Let’s Booze-up for New Year’s … Nothing but Lives Are at Stake

         Let’s Booze-up for New Year’s … Nothing but Lives Are                                                at Stake

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 12/30/18

            Looks like breweries will soon cover Cobb County like the dew.  Americans have gotta have their “likker,” you know, especially around New Year’s Eve.

            I call all alcoholic drink “likker” because my parents did.  I’m sure there is a big difference between beer and whiskey, but I don’t really care to know how much.  What I care about is the effects of both, and far too many of those effects are bad.

            Dead is dead and sorrow is sorrow whether it’s the alcoholic or the teenager led by beer to his Friday or Saturday night highway death.  Sorry, but I get angry when I think of how Americans have gotta have their alcohol.  Whatever its benefits - the buzz, the taste, the forgetfulness, or the desired social status – we are paying a high price for our love of our pet drug.  At home, at the parties, after work … gotta have it! 

            I wish we took the harmfulness of alcohol as seriously as we do that of tobacco.  The expression “adult beverage” doesn’t work for me, and obviously, in a different way, not for teenagers either.  For teenagers the expression is an enticement.  Don’t teens want to be adults or feel like they are adults?  Guess what the rite of passage still is for the American teenager.  It’s not sexual experience.  It’s easy-to-get alcohol.

            If teenagers see their parents drinking and know that drinking is simply their parents’ way of life, what do we expect teenagers to do?  Become tee-totalers?  No, no, no.  They don’t have to be tee-totalers.  That’s a bit drastic and old-fashioned.   They just need to be taught to “drink responsibly.”  For parents who believe that “drink responsibly” will work for more than 5 % of America’s youths, I have some oceanfront property in Arizona.

            Another expression that doesn’t work for me is “moderate drinking.”  Moderate or social drinking isn’t a cure for alcoholism.  It’s the cause of much of it.

            Two things have led to my stiff – and I do mean stiff – opposition to alcohol: my parents and teaching school.  My parents were as full of practical wisdom as anyone could be.  I can’t think of anything they were wrong about except maybe Little Richard and The Beatles.  But they were not stern.  They merely shook their heads at “this new ‘50s music,” saying little and sometimes half smiling.

            Even with “likker,” they were not preachy.  The thought of people drinking made them sad.  It brought to their minds carnage and sorrow.  They issued kind, but strong warnings.  Their teachable moments were supplied by the “town boys,” those inebriated rebels without a cause who turned Old U.S. 80 Highway into a virtual drag strip right in front of our house way out in the country, creating havoc more than once. 

            But there was a more deeply embedded reason for my father’s opposition to alcohol.  His father drank and so did his only sibling, a brother.   This lovable brother was reckless and wild when drinking.  Two people whom my father loved most turned him off to drinking.

            Teaching teens and college students is a good way to learn what alcohol can do.  You not only overhear things.  You are sought as a confidant by students who live with alcoholic parents and endure alcohol-induced sorrow.

            Researchers at the Archives of General Psychology report that 78% of teens from 13 to 18 drink alcohol and view binge drinking as no big deal.  The Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reports that the average age for first use of alcohol is 12.  For marijuana it’s 14.  The CDC claims drinking is responsible for more than 4300 deaths among youths each year.  Unfortunately these facts don’t bother those who gotta have their booze.

            Regarding alcohol’s “moderate” use, how many moderate drinking state legislators have been stopped for DUI while returning home from a party?  At least four of my legislative friends have.  I’m glad they were stopped.  Their moderation could have killed somebody.

            I expect Americans to continue popping the corks, lifting their glasses at parties, and building their breweries.  Something else that will continue is the sorrowful and deadly effects of drinking.

            Frankly, I don’t think too many people really care.  They love drinking too much.  On New Year’s Eve, I also suspect, drinking and its sad consequences will intensify.  They always have. 

That’s why I hate “likker” and why I believe tee-totalers aren’t foolish.

