is that he is trying to distract us from the Epstein files, where his name appears many thousands of times. In fact, how much have you heard of the Epstein files the past couple of weeks? I rest my case.

I don't know what the answer is. Even if Trump ended his military misadventure at this hour, I suspect Iran is pissed off enough to continue an accelerated terror campaign against this country. Will we feel safe in our high-rises? Or crossing bridges? Or flying to distant destinations? Or even breathing the air?

Talk about a forever war. What a grievous miscalculation this was.

"Cry 'Havoc!' And let slip the dogs of war." – Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1.

"And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." – "The End", The Beatles, Abbey Road.