Roger Hines

12/18/18

No Judaism, No Christianity … Before Christmas, Hanukkah

 No Judaism, No Christianity … Before Christmas, Hanukkah

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 12/16/18

            Ah, Christmas!  Is there any celebration anywhere on the globe that compares to it?  Think of its themes that are celebrated every year: peace, goodwill, joy, children, music, cheer, and a giving spirit.

            Elvis put it best, “Why can’t every day be like Christmas? / Why can’t that feeling go on endlessly / For if every day could be just like Christmas / What a wonderful world this would be.”  (Google it, people, Google it!)

            I seriously here testify that I know hundreds upon hundreds of people for whom the feeling does go on endlessly.  What an encouraging reality to have loved ones and friends – lots of them – whose each and every day is genuinely like Christmas.  Not to tamper with Elvis, but for the people I’m thinking of, it’s actually not a feeling. It’s a mindset, a spirit, an upward and outward view of life and a practice of living that is selfless and others-centered.

            To whom could I be referring?  Since you asked, yes, I am referring to the bride of my youth, to two beautiful daughters and two strong sons, none of whom have a selfish bone in them and who reach out to others daily.  I chronicle them not out of pride, but out of gratefulness.

 But I’m also referring to friends galore who also do not live for themselves but for others.  I’m referring also to countless business, community, and political leaders in the county where I live who are incredible givers.  Get around these happy leaders for ten minutes and you see why they act like it’s Christmas Day every day.  It’s because the “feeling” (I’ll use Elvis’ word here) goes on endlessly for them as well.  How many counties in the nation can revel because of such a community?

            Christmas has literally caused the guns of war to cease at least for 24 hours.  It happened in both world wars.  Christmas has brought food to the hungry, clothing to the poor, and hope to many who were about to give up on life itself.

            Christmas, of course, has a history, a context, and certainly a purpose.  It doesn’t take a scientist to figure out that every effect has a cause, the cause being greater than the effect.  Christmas is an effect.  Its cause was that God put on an earth suit.   It doesn’t take a philosopher to explain that man can endure the loss of just about anything except meaning.  At Christmas – understandably, with joy all around – those who cannot see or find meaning in life are often at the lowest point of their lives.

            I wonder what percentage of Americans under 30 know that Christianity was born out of Judaism, that Jesus was a Jew, that Jesus was His name and Christ (Messiah), according to His own claim, was His office?

            Today the state of Israel and Jewish people around the world have no better friends and defenders than evangelical Christians.  The Christian’s God is the God of Israel.  While Jews and Christians interpret the Abrahamic covenant differently, there is a kinship between them that is unbreakable.  (And I know people who think Christians are disdainful of Jews.)

            Just as Judaism preceded the new covenant, or New Testament Christianity, so did Hanukkah precede Christmas.  Just as the Maccabees were resisting the Syrian Greeks who sought to impose their culture on the Jews, so did early Christians and so do Christians today resist the notion that the state or the culture is their God.  Jesus’ life and ministry are chronicled by Jewish historian Flavius Josephus as well as by the biographers (also Jewish) Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  Wherever they are chronicled, both believing Jews and Christians are seen standing for their faith.

            America’s predominate ethic is Judeo-Christian, its principles having been drawn from the Mosaic Law, the Sermon on the Mount, and the tenets of the Epistles.  No informed citizen can say our basic ideals are drawn from Buddhism, Islam, or Hinduism.  To so argue is not criticism, just mere fact.  Today’s motto seems to be “Respect the faiths of others and don’t dare have one of your own.”  Atheism is just as much a belief system as any theistic one is and is probably the most evangelistic religion in America today.

            When the multicultural gospel is stretched too far, a culture winds up ceding everything away.  Hanukkah and Christmas are reminders that, though under fire, the faith of our fathers continues to be the foundation of our lives.

Roger Hines

12/12/18

           

           

Go Teach … and Be Encouraged

                           Go Teach … and Be Encouraged

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 12/9/18

            An article in the Marietta Daily Journal this past Tuesday produced a parade of personal history that marched across my brain for at least 48 hours.  The article was about a former student of mine, Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Harold Melton.   It recounted the speech Melton gave to the Cobb Chamber of Commerce’s First Monday Breakfast. 

            The Chief Justice rode high in that parade, but allow me to leave him momentarily after stating that in 10^th grade English at Wheeler High School, Melton was a prince of a guy with character and future success already written all over his face. 

Flashback to the parade that led up to Harold Melton.  When I was 11 and 12, I dreamed of becoming either a radio announcer or a country music star.  Radio announcer because I simply loved radio.  Country music star because country singers rode on big buses and got to see the world as well as sing.

            During my 13^th year, realism set in.  Newspapers stole my heart from radio, and Ernest Tubb and Marty Robbins were riding so high that I decided I could never reach their heights.

            During year 14 in the 10^th grade, a deeper desire began to stir.  Unbeknownst to them, my teachers and coaches at little Forest (MS) High School began to draw me to themselves.  They weren’t just smart.  They loved life and people.  The coaches, like those I would work with years later, were fun-loving and motivating.  Even the sterner, less outgoing teachers obviously enjoyed teaching.  With this batch of educators, Roger Dale Chambers and Gerald Smith met their match.  These teachers still believed and let us know that the teacher should be large and in charge, not students.

            History, literature, science, agriculture, and even mathematics were all compelling, but not nearly so much as the teachers themselves.  If they could enjoy their line of work so much, maybe …

            Suffice it to say that at age 22 I set out to be the kind of teacher my teachers were.  No such luck.  My first year was heaven and hell.  Let’s forget the hell.  Every line of work probably has its share.  That first year produced cute little blond headed 7^th grader Lloyd Gray who became one of Mississippi’s most well known editors at Tupelo’s Northeast MS Journal.

            Three years before the death of former MDJ editor Joe Kirby, I finally got him and Lloyd Gray together.  The two of them enjoyed talking journalism. I listened in.  Lloyd Gray began the 52-year parade of outstanding youngsters that made teaching a joy.  

            Three years ago a bright-eyed 40-something plumber knocked on my door.  We had a happy reunion.  Nick Smith had enjoyed American literature and composition at North Cobb High School, but before entering to fix my problem, he apologized profusely for refusing to give the required talk in American literature. 

            “Mr. Hines, I was too bashful and petrified, but you’ll be glad to know I teach 12-year-old boys at my church,” he pleaded.

            Unlike the effervescent 12th grader Judge Tain Kell, Harold Melton was quiet.  But you knew he had his sights set on something.  When Justice Melton spoke at a Chattahoochee Tech graduation several years ago, he and I also had a happy reunion.

            It’s not the Lloyd Grays, Tain Kells, Nick Smiths, and Harold Meltons who most need the help of good teachers, however.  It’s those who are not so bright-eyed or so fortunate to have parental encouragement.  More and more, suburbia is sending to our schools children and youths who need the kind of teachers I had and the kind of exemplary classmates like the former students I’ve named.

            That’s why the teaching profession needs the best and the brightest, not just in the brains department but in the ability to encourage and point the way for a generation that is not as well-anchored as the one I taught.  That’s why adults who are seeking a second career need to consider teaching and why we need to support our current teachers who still labor hard and long.  To teach is to learn twice.  Do it, adult readers. 

To his friend Richard Rich, Sir Thomas More said, “Why not be a teacher?  You’d be a fine teacher, perhaps a great one.”

            “And if I was, who would know it?” asked Rich.

            “You, your pupils, God.  Not a bad public, that.”

            Every new generation of youth is up for grabs, and they are immensely influenced by teachers and the likes of forward-looking classmates like Harold Melton.  Therein lies much hope.

Roger Hines

12/5/18

Man with No Manners, Characters with No Character, Children with No Anchor

   Man with No Manners, Characters with No Character,                                       Children with No Anchor

         Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 12/2/18

            Sad but true, humans have to learn to be human.  When they don’t, what we get is man’s inhumanity to man.

            Inhumanity takes many forms such as slavery, tyranny, disrespect, and general incivility.  Incivility has many manifestations.  Some of the prevalent ones today are shouting down public speakers with whom you disagree, blocking traffic, vandalizing property, and accosting prominent citizens in public places. 

            In 1969 country singer Merle Haggard revealed his opposition to the anti-Vietnam War, anti-establishment movement with his big hit, “Okie from Muskogee.”  In 2012 sociologist Charles Murray (who knows what it’s like to be shouted down), penned his highly acclaimed book, “Coming Apart: the State of White America.”  Haggard sang of college students of the 60s who didn’t respect the college dean.  Murray chronicles events from 1960-2010 and concludes that many college students still don’t respect the college dean.

            Something obviously happened during the 50 year span Murray analyzed that allowed incivility and disrespect for authority to continue. Permissiveness? Why, just as Haggard became a target for the dope-smoking anti-war protestors, has Murray become the target of today’s political left?  Perhaps it’s because Murray is an intellectual libertarian/conservative who is hitting some nerves.  (Haggard, of course, was a deplorable.)

            The ancient Roman poet Horace often used the expression “laudatores temporis acti,” meaning “praisers of the past.”  What aging generation has not claimed that things were better in the past?   Today Americans have more food, more healthcare, and more “stuff” than ever before, but less civility.  When it comes to manners and respect for others, we can say we have seen better days.  For two centuries our political leaders at every level followed the dictum of England’s Sir William Harcourt that says to function well, nations and their law making bodies must engage in “constant dining with the opposition.”  From 2001 to 2010, I observed this dictum being successfully practiced in the Georgia General Assembly.

            Today, however, there appears to be no middle, no middle ground between the political/cultural opposition, no place to dine.  But appearances aren’t always real.  The great divide, America’s cold civil war, is taking place not so much between ordinary citizens out across the land as between the talking heads on television.  The majority of those talking heads are defenders of the political left, particularly of the manners that campus leftists are displaying.

            Englishman Edmund Burke argued that manners were more important than laws.  One can understand this.  The purpose of law is to make us behave.  What are manners but the individual choice to act mannerly?  Lawful, mannerly people hardly need laws.  Yet, more and more we live in a manner-less world.  Laws are necessary.

            Long before our current president crossed the line, uttering manner-less words no presidential candidate had ever uttered, writers, movie makers, comedians, and college campus activists were doing far worse.  Today’s television fare is as bad as Tinseltown, the standard fare of both being profanity and moral garbage.  When did today’s entertainment and media elites, who pretend to oppose the President’s crassness, ever call into question the culture that produced him, the culture they engineered?

            In the 18^th century novel “Frankenstein,” a scientist created a monster, only to have the monster get out of control and turn on him.  What was his creator, Dr. Frankenstein, to say?  That which he fashioned became his enemy.  Media elites and movie moguls should reread “Frankenstein.”  Their “monster” turned on them and they don’t like it.

            The publishing business has affected manners and morality as much as television and movies.  My line of work requires me to haunt libraries and book stores.  Base magazines, lurid novels, large measures of graphic eroticism, and filthy language fill our libraries and bookstores.  Most fiction now presents characters without character, man at his worse, certainly not his heroic, sacrificial best.  Writers of the not so distant past seldom depicted man’s underbelly.  They didn’t need to. They had literary talent and could make their point with grace.

            And how do all of these dynamics affect children and youth?  The next generation will always land where the previous generation casts its anchor.  It will champion, at least for several decades, what the previous generation championed.  The cultural/political left has championed the sexual revolution, a different definition of marriage, transgender and non-gender silly talk, and freedom from restraint.  

            Are there any words more powerful than “Thank you” or “I’m sorry”?  Such words are external indications of internal character.  They are actually necessary if we are to avoid brawls, incivility, and the salacious “entertainment” that has seeped into every corner of our society.

Roger Hines

11/29/